50 Years of British Arrows: From Awards, to Films, to Anniversary Festival

The British Arrows and Thinkbox on how decades of championing craft evolved into their joint series, ‘The Art of Craft’, and now an entire event – and why it’s only gaining relevance in modern contexts.

Little Black Book delves into the makings of and the behind the scenes of The Art of Craft Festival.

It’s 1970s Britain, and frustration is brewing within the advertising industry. Awards schemes feel either too commercially driven, or too detached from the realities of craft. Hearing those complaints, a new awards show is built: the London Advertising Festival Awards, now known as the British Arrows.

That’s the scene set by its managing director, Lisa Lavender, when asked how the bastion of British craft, now celebrating its 50th anniversary, first came to be. “The British Arrows were born out of a sense that British television advertising deserved to be judged properly, by the people who actually made it, and on the quality of the work itself. The founding principle was clear: to create an awards body that existed for the business, not the other way around,” she stresses.

“Deliberately independent, industry-led and radical at the time,” as Lisa describes it, the British Arrows focused solely on moving image advertising, placed craft at the centre of the judging process, and finally set the standard for giving creative teams beyond agencies their flowers. This was an institution that would help define what ‘good’ looks like in British advertising, Lisa tells us.

Today, the core mission remains the same: to champion exceptional craft. Yet what we understand as craft itself has changed. Lisa explains, “Fifty years ago, it was most often associated with visible techniques such as direction, cinematography, editing and sound. Today, craft encompasses a far broader spectrum, from VFX and animation to CGI, colour, innovation and, most recently, AI.” 

Last year, British Arrows stepped up the way it celebrates this spectrum of specialisms in partnering with Thinkbox, the marketing body for commercial TV in the UK, on the series, ‘The Art of Craft’. Drawing from the insight that advertising creativity is the second biggest driver of effectiveness in commercial terms, each film invites a Craft Arrow winner to talk through how they applied theirs in a prizeworthy way. Take, for example, Untold Studios’ ridiculous yet realistic VFX for Virgin Media O2’s ‘Walrus Whizzer’, or tenthree’s dizzying edit of Bodyform/Libresse’s ‘Never Just a Period’.

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