Leeds Digital Festival Awards: Meet the 2021 Shortlist!

It brings us a huge amount of pleasure to confirm the official shortlist for the 2021 Leeds Digital Festival Awards! 

Hosted by Amsource and WardHadaway, this years Awards will return to being an in-person event – having been forced online in 2020 – with the Belgrave Music Hall and Canteen booked for Wednesday 29th September. Information about ticketing will be released in the coming weeks. 

We were overwhelmed with the volume of nominations received, and the standard of entry across all categories unbelievably high. Making the task for our judging panel of Eve Roodhouse (Leeds City Council), Greg Wright (Yorkshire Post), Rachel Skelton (Covea Insurance) and Rashik Parmar MBE (IBM) incredibly hard, we’d like to take the opportunity to thank everyone who took the time to make a nomination and congratulate everybody who had their name or business put forward, whether they were shortlisted or not. 

With nine awards on the slate this year – including a couple of new categories – here are the shortlisted individuals and businesses for the 2021 Leeds Digital Festival Awards: 

Entrepreneur of the Year (sponsored by the University of Leeds) 

Achille Traore (Top Screen Media) 

Sarah Pawson (Fruition Consulting) 

Lyric Jain (Logically) 

Justin Whitston (Fleetondemand) 

Bobby Thandi (XR Games) 
 

One to Watch 2021 (sponsored by LITTLE) 

Ruta Baltiejute (AND Digital) 

Anju George (TruNarrative) 

Eric Harstedt (Meeow) 

Fiona Bradley (FB Comms) 

Start-Up of the Year (sponsored by AD:VENTURE) 

Iatro 

Meeow 

Tred 

Gridfox 

Logically 

 
Growth Company of the Year (sponsored by Marsh Commercial) 

Force24 

TruNarrative 

Burendo 

6B 

eviFile 

 
Tech4Good (sponsored by SCC) 

Mindwell Leeds 

The Data Shed x GAMSTOP 

365 Response 

givto 

JUST: Access 

Best Tech Place to Work (sponsored by Crisp) 

6B 

FluidIT Consulting 

The Data Shed 

BTL Group 

Audacia 

AND Digital 

 
Diversity and Inclusion Award (sponsored by Panintelligence) 

Digital Access Across West Yorkshire 

University of Bradford: MSc Applied Artificial Intelligence & Data Analytics 

Northcoders 

Alice Chance 

Sophie Mei Lan 

 
2020-2021 Thrive Award (sponsored by BJSS) 

KwizzBit 

madeby.studio 

Reflex Arc 

incuto 

Fleetondemand 

 
International Award (sponsored by Sedulo) 

Burendo 

BTL Group (Surpass) 

TruNarrative 

Content Catalyst 

ddroidd 

 
We’re looking forward to seeing as many of you as possible on the 29th of September at the Belgrave Music Hall and Canteen for the 2021 Leeds Digital Festival Awards – good luck and congratulations to all of our shortlisted nominees!