RTS Student Television Awards 2024

The RTS Student Television Awards encourage, nurture, support and reward talent, potential and enthusiasm of students in colleges and universities for the creation of film and video content.

The awards offer a marvellous opportunity for students to put their creative talents before the critical eye of professionals, win recognition for their skills, and even “audition” for a first job in the television, media and film industries.

Sinead Rocks, Channel 4 Managing Director and the Nations & Regions Chair of the RTS Student Television Awards, says: “The RTS Student Television Awards have a proven track record in discovering and nurturing the next generation of world class talent in video production, film making and television journalism. They provide a fantastic opportunity to have your ambition and creativity recognised and celebrated by top media professionals and crucially, for you to sell your skills to people at the very top of the broadcasting industry.

“Put simply, winning an RTS Student TV Award is a real badge of honour on any CV and one that is taken incredibly seriously by professionals.”

Criteria

• Entries will be accepted from any students enrolled with higher education colleges, universities and institutions in the UK and Ireland only.
• Each submission must be accompanied by an entry fee: this is £25 + £5 VAT. Total £30 per entry per category. A VAT receipt will be issued on receipt of payment.
• The RTS pays due recognition across all its awards to the need for diversity. It is important that these awards should reflect diversity within the student community and within wider society.
• The judges will look for strong story-telling, creativity, innovation, outstanding visual and aural creativity, high quality craft skills, all with a strong emphasis on originality.

Criteria changes for 2024

• Factual has been split into two separate categories: Factual – Short Form and Factual – Long Form. These two categories have been redefined in the category section.
• Sustainability has been renamed to Saving the Planet and redefined so that it explores issues including global warming, the environment, wildlife, climate change and sustainability.

Judging

Judging of these entries will be in two parts. Undergraduate entries are judged first by the RTS regional centre (including the national centres of Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland) in which your educational institution is based. They select a winner and the winners are announced at an Awards Ceremony in your region.

All regional winners then go through to National Judging, which will take place in April 2024, alongside all Postgraduate entries, (which qualify automatically for UK national assessment and are not judged at RTS centre level), to decide on the national nominations for presentation at the RTS Student Television Awards Ceremony 2024 in June 2024.

At both a regional and national level, industry practitioners will view and judge all entries and the nominated films will be invited to the relevant Awards Ceremony, where they will get the opportunity to network with the judges and other professionals, as well as the chance of winning a RTS Award.

Enter

Entries must have been made between 1 November 2022 and 31 October 2023. The closing date for submission is Monday 13 November 2023 and will close at 5pm.

If you’re unsure of which RTS Centre to select when filling out the entry form, please look at this spreadsheet which specifies most of the main Universities & Colleges that fall under each Centre in the Nations and Regions.

Where a university or college has multiple campuses in different parts of the country, entries should be sent to the RTS Centre where the main campus that confers the qualification is located, not the local campus. For example, if University College London had a campus in Leeds, entries would be submitted to RTS London not RTS Yorkshire. 

In the event of any queries, please contact the RTS Events Department: events@rts.org.uk