Well – The ACON Honour Awards have come and gone. Emily & I attended to represent BitBent. It was a great night of music, mingling & mini-quiches.

BitBent did not win an award this year – the winner in the Community Sector category was Queer Screen. All the folks at BitBent would like to congratulate Queer Screen on their award as well as for mentioning BitBent in their acceptance speech. we’d also like to say well done the other nominees this year.

Since we didn’t get to get up and make a speech at the awards – i’m gonna list some people here who have helped BitBent come this far.

Firstly, Tom who started the nomination ball rolling. Without his persistence, BitBent wouldn’t have even been nominated; to U-turn youth Services & Woden Community Services for giving Bitbent a home over the past 8 years; to Sophy Greenwood who pushed to give us more support than we had ever hoped for; to Amy Linden for her tireless help in Woden; a HUGE thank-you to Emily Anderson who gives so much to the Belconnen branch; to Sonya Roelofse who organised for Emily & I to attend the awards; to Nick Henderson & Paul Nicholson who created BitBent 8 years ago and gave the youth of Canberra a space to socialise in.

Finally – and most importantly, i’d like to thank every young person who has ever been brave enough to step through those doors to the youth centre and visit us at BitBent. You are way cooler and braver than i was at your age. BitBent exists not only for you, but because of you. Thankyou to everyone who has come along and been a part of the BitBent family over the past 8 years. Here’s to another 8!

The 22 finalists were selected from over 70 nominations received across five categories covering business and industry, media and entertainment, health and wellbeing, and the community sector.

BitBent has been announced as a finalist for the Community Sector award.

The other finalists in our category include:

• The Red Rattler – in just 18 months this innovative venue has become an important community hub and creative playground for queer women in Sydney
• Queer Screen – has provided audiences in Sydney and throughout Australia with the biggest and best LGBT film festivals in the country for over 20 years
• Harbour City Bears – has been a leading social group for gay men in Sydney for 15 years and is a significant supporter of GLBT community organisations and events

We’d like to thank everyone who put forward a nomination & a really big thankyou to Tom Hulse & Emily Anderson for organising our nomination.

Stay tuned to find out the results . . .