RACING WELFARE SCOOPS SILVER AT SMILEY CHARITY FILM AWARDS

Racing Welfare has scooped a silver at the Smiley Charity Film Awards on 20th March, in recognition of the charity’s impactful 2023 Mental Health Awareness Week film.

The winners were announced at a prestigious gala ceremony in Leicester Square’s iconic ODEON Luxe cinema, the stage for many royal, global and European film premieres. From 15 finalists within their category decided by a public vote, the expert panel of judges deemed Racing Welfare’s film worthy of the silver award, pipped to the post only by breast cancer awareness charity, CoppaFeel! who took the gold.

As part of Mental Health Awareness Week 2023, Racing Welfare commissioned and showcased the film that depicts anxiety building up for a racehorse trainer. It was created in conjunction with Equine Productions and shows typical day-to-day scenarios that can build up to create challenges to mental health.

The charity led racing’s response to this important awareness campaign, aiming to raise awareness of the signs and symptoms of anxiety, normalising conversations and signposting to support services. Racing welfare also called for people working in the industry to take action for their own mental health or for the mental health of others in the racing community.

The film was well received across the week with over 87,000 views on social media and was broadcast on RacingTV’s Luck On Sunday.

Racing Welfare’s head of communications and marketing, Nicki Strong said: “It was a huge honour for our film to be recognised by an expert panel comprising high-profile and influential people from the worlds of fundraising, business, entertainment and media. We are extremely proud of the film and the role it played in spearheading our mental health campaign, and that it resonated with both those within and outside of the racing community. We’d like to say a huge thank you to Equine Productions for expertly bringing our vision to life, our actor Charlie Smith for giving his time and to Warren Greatrex and his team for allowing us to film at Rhonehurst.”

Chloe Martin, head of community engagement at Racing Welfare was instrumental in the campaign delivery and creation of the film. She added: “I’m immensely proud that our charity was recognised for producing some of the best work of the year, sitting right up there alongside the biggest names and most universally recognised causes in the charity sector.

“So many of our team contributed to the concept behind the film, the overall campaign and even more so to the mental health support services that it was promoting, so I hope they are as proud as I am of the part they played in this achievement.”

The Charity Film Awards are one of the largest charity events of the year and this year over 500 entries were received in total.

Organisers said: “These finalists represent the best in cause-based storytelling, each film showcasing a unique narrative that resonates with the ethos of philanthropy and social impact.

We invite you to explore the profound stories these films tell and the significant causes they champion.”