Dawn Foster (1986-2021) was a brilliant and fearless working-class journalist who told the stories of those who would otherwise be voiceless. Housing was already a major focus of her career when the Grenfell tower fire happened. She went to aid residents on the ground, listen to their experiences and reflect them to a worldwide audience. She immediately understood it would become her life’s work but that life was tragically cut short in July 2021.
You can read more about Dawn and her journalism here and here in Red Pepper, in Tribune, Inside Housing and many other sites.
In the months following the death, it became clear that preserving her legacy wasn’t going to be an uphill struggle. Her body of work speaks for itself, and her readers, colleagues and friends were in no danger of forgetting her.
In her memory, HCI Skills Gateway in partnership with Red Pepper launched the Dawn Foster Memorial Essay Prize for a 1,500 word essay on Britain’s housing crisis. Open to any UK-based writer aged 35 or under, it offered a first prize of £1,500 and three runner-up prizes of £200. Beyond the numerous obituaries and appreciations of her journalism, the Prize emerged as a positive move towards keeping her name relevant for a new generation of writers.
The housing crisis was an intentionally broad topic, and this was reflected in the range of responses received. Entries in the shortlist included explorations of homelessness, student housing, modular construction, home insulation, migrant housing, Right to Buy, illegal eviction and more. Some gave overviews of the housing crisis and its varied repercussions, others took a case study approach, often with personal experience or interview material woven in. A few bristled with righteous anger or dark humour, which was certainly in keeping with a prize in Foster’s memory.
Acknowledging Foster’s significant impact with her work on housing, the Housing, Construction & Infrastructure (HCI) Skills Gateway at Edinburgh Napier University stepped forward to fund the prize and we at Red Pepper committed to publish the winning essays and assist the judging process.
A representative from the HCI Skills Gateway noted:
Our aim is to build inclusive, innovative and sustainable careers in future construction and the built environment, to decarbonise the communities where we live, work and play. Based at Edinburgh Napier University and part of the Edinburgh & South-East Scotland City Region Deal, we’re committed to finding new and better ways to inspire people to consider how we imagine how and where we live, and the diverse range of skills we need to achieve zero carbon in construction.
Dawn Foster and her astonishing writing about housing encapsulates how we want people to consider and challenge our housing status quo, and we are honoured to support this essay competition in her name.
We received 66 entrants from all across the UK, the majority of whom were previously unpublished. After panel deliberations over an incredibly high quality set of submissions, Red Pepper hosted the prize-giving on 24 May 2022. Author Lynsey Hanley awarding first prize to Jessica Field for her essay ‘Fighting for Cardboard City: The drudgery of activism on the frontlines of the housing crisis’. The essay looks at the #SaveOurHomesLS26 campaign, and Field’s parents’ community in a 1950s estate on the outskirts of Leeds being slowly torn apart by developers.
Hanley, who judged the shortlisted essays, said that she ‘loved this essay, because it completely encapsulated so much of the spirit and the not-holding-back-ness of Dawn’s own writing.’
The winning essay was published in full in Red Pepper‘s summer 2022 issue. All four shortlisted essays are:
- Winner of the Dawn Foster Memorial Essay Prize 2022 – Fighting for Cardboard City: From a 1950s estate on the outskirts of Leeds, Jessica Field charts a community under threat and the stresses of activism on the frontlines of the housing crisis
- Life and housing on an Oxford estate – by Connor Woodman
- The ‘housing crisis’ is the result of a failed economic experiment: I know, I’m from Hull – by Jon Bailey
- The pre-teen and the influencer: how the rise of the landlord class hurts us all – by Kathryn Wheeler
