Welcome

THE SECOND LUKE BITMEAD WRITERS' BURSARY

13 MAY 2009

We are proud to announce on Luke's birthday the second Bursary in his memory. The energy and creativity of TOM CHALMERS and his dynamic team at LEGEND PRESS are again giving us their support and an opportunity of a fantastic publishing deal for the winner.

We are delighted to have ZOE JENNY and DEBORAH WRIGHT bringing their professional expertise, gained in their own successful writing careers, to the panel of judges.  Further details can be read at  www.legendpress.co.uk

We thank all of you who have donated to Luke's Fund which enables us to present a cheque for £2,500 to the winner.  Other prizes will be decided near the presentation date.  Anyone who would like to make a donation in memory of Luke please make cheques payable to "The LUKE BITMEAD MEMORIAL FUND" and send them to THE HANSON PARTNERSHIP LLP, BRINKWORTH HOUSE, BRINKWORTH, WILTS, SN15 5DF

With your support, we will be able to do as last year, giving second and third prizes and runners up prizes as well.  We know there are many people out there who feel connected to Luke and this is a really meaningful way to continue that connection, supporting the bursary that he wanted to create. Thank you.

ANDREW BLACKMAN last years winner goes from strength to strength.  Read his book "ON THE HOLLOWAY ROAD"

 

 

2009

We wanted to share our pride with you at seeing our first winner of the Luke Bitmead Writers' Bursary in print: Andrew Blackman's On The Holloway Road was formally launched at a party in London's West End on February 26th and is available in bookshops from February 28th. It was wonderful to see Andrew looking so confident as he gave his speech and his reading from his first published novel - it looked as if coming out of the shadows and stepping into the spotlight was something Andrew took in his stride. The time was right. We feel his supportive partner Genie was an integral part of this. We were also thrilled to see our second prize winner last year, James Higgerson, come along to support Andrew, and to receive a lovely message of support from our third placed winner Andrew Kirby ahead of the evening. What lovely people Luke's award has introduced to our lives.

A big thank you to Tom Chalmers and his team at Legend Press, the publisher of Andrew's novel, in helping us to realise Andrew's dream of a life in print come true. We were also honoured to have our judges, themselves bestselling writers, Zoe Jenny and Deborah Wright in attendance at Andrew's launch. We are all excited about awarding another bursary in Luke's name later this year - further information will follow soon!

 

It seems our openness to the unknown leaves more room for you, Luke's friends and fans to help us make the incomprehensible, comprehensible. Your continued supportive messages, donations and creative ideas energise us for another year of growth and discovery in this troubled world.  By allowing you to play your part in building Luke's Fund into something people can turn to for creative help allows you to be creative as well.

Andrew Blackman's book On The Holloway Road will be launched in February and it is with enormous pride that we see the Luke Bitmead Award has been acknowledged on the front cover 

 

ANDREW BLACKMAN'S "ON THE HOLLOWAY ROAD" IS A GREAT READ AND WE FEEL SURE IT WILL DO WELL. IT IS A BOOK ABOUT TWO LONDONERS SEARCHING FOR MEANING AND FREEDOM IN MODERN-DAY BRITAIN AND IT FEELS ABSOLUTELY RIGHT THAT WE HAVE BEEN ABLE TO BE ONE OF THE LINKS THAT HAS ENABLED ANDREW TO BECOME A PUBLISHED WRITER.  

THE MENTAL HEALTH STRAND TO OUR FUND IS ALSO PROGRESSING.  WE ARE SEEING CHANGES TO PEOPLES ATTITUDE AND AWARENESS OF AN ILLNESS THAT NEEDS COMPASSION AND UNDERSTANDING. A HUGE CAMPAIGN BEGINS IN 2009 THAT WILL BE FOCUSING ON BRINGING KNOWLEDGE INTO EVERYBODIES LIVES THAT WILL ENABLE US ALL TO RESPOND DIFFERENTLY.   WHEN SOMEONE BREAKS THEIR LEG AND BECOMES UNSTABLE WE OFFER SUPPORT TO STEADY THEM. THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT WE NEED TO DO WHEN PEOPLE BECOME PSYCHOLOGICALLY UNSTABLE, OFFER SUPPORT TO STEADY THEM. THAT CAN BE JUST LISTENING TO HOW THEY FEEL AND ENCOURAGING THEM TO SEEK PROFESSIONAL SUPPORT WITHOUT FEELING GUILTY ABOUT BEING UNWELL.

NOW WE NEED TO RAISE FUNDS FOR NEXT YEARS BURSARY.   ALL THE DETAILS TO ENABLE YOU TO DO THIS CAN BE FOUND ON THE MEMORIAL FUND PAGE, OR YOU CAN SEND CHEQUES MADE OUT TO THE LUKE BITMEAD MEMORIAL FUND TO KEBLE HOUSE, THE FARRIERS, SOUTHROP, GLOS. GL7 3RL. WE THANK ALL OF YOU WHO HAVE ALREADY DONATED FOR 2009 BEFORE WE HAD EVEN ASKED !!!!!  

PLEASE REMEMBER LUKE'S BOOKS MAKE GREAT PRESENTS AND ALL THE ROYALTIES GO INTO THE FUND ENABLING US TO REMEMBER OUR MUCH MISSED SON AND BROTHER IN A WAY THAT HELPS OTHERS.

WE WISH YOU WHATEVER YOU WISH YOURSELVES FOR CHRISTMAS AND OFFER YOU TWO THOUGHTS.

"SUCCESS IS A JOURNEY, NOT A DESTINATION."             UNKNOWN

"WHATEVER YOU ARE, BE A GOOD ONE."         ABRAHAM LINCOLN

 

THE SECOND ANNIVERSARY OF THE LUKE BITMEAD MEMORIAL FUND

27th OCTOBER 2008

The Greek Poet Hesiod [circa 700BC] wrote, "If you should put even a little on a little and should do this often, soon this would become big." So it is with Luke's Fund. To receive messages telling us how much you miss Luke helps us enormously to feel we are not alone with our grief. We received a card from one of Luke's dear friends who he did much traveling with, that has a burst of sunflowers on the front, and a compassionate message inside. Another letter came from a school friend who has had a major back operation and was unable to join us for the presentation of Luke's Bursary.  He sends us encouraging words and a donation towards next years award.  Yesterday we received the winnings from a sweep-stake at a wedding guessing the length of the speeches!  Luke would be amused at the creativity you are showing to enable his fund to grow.  This is just a taste of how donations are coming in.

If everybody that knew Luke donated a small amount we would soon have sufficient to be sure of next year's presentation when we feel it will be needed even more to support artistic talent in these difficult financial times.

For those of you that have read White Summer you will know that The Swan in Southrop, heavily disguised by Luke as The Duck, was featured in the book and indeed some of the story was written in the bar! Yesterday we had lunch in The Swan remembering Luke and the happy times we had spent with him there. The new people running The Swan are Lana who is front of house and made us very welcome, and Sebastian the chef who creates delicious dishes which we enjoyed immensely.

We walked down to the Churchyard and put vibrant flowers on his grave trying to remember the joyfulness of Luke and his ability to see humour in the most difficult of circumstances. That is what we must do now. He used to call me a technophobe, and would laugh at how I struggled using the computer but then showed me how to master the technology that I feared!

We are delighted to have linked with another family whose son also died by suicide, a few weeks after Luke.  To read more about this please visit the Memorial Fund page.

During the wet season, I hesitate to call it summer, it has been encouraging to continue to receive messages and see the number of visitors to Luke's web site grow.  It is wonderful to know we have your support in keeping the memory of Luke alive in a way that sends out the clear positive message that we are incredibly proud of him.  It seems many of you were proud to be his friend and now we are delighted to be able to call you our friends as well.   This connection between us is creating a change in the way that people perceive suicide.  When people are angry, but feel guilty or frightened and powerless, they often turn the anger in on themselves.  The result is depression.  You are helping us, Luke's Family, to feel empowered.  Your support gives us a feeling of being in a floating dock where we have been raised up for maintenance and repair.  We are grieving while being held by the buoyancy that knowing you care as well, gives us.  We remember the difficulties that other people are living with and some of you shared on the night we presented Luke's first bursary.  Taking more time to listen to each other provides opportunities to learn and discover how to give support to those who are in need but feel unable to ask.  At the end of October I feel privileged to have been invited to meet with nine other mothers who have also lost valued sons by suicide.  We will be brain storming together, driven by the strongest of motives to help discover what makes someone believe that all that is available for them is to destroy themselves.  And what we can do to prevent other families experiencing this terrible trauma.   Luke felt instinctively that what would be good for the world was to help people laugh.  He, as those of you who knew him will remember, had a great gift for this.   I am sure he would be delighted to see that the BBC's new mental health campaign, Headroom is fronted by what might seem an unusual choice of person.  She is a psychotherapist with an MA in neuroscience.  Look on the Memorial Fund page and you may discover you know this person well in a completely different guise.  A quote from Therapy Today says about her  "Her informal, confessional and jargon - busting style is intended to demystify mental health issues, and she uses her humour to demolish taboos."  Well we like the sound of all that.  Amongst our friends out there is someone who has been hiding his talent as a photographer but has just sent us a great picture of Luke and other people who were at the launch of White Summer.  We will be adding them to the Gallery pictures in due course.  Luke was enigmatic .  He was also unpretentious.  His idea of creating a bursary for fledgling writers was something he, I feel, knew would have a profound affect enabling people to be drawn together in a supportive way.  Perhaps we did not realise how quickly things would begin to grow.  It feels as if we flung a handful of seeds on to exceptionally fertile ground.   We have quickly learnt that to give creative people an opportunity they seize it, play around with it and explore what they can give in return.   We would like to share more with you about the amazing evening in London.  When we arrived the room where the awards were due to be presented had its windows wide open as it was a hot night.  We feared the roar of the traffic outside would make conversation difficult.   We need not have worried.  The room filled very quickly and the animated conversations between lively, energetic people completely obliterated any sounds of traffic.  The plan was for the judges to weave there way amongst the vibrant crowd and each try and speak to the writers on our short list.  This worked well except nobody could find Andrew Blackman.  Had he arrived, yes his name had been ticked off Lucy's list so where was he?  We decided the time had come to proceed and we just had to trust in the belief that he would appear.  Read more about Andrew and in due course the other writers who received awards on the Memorial Fund page.

 We continue to receive messages of congratulations on the success of our first presentation of this new award and things are happening that we will be sharing with you.   In the next few days we will have the opportunity to confirm the changes we hear that are being made in the attitude to mental health. We will also share some of the complimentary messages plus offers of creative help that we have received.  Changes are being made in areas where things have stayed stuck for years.  THANK YOU to everyone that is helping make this happen. 

We are proud and excited to announce the winner of the first Luke Bitmead Writers Bursary as Andrew Blackman from North London.  Andrew receives the winners cheque of £2,500 and a contract from Legend Press to publish his novel On The Holloway Road.  None of the judging panel had managed to meet Andrew in the hour before the presentation so it was equally exciting for us to meet our winner, and find him to be such a charming man.

The finalists were announced at the award ceremony in London on the evening of Thursday 24th July in front of a large and excited crowd. The judges were so impressed by the standard of entries, and the determination and hard work in the face of adversity shown by the writers, that additional prizes were awarded to all eleven shortlisted entries: 

READ MORE ABOUT OUR Second prize winner James Higgerson from Manchester for Shot Down -  £500

AND our Third prize: Andrew Kirby from Leeds for When Elephants Walk Through The Gorbals - £400 on the Memorial Fund Page

Runners up prizes of £100 each:

DA Allan - Goodbye Tear

Tom Byam-Cook - It's all in the Title

Elly Clark - as yet un-named!

Josie Henley-Einion

Garan Holcombe - The Act of Union

Dan Jones - Dear Mrs Jones (Letters to and from Blighty)

Chris Lambert  - The English War of Independence

Peter Poole - Fear and Magic

We are so encouraged to receive so many wonderful compliments on the night about Luke's idea to have a writers bursary that we are now making plans for next year! Please continue to support us.

JUDGING PANEL

Elaine Hanson and Tiffany Orton (Luke's mother and sister) would like to say a huge thank you to their fellow judges who put so much time and effort into evaluating all the chapters and personal stories submitted: best selling authors Sam Mills and Zoe Jenny together with Tom Chalmers and Lucy Boguslawski of LEGEND PRESS.

 Further information about the Bursary is available under  the 'Luke Bitmead Memorial Fund' section.

PURCHASES: for those who wish to support the Bursary and help raise funds for next year you can purchase copies of WHITE SUMMER and HEADING SOUTH through direct links to the Legend Press website. Please click on 'Recent Publications' and the links will take you straight through.

GETTING IN TOUCH: please do leave us messages through the 'Email Me' link and we will respond.

 We are so thrilled to say that donations keep coming through - and it gives us a boost each time. Thank you so much. Luke would be amazed and delighted that you are all remembering him and doing something worthwhile in his name. We have started the journey of raising awareness to help prevent future tragedies.


DONATIONS: for those of you who wish to make a donation please send a cheque made out to the 'Luke Bitmead Memorial Fund' and post to Luke Bitmead Memorial Fund, c/o The Hanson Partnership, Brinkworth House, Brinkworth, Swindon,Wilts SN15 5DF

For further information about the Fund please click on 'Luke Bitmead Memorial Fund'.

We will continue to update this website with details of progress on the Luke Bitmead Writer's Bursary and fund raising so do please continue to log on from time to time. We have further works written by Luke. With the valued assistance of Luke's hugely supportive publisher Legend Press, we hope to be able to share these with you in the future.

We miss you Luke, you will never be forgotten.