by Kevin J. Gray, President and Chief Content Officer
Last month, Westchester Education Services and Westchester Education Services UK, Ltd attended The Stationers’ Company’s annual Innovation Excellence Awards. The Stationers’ Company is one of London’s original livery companies, founded more than 600 years ago by tradespeople who bonded together with industry peers to advance their trades—in this case, work related to printing, publishing, and distribution. While most of its membership is based in the UK, membership and activities have expanded in recent years to address the interests of the publishing, journalism, and media industries globally.
The goal of the Innovation Excellence Awards is to highlight “the key role the Communications and Content industries play in the UK economy, highlights outstanding innovation in the sector and offers the opportunity to share best practice.” Held virtually this year, but broadcast from the venerable Stationers’ Hall, the ceremony highlighted companies in categories such as business processes, communications and marketing, customer experience, package design, service development, and best start-up. Fitting for this year, they also added a pandemic response exceptional performance award.
Westchester was honored to be shortlisted for the service development category. We were nominated for our Culturally Responsive Education Rubric Review process. This service helps publishers and ed tech companies remediate educational content to better address the needs for diversity, equity, and inclusion. You can read more about our process here. We rolled this service out in the US last year. This year, we’ve adapted our rubric for the UK and are working with publishers there to ensure that all students learn from material they can see themselves in and through which they can learn empathy for others.
Westchester congratulates World Textile Information Network for their WTiN Discovery service, which won in the service development category. You can read more about the awards themselves and see all the contenders and winners in this brochure distributed by the Stationers’ Company. We look forward to participating again next year, most likely in person.