Thursday, December 23, 2010

Shedworking Awards 2010

It's that time of the year again when we present the annual Shedworking Awards (actually, this is the first time we've done it but it'll be annual from now on). There have been so many intriguing posts and builds and blogs and photos and tweets and comments over the last year that it's really hard to narrow them all down. Thanks too to everybody who got in touch via Twitter to 'vote' for the Readers' Award. And so without further ado, onto the opening of the envelopes...

Best design - In a year when we saw a lot of intriguing round/egg-shaped designs, the award goes to a shedlike atmosphere with lots of pointy bits, the Hickshaw by Derek Diedricksen. There's a lot to like about the Hickshaw: it's made from recycled building materials, it's very mobile and it's a genuine labour of love.

Best blog/web site Again, fierce competition in this category. Honourable mentions to Workalicious and A Place Imagined and to the always intelligent Lloyd Alter at Treehugger but the one blog that has impressed us in particular is Kent Griswold's Tiny House Blog which has consistently brought interesting builds to a wider audience as well as championing the importance of living and working in small spaces.

Best use of Facebook – Shedworkers and garden office builders are becoming much more savvy about the use of social media sites, though many could do much, much more. We thought Atelier and Irish Wood Style both did a good job on FB this year but the award goes to Historic Shed who as well as using it as a showcase for their own work also pointed fans of the page to other relevant sites of interest on the interwebs


Best Tweeter – Not many people tweet regularly about their garden office. Fiona Gilsenan is an exception, using the #shedworking hash tag more than anybody (including Shedworking itself!) and also charting the ups and downs of life as a shedworker. A very worthy winner.

Best popularisation of shedworking – The V&A's 1:1 Architects Build Small Spaces exhibition brought home to thousands of visitors that small is good and they also put together a cracking website to accompany it. A thoughtful and cleverly curated show

Readers' Award - We asked Shedworking's followers on Twitter and Facebook what they most enjoyed reading/seeing this year and the winner by some margin was our research revealing the £6.1bn which shedworkers contribute to the UK economy

Lifetime achievement award – It's impossible to overestimate how much Uncle Wilco has done to popularise back garden microarchitecture, in particular in the UK but increasingly across the entire planet. Shed of the Year is now a major event covered by the world's media and readersheds.co.uk continues to move onwards and upwards, not forgetting the Flickr site too. And he's a decent chap. Take a bow.

And for you stat fanatics, the three most popular posts of 2010 (by pageviews) were:
1) Phone book shed - 3,626
2) Neil Gaiman: shedworker - 3,469
3) Launch of Irish Men's Sheds Forum - 1,002
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Thursday posts are sponsored by Atelier garden studios which are sustainable, stylish, flexible, functional and future proofed

4 comments:

  1. Many thanks Alex.

    don't know what to say!

    hope you and yours have a great Christmas and a Shed full New year

    Shed of the year 2011 is doing to be the best yet!

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  2. Andy from Workshopshed2:30 PM

    Congratulations everyone, and Merry Christmas.

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  3. I am honoured to have been considered for an award, drowning my disappointment at losing in a tumbler of Canadian Club.

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  4. Wow! Thanks, and congratulations to everyone else. I've enjoyed reading shedworking for a while now and am looking forward to what's to come in 2011.

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