National Lottery Awards 2012

By James Laverty - last updated on 10 February 2012

The National Lottery has opened their 2012 Awards which are an annual search to find the UK's favourite Lottery-funded projects.

The National Lottery Awards are an annual search to find the UK's favourite Lottery-funded projects. Lottery players raise £30 million each week for projects all across the UK. The Awards are a great way to highlight how that funding has changed the UK for the better.

Now in their ninth year, the Awards recognise the incredible difference that Lottery-funded projects have made to people, places and communities all across the UK. They also celebrate the talent, hard work and amazing dedication of the people involved in running them.

Since The National Lottery began in 1994, over 370,000 grants have been given out across the arts, sport, heritage, charities, health, education and the environment.

The National Lottery Awards 2012 are brought to you in association with the Telegraph. The Awards have seven categories, reflecting the different types of projects that benefit from Lottery funding. The categories are:

Best Arts Project
Best Education Project, in association with Best magazine
Best Environment Project
Best Health Project, in association with iVillage.co.uk
Best Heritage Project
Best Sport Project
Best Voluntary/Charity Project

How do the Awards work?

An independent organisation will review all the entries and draw up a longlist. An independent judging panel will shortlist 10 projects in each category to go through to the semi-final round of public voting.

The three projects in each category with the most votes will progress to the final round of public voting.