The Orwell Prize Company Profile

George Orwell believed in the moral power of language and understood the dangers that accompany its corruption. The Orwell Foundation uses his work to celebrate honest writing and reporting, to uncover hidden lives, to confront uncomfortable truths- and, in doing so, to promote Orwell’s values of integrity, decency and fidelity to truth. We do this through awarding The Orwell Prizes, lectures and debates, the Unreported Britain Project and through celebrating Orwell’s legacy.

The Foundation runs the Orwell Prize – the UK’s most prestigious prize for political writing. Annually, the Orwell Prize rewards the writing which comes closest to George Orwell’s ambition to ‘make political writing into an art’.

In addition to the Prizes, the Orwell Foundation also runs free public events, debates and lectures on topics of national and international interest and importance, and provides free online resources by and about Orwell. Since 2014, we have also run ‘Unreported Britain’ which seeks to report on places and communities in Britain which often go unreported.

The Orwell Youth Prize, a separate charity set up to bring the work and values of George Orwell to young people aged 14-18 around the country, aims to support and inspire the next generation of politically engaged young writers. The Orwell Youth Prize organises writing workshops for young people and runs a writing prize, culminating in an Annual Celebration Day.

The Orwell Foundation is a registered charity no. 1161563.

The Orwell Youth Prize is a registered charity no. 1156494