Final winners of the EBDA Award named by trustees
The EBDA Award closes this year, exactly half a century after its inception.
The 2025 joint winners – the final recipients – are Ad Gefrin in Wooler and the Berwick Literary Festival.
The award was born out of the Eastern Borders Development Association, which had been effective in improving economic conditions in north Northumberland and the eastern Borders in the 1950s and 60s following a steep decline in agricultural employment.
During the last 50 years, it has acknowledged the legacy of its illustrious forebear by recognising the achievements of “a person or organisation who, or which, through skill or effort, has made an outstanding contribution in social, economic or environmental fields within the eastern Borders or north Northumberland in the past 12 months”.
The EBDA trustees have closely followed those guiding principles in this, the award’s closing year, by honouring two of the most worthy nominees in a roll-call that includes, over half a century, all that is best in the cultural, economic, environmental and social heritage of the eastern borderlands.
Since 2014, the Berwick Literary Festival has been celebrating words – written, spoken and performed – as an extra dimension to the town’s popular festivals calendar with a prestigious range of authors, speakers and performers and a cross-border outreach of education enrichment through poetry and drama workshops, performances, productions and writing competitions.
In addition, the trustees acknowledge the extraordinary achievement of the team at Ad Gefrin in showcasing the heritage of Anglo-Saxon Northumbria through visitor interpretation, crafts, arts, hospitality and the reintroduction of distilling to north Northumberland.