Every year, right across our region, people do extraordinary things with very little recognition. They run the community group that keeps a neighbourhood together, mentor young people who’ve been written off, build businesses against the odds, or quietly make their workplace fairer for everyone who comes after them. The Tees Valley EDI Awards exist to make sure that work is seen — celebrating the people and organisations advancing equality, diversity and inclusion in communities that are too often overlooked.
Formerly the Tees Valley BME Achievement Awards, the awards have championed the region’s Black, Asian and minority ethnic and wider diverse communities since 2010. The name has evolved, but the reason for it hasn’t: recognition changes how a community sees itself, and how the wider region sees that community.
The communities behind the awards
Tees Valley — Middlesbrough, Stockton, Redcar & Cleveland, Darlington and Hartlepool — is home to rich and varied communities whose contribution to the region’s culture, economy and public life is enormous, and not always acknowledged. Across Tees Valley you’ll find first-generation entrepreneurs, community organisers, healthcare workers, teachers and volunteers from every background, shaping the place we all share.
When achievement in those communities goes unrecognised, two things happen: the people doing the work feel invisible, and the next generation grows up without role models who look like them or share their story. The awards set out to change both.
Why recognition matters
Recognition isn’t a nice-to-have. Being celebrated in public tells a young person that someone from their community, their street, their family, can be a leader, a founder, a champion. It tells a small business that its work is valued beyond its balance sheet. It tells a volunteer who never asks for thanks that their community sees them.
That visibility ripples outward. A single award nomination can lift a whole organisation, open doors, and inspire other people to step forward. Multiply that across dozens of winners and finalists every year, and you begin to change the story a region tells about itself.
What the Tees Valley EDI Awards set out to do
The Tees Valley EDI Awards do three simple things, and try to do them well:
- Celebrate — putting the spotlight on people and organisations whose impact might otherwise go unnoticed, across fifteen awards spanning community, youth, business, health, education, the public sector and more.
- Connect — bringing together community leaders, businesses, public bodies and sponsors in one room, so relationships and partnerships form that outlast the night itself.
- Inspire — creating role models. Every finalist’s story is proof to someone watching that it can be done.
The award categories are deliberately broad, because contribution takes many forms — from a lifetime of service to a single year of remarkable impact.
More than one night
The ceremony is the celebration, but the purpose runs all year. The awards give local businesses a meaningful way to put their corporate social responsibility into practice — not with a logo on a banner, but by genuinely backing the communities they operate in. Sponsors help fund the platform; finalists gain visibility and networks; and the region gains a shared moment that says diversity is one of Tees Valley’s greatest strengths, not an afterthought.
How you can be part of it
Whether you want to celebrate someone, attend the night, or stand behind the mission, there’s a way in:
- Nominate someone who deserves recognition — it’s free and takes about ten minutes. Nominations close 2 October 2026.
- Join us at the awards night on Friday 16 October 2026 at Digital Life, Teesside University.
- Sponsor the awards and put your organisation’s values into action across Tees Valley.
Tees Valley is full of people worth celebrating. The EDI Awards are how we make sure they are. Nominate someone now, learn more about the awards, or explore sponsorship and get your organisation behind the communities that make our region what it is.
