THE Aisling Awards once more return to the Europa Hotel for a gala evening on December 4 – after last year’s remote awards ceremony.
We will be honouring the best that the city has to offer, with #Rebuilding our theme for 2021, as the community puts its best foot forward in the wake of the tests and challenges thrown up by Covid-19.
With our civic leaders set to be honoured across various categories, once again the Aisling Education Award is set to be one of the most competitive awards up for grabs as it is every year.
Once again the Kennedy Centre is sponsoring the Aisling Education Awards and with nominations closing in just two weeks time, Kennedy Centre manager, John Jones is calling on our readers to nominate the school or educational project which they believe should make our shortlist for 2021.
“It is all about community involvement so it’s very important that people get involved and make their vote count,” said John. “Everybody has somebody who they know who attends some school or some form of education, so it’s important for those people to show their support.”
John says it has always been important for the Kennedy Centre to support the local community and education.
“We’ve been sponsoring the Aisling Awards for over 25 years,” he said. “It’s brilliant for us as a shopping centre to be involved in the community and with the education of West Belfast. Education in West Belfast plays such a huge role in the community and it is very important for us to be able to support that.”
As one of the judges in the Education Award, John enjoys nothing better than getting out and seeing what the finalists have to offer each year.
“Yeah, it’s great to get out on site and obviously last year we weren’t able to do that with Covid so it will be great to get back out again. It’s great to see all the different types of education taking place, it’s not just what people think is conventional in schools, we’ve been to some fantastic educational places in Belfast over the years.
“Last year the whole awards ceremony was online, we didn’t get to visit anyone, everything was done on Zoom. But it must have been a very difficult time for anybody working in education, with kids in and then kids out, so it was very difficult, so hopefully we’ll get back to some level of normality this year.”
And with the next two months the busiest period for any shopping centre, John will be balancing his Aisling Awards judging with the busy festive period. But he's looking forward to the buzz.
“We are going to have a Halloween event on Saturday 30th from one o’clock to four o’clock in the Food Court, so there will be trick or treating, some pumkin carving and face painting etc, so it’s nice getting back to that. And following on from that we will have Santa in his grotto in here again on Friday 19th November."
You can cast your nomination for the Education Award here.
