Joe Farley Award

Farley was founded by Joe Farley more than 50 years ago. As an individual with a passion for antiques he started hiring paintings and furniture to the entertainment industry in 1962. Some years later, his son Mark took over and continued to run the family business, helping it to grow from strength to strength and expanding the stock to include all manner of beautiful objects.

After Joe Farley passed away in 1993, Mark set up The Joe Farley Award as a tribute to his late father, an artist himself, and to recognise emerging design talent. Originally in association with The Royal College of Art and now at its new home with The National Film and Television School, the award is run annually for first year students on the Production Design course.

Each year sees a different theme for a range of ‘money-no-object’ fictional productions for which the students must produce technical drawings and scale models. These are then presented to Mark, who is assisted each year in awarding a winner by a co-judge, who is an industry professional with years of experience. The winner then receives a financial gift to allow them to enhance their creativity and expand their learning experience as they move in to their second year studies.

The National Film and Television School is the UK’s leading centre for education within the film and television industry and their students and faculty are extremely talented. Every year sees new and innovative ideas and designs from the next generation, which offers us an exciting insight into what’s to come.

We are honoured to be able to contribute in some way to the future of an industry we feel passionately about and are so pleased to work with the NFTS to do it. We feel it is a fitting tribute to Joe Farley and are confident he would be as proud and excited as we are to see it progress.

This years’ guest judges were Sarah Greenwood and Katie Spencer (Barbie, Atonement, Beauty And The Beast, Cyrano, Darkest Hour, Sherlock Holmes, Anna Karenina).

This year’s winner; Will Mansell, ‘Sinbad’.