Civic winners to get top glassware

The winners of this year's awards to find Dudley's unsung heroes and secret stars will be presented with beautiful handcrafted glassware to mark their achievements.

The glassware has been created by local glass artist Allister Malcolm.

It will be presented to each of the five winners at the Mayor's Civic Awards ceremony on March 6. The winner of the Mayor's Award – a new prize which has been introduced this year to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the ceremony – will be presented with an eye-catching blue and green coloured glass disc.

The winners and runners-up in the four other categories celebrating people's achievements in sport, art, community spirit and education will each be presented with a coloured glass vase.

The glassware was cre-ated by Mr Malcolm who spent several days in the furnaces at the Broadfield House Glass Museum, in Kingswinford.

The glass was produced using traditional glassblowing techniques dating back hundreds of years.

More than 80 nominations have already been received for this year's awards in the four categories which are all named after borough greats.

They are the Duncan Edwards award for sport, the Cedric Hardwicke award for arts, the Frank Foley award for community spirit and the Thomas Attwood award for education.

The Mayor of Dudley, councillor David Stanley, said: "The awards have been produced locally and by hand and that shows in their outstanding quality.

"I am very much looking forward to meeting the winners and presenting them with these truly unique pieces of artwork."

Mr Malcolm, who is based at Broadfield House, and who has been producing glasswork for more than 10 years, said he was thrilled to have been asked to produce the awards.

"The Mayor's Civic Awards are very special and I wanted to produce some special awards to celebrate that," he added.