Congratulations to Ben for winning the Song Academy’s ‘Young Songwriter of the Year Award’ with his original song ‘The Kid’, written and performed with his brother Hugo as their musical duo, ‘String ‘n' Bone’. The competition attracted just under a thousand entries from aspiring young songwriters across the world and the panel of judges was extraordinary. Among the star-studded line up was Tom Odell who has 29 million monthly listeners on Spotify and is world famous for hits such as ‘Another Love’. He was sitting alongside Grammy nominated songwriter Ruth Anne who has multi-platinum global number 1s totalling over 10 billion streams with artists such as Britney Spears and Niall Horan. Ben was amongst the ten shortlisted contestants who performed at the final hosted at The Tabernacle in Notting Hill. Ben was thrilled to win and reminisced that one of his highlights had been meeting the legendary songwriter and producer Toby Gad, known for co-writing John Legend’s ‘All of Me’ and Beyoncé’s ‘If I Were a Boy’. 

Ben is currently studying Music Technology, English and Physics A Levels and performed another of his original songs ‘Kamikaze’ in Hurtwood’s informal lunchtime concert last Friday.