Case Study
RTS Awards
Royal Television Society, an educational charity promoting the art and science of television.
Helping the RTS to embrace all aspects of television through our work with them
The Royal Television Society is an educational charity which encourages and celebrates the work in television and its related fields. Founded in 1927, and granted its royal title in 1966, the charity works all over the United Kingdom through a variety of means, including hosting events and providing bursaries and grants to those in the audio-visual field. A hugely important element of the RTS is that of their awards – recognising outstanding work throughout the industry.
The awards span all genres, and showcase exceptional actors, presenters, writers, and production teams, all alongside the programmes themselves. The RTS have six awards including the Student Television Awards, Regional Awards, and the highly esteemed Programme Awards. Winners of a Programme Award include the likes of Billy Connolly, Jodie Comer and Ant & Dec (who have won an award too many times to count!). The awards are highly respected throughout the industry and are well-attended each year, leading to high coverage from the press.
For the past thirty years, our job here at Midton is to collaborate with the Royal Television Society to produce custom, distinctive awards for the ceremonies to give to worthy recipients. For this, we create two different styles of awards:
Firstly, we create an acrylic award which features the RTS branded head bolted onto the front. This gold head is supplied to us, requiring us to attach it to our produced acrylic award.
Secondly, we produce a clear acrylic award that features an indent of the RTS branded head inside. Each year we produce hundreds of awards for the ceremonies.
During our longstanding relationship with the Royal Television Society, we have both undertaken a lot of growth. The award itself has kept its classic image, while undertaking slight alterations to modernise the iconic head that features heavily in the branding of RTS, and on their awards.
The biggest change, however, can be seen in both Midton’s and the Royal Television Society’s attitude towards sustainability.
Here at Midton, we have a strong passion to strive towards sustainable production, and the RTS join us in striving for this. This can be a difficult mission when creating a pure acrylic award, however, together we have found ways to combat this.
By advancing our tooling we are able to reduce and remove our wastage present in processes used to create awards. We have removed non-recyclable elements of the process and replaced them with more sustainable products to increase our sustainability through the creation of awards.
Our relationship with the Royal Television Society spans further than just producing awards for the annual ceremonies. During the Covid-19 pandemic, RTS were a fantastic support during our early days of our venture into PPE production for hospitals.
The charity’s May 2020 magazine issue showcased a feature of our work, titled “Turning trophies into ward wear”. CEO of the charity, Theresa Wise, stated that she was “impressed and proud that Midton has pivoted its business to the manufacture of vital PPE”, explaining it to be a “wonderful example of British agility”. This coverage was highly beneficial to us here at Midton, and the support we received has been amazing.
Working with the Royal Television Society is always an exciting project for us here at Midton. Collaborating on such an esteemed awards ceremony is a joy for us and seeing our work featured on television and the social media of such famous members of the industry always feels special.
It is amazing to know our work is seen by millions, thanks to the likes of Ant & Dec, who showcase our awards in the background of their famous Saturday Night Takeaway television show.
The Royal Television Society are a great client to work with, and we are thankful for the recognition they have given us during the current pandemic. At Midton, we look forward to hopefully many more years of collaborating and creating beautiful awards!
Thanks to The Royal Television Society for making us feel like acrylic royalty!
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