麻豆社

The 麻豆社's Code of Conduct for Competitions and Votes applies to this competition. You can read more about it here: .

Rules for Climate Tales Writing Competition

1. Entry to this competition is open to persons who will be aged between 5 and 16 years on Wednesday 30 June 2021 and who are full time residents of the UK (including residents of the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man) except the children or close relatives of 麻豆社 Group employees, the Scottish Library and Information Council (SLIC), or any person closely connected with the competition. Entries must be submitted by an adult (parent or guardian) on behalf of the child. This adult may be asked to provide proof of age, identity and eligibility. Entry will be in three age categories – ages 5 – 9 (at 23:59 30 June 2021), 10 -13 (at 23:59 30 June 2021) and 14 -16 (at 23:59 30 June 2021).

2. To enter the competition, entrants must write a poem, spoken word, short story, monologue, rap or song lyrics (the ‘stories’) on the subject of climate change (no more than 500 words). Entry is via an online entry form available at www.bbc.co.uk/climatetales. The parent or guardian submitting the story on behalf of the entrant will be asked to provide the entrant’s name, gender, region and their age. The submitter must enter the child’s story in the text box provided for submission.

3. All stories should be submitted in English.

4. We can only accept stories which are 500 words or fewer according to the word counter on the online submissions form; the 麻豆社 cannot accept word counts from any other software. Please make sure you check the word count on our form if you are pasting from piece of software such as Microsoft Word.

5. Entries can only be accepted online; postal entries or entries sent over email will not be read or considered. Entries sent over email before the deadline because of technical errors will not be considered. The adult submitting the entrant’s story will be required to approve the entry and agree to these Rules on behalf of the entrant by way of a check-box in the online form. This includes agreeing to the 麻豆社’s use of the story submitted and confirming the story is entirely the entrant’s own work. The adult must be the child’s parent or guardian. The adult must provide the following: their own name, email address, region and contact telephone number (not the child’s). The telephone number provided must allow us to contact the parent or guardian between September and October 2021.

6. Submissions for 麻豆社 Radio Scotland’s Climate Tales 2021 will be accepted from 10am (BST) Thursday 15 April 2021. The deadline for receipt of entries is 23:59 (BST) on Wednesday 30 June 2021. Late entries will be disqualified. The 麻豆社 cannot take any responsibility for any technical failure or malfunction, which may result in an entry being delayed or not properly registered or recorded; so the 麻豆社 advise users not to wait until the last minute to submit entries. The Climate Tales website may receive a lot of entries in the last few hours of the competition. The 麻豆社 cannot be held to account if the website runs slowly.

7. If users have emailed the administrators and are awaiting a response, the competition deadline still stands. Unless the competition administrators have explicitly instructed otherwise, all users must submit stories before the deadline in order to be considered in the competition. Entrants can only enter individually.

8. Only one entry per person is permitted and the story must be wholly written by the entrant only; stories cannot be written by more than one person. If more than one entry is received from an entrant, we will accept the first entry received and disregard the others.

9. Entries must be the original work of the entrant and must not infringe the rights of any other party. Entries can be fiction, non-fiction and/or historical. Entries can be an account of real events, which can be either historical or current. Entries can feature well known public figures from present day or from history (e.g. Greta Thunberg or Charles Darwin), take place in historical eras (e.g. The Ice Age) or use real-life experiences as creative springboards. Entries can use scientific facts, theories and principles to support storytelling, but entrants must avoid presenting someone else’s work or ideas as their own. The 麻豆社 accepts no responsibility if the entrant ignores these Rules and the entrant’s parent or guardian agrees to indemnify the 麻豆社 against any claim by any third party from any breach of these Rules. If the entrants are unclear on whether the content of the story contradicts these Rules, they may email the competition administrators at climatetales@bbc.co.uk. As the stories will be published it is important that entrants do not include any personal details about themselves in the title or body of the story; entries which do contain this information may be removed from the competition.

10. Entries must be suitable for broadcast or publication by the 麻豆社 for audiences of all ages. Entrants retain the copyright of their entries but their parent or guardian grants the 麻豆社 a perpetual non-exclusive royalty-free licence to publish free of charge by the 麻豆社 Group in all media including television, print and internet, and any platforms yet to be envisaged, for all purposes as it wishes. The 麻豆社 may wish to publish or broadcast entries containing an entrant’s forename, age and town or county, in all of the above instances working in line with the 麻豆社 Child Protection Policy, to prevent jigsaw identification of any entrant. For further information please see the 麻豆社 Editorial Guidelines and 麻豆社 Child Protection Policy. If the story has troubling content, the 麻豆社 may take advice from the NSPCC, and may refer to the relevant authorities in accordance with the 麻豆社 Child Protection Policy. By submitting the Entry Form the entrant’s parent or guardian guarantees that they or the story they’ve submitted will not bring the 麻豆社 into disrepute. To do so would result in disqualification. Ineligible, obscene or fraudulent entries will be automatically disqualified. The 麻豆社’s conditions on contributions apply to the Competition Rules and can be found here: Using The 麻豆社.

11. Entries submitted online will receive an automated acknowledgement. Entries cannot be returned so please remember to retain a copy. Unsuccessful entrants will not be contacted in respect of their entry and no feedback will be provided. By submitting a story the entrant’s parent or guardian agrees that the 麻豆社 may at its sole discretion, edit, adapt, abridge or translate the entry for the purposes listed in clause 10 above. If you have any questions about entering the competition, please email climatetales@bbc.co.uk. The Competition administrators will respond as soon as possible. Please note that for any email correspondence sent to climatetales@bbc.co.uk an automated reply will only be sent to the first email.

12. In the event that the story is published online at for the avoidance of doubt, this will not be part of, or influence in any way, the judging process. Only the story title, entrant’s name and age will be published with a story.

13. Make sure your story is original, imaginative and engaging. Make your story stand out – make it funny, sad, edgy, thought provoking or just plain silly. Why is climate change so important to you? How do you know our climate is changing? How are humans, plants or animals affected by the climate crisis? What is happening to our oceans? Describe how you feel when you think of words like plastics, ecosystems, pollution, sustainable, heat, waste, biofuels, oceans, rain forests, carbon footprint, glaciers, volcanoes, drought or greenhouse gases.

Entries will be judged on the following criteria:

• Originality

• Creativity

• Imagination

• Inspiration

• Emotional Connection

14. The first round will be judged by librarians from SLIC. Each librarian will receive a batch of anonymised stories to read and score using the criteria above. Each librarian will be emailed all stories (via a secured login) along with details of the criteria and how to score the stories. The highest scored entries from this round will be put through to the next round. This process will be overseen by a 麻豆社 Editorial figure.

15. The highest scored entries from the first round of judging will be collated and considered by a judging panel from senior members of SLIC, in partnership with 麻豆社 Editorial figures. ‘The SLIC panel will read and score these anonymised stories using the criteria above, to produce a shortlist of the top 45 entries comprising of the top 15 entries from each of the three age categories.

16. The top stories will be verified by a 麻豆社 Editorial figure and the ages and identities of the entrants confirmed. If an entrant is unable to be contacted after reasonable attempts have been made to do so, the 麻豆社 reserves the right to offer their place to the next best entrant. Unsuccessful entrants will not be contacted.

17. These top entries will be read and judged by a guest panel chaired by Janice Forsyth. 3 finalists with 1 overall winner will be selected in each age category (gold, silver and bronze – gold being the overall winners).

18. The top 9 entrants will be recorded and/or filmed reading their stories before the award ceremony and these performances will be played in as part of the 麻豆社 Radio Scotland broadcast (plus possible use across 麻豆社 and partner’s TV, radio and online output). We will request parental permission plus complete appropriate child licences if needed.

19. The top 9 entrants (3 in each age category) will be invited to attend an awards ceremony at 麻豆社 Scotland in Glasgow on Saturday 23 October 2021 (the prize dates are movable, and we reserve the right to change them due to editorial/production considerations including any restrictions which may be extended due to COVID-19) for a recording of the 麻豆社 Radio Scotland Climate Tales Show. The full names of the 9 finalists and the 3 overall winners will be announced during this recording, but all finalists and winning entrants must wait until the official announcements have been made before they make their success publicly known via online forums such as Twitter, Facebook etc. To do this runs the risk of their entry being disqualified, which may lead to the finalists and winning story being revised. Officially, announcements will be made via 麻豆社 Radio Scotland by Friday 12 November to tie in with COP26 which is taking place in Glasgow.

20. The 麻豆社 will obtain an appropriate child license for the finalists if needed. The 麻豆社 will contribute a limited amount towards travel expenses and endeavour where necessary to provide one twin hotel room to share for the child and a parent or guardian to attend the awards ceremony on Saturday 23 October 2021. However, the 麻豆社 cannot cover any additional travel and accommodation that may be incurred by any other family or friends of the entrant. The winner’s parent or guardian will be deemed to have agreed to be filmed during their day at 麻豆社 Scotland and entrants may be filmed by the Climate Tales Production team at a masterclass on location should they be a gold winner. The parent/guardian of the finalists will be required to sign contributor release forms on behalf of their child/ward and themselves to allow the 麻豆社 to use the contributions in all media for all purposes.

21. The Prizes consist of:

1st Prize: ‘Gold’ Winners x 3 (for each age category)

• You will attend a creative writing and book publishing masterclass led by a leading author and organised by Publishing Scotland (Reasonable travel, food, accommodation costs will be provided by the 麻豆社)

• You will be filmed reading your story and this will be showcased both on 麻豆社 Scotland Radio/TV/digitally and at COP26 (TBC)

• You will be given a tour of 麻豆社 Scotland’s HQ in Glasgow, then attend an Awards ceremony where you will meet the judges. This will be recorded for broadcast across the 麻豆社. You will be announced as winner of the competition in your age category.

• You will receive a winners pile of books and a 麻豆社 Radio Scotland Climate Tales branded book bag

2nd Prize: ‘Silver’ winners x 3 (for each age category)

• You will be filmed reading your story and this will be showcased both on 麻豆社 Scotland Radio/TV/digitally and at COP26 (TBC)

• You will be given a tour of 麻豆社 Scotland’s HQ in Glasgow, then attend an Awards ceremony where you will meet the judges, this will be recorded for broadcast across the 麻豆社. You will be announced as second place of the competition in your age category.

• You will receive a second place pile of books and a 麻豆社 Radio Scotland Climate Tales branded book bag

3rd Prize: 3 ‘Bronze’ winners x 3 (for each age category)

• You will be filmed reading your story and this will be showcased both on 麻豆社 Scotland Radio/TV/digitally and at COP26 (TBC)

• You will be given a tour of 麻豆社 Scotland’s HQ in Glasgow, then attend an Awards ceremony where you will meet the judges, this will be recorded for broadcast across the 麻豆社. You will be announced as third place of the competition in your age category.

• You will receive a third place pile of books and a 麻豆社 Radio Scotland Climate Tales branded book bag

Top 45 (e.g. the top 15 from each age category)

You will receive a 麻豆社 Radio Scotland Climate Tales branded book bag.

22. The prizes cannot be transferred and there is no cash alternative. Due to Covid-19, elements of the prize and award ceremony may change or have to be altered to fit with social distancing regulations. If any of the prize details have to change, all efforts will be made to fulfil an equivalent prize.

23. Entrants will be expected to take part in post-Competition publicity for the 麻豆社.

24. The 麻豆社's decision as to each stage of this competition, the top 45 (15 in each category), the 9 finalists (and 9 standbys) and the choice of gold, silver and bronze in each category is final. No correspondence will be entered into.

25. The 麻豆社 reserves the right to disqualify any entry which breaches any of these Rules, brings the 麻豆社 into disrepute or to withhold a prize if in its opinion entries do not reach the required standard.

26. The 麻豆社 reserves the right to cancel the Competition or change any of these Rules at any stage if deemed necessary in its opinion or if circumstances arise outside of its control. Any such changes will be duly communicated. The 麻豆社 cannot be held responsible for any unforeseen events relating to, or the cancellation of any related element of this Competition outside of the control of the 麻豆社.

27. The 麻豆社 (or any of its affiliates or partners) accepts no liability for any damage, loss, liabilities (including direct, indirect, incidental, consequential or punitive damage) injury or disappointment incurred or suffered by you as a result of entering the Competition, not being able to enter into the Competition or accepting any of the prizes. Nothing shall exclude the liability of the 麻豆社 for (i) fraud, (ii) for death or personal injury as a result of that party's negligence, or (iii) any other cause of action which cannot be limited or excluded under applicable law. In no event shall the 麻豆社 and/or any other organisation associated with the Competition’s total liability to you for all damages, losses, or causes of action exceed the price of the relevant prize.

28. The 麻豆社 and/or any other organisation associated with this competition cannot accept any responsibility whatsoever for any technical failure or malfunction or any other problem with any server, internet access, system or otherwise which may result in any entry not being properly registered or recorded. Proof of sending is not proof of receipt.

29. If any of these clauses should be determined to be illegal, invalid or otherwise unenforceable then it shall be severed and deleted from these Rules and the remaining clauses shall survive, remain in full force and effect.

30. These Rules are governed by the laws of England and Wales. This service is subject to the 麻豆社’s .