Folk Album Of The Year Award
2026

Meet The Jury 

Kellie While (Chair)  

Kellie While is Chair of the Sound Roots Board and Jury Chair. The BBC/Pomona Audio radio producer’s production credits include the BBC Radio 2 Folk Show, 21st Century Folk and the Radio 2 Folk Awards, as well as myriad documentaries and specials for Radio 1, Radio 2, Radio 4, BBC World Service, Radio 5 Live, 6 Music and Sky Arts. As a teenager, she became the youngest lead singer of The Albion Band and went on to front Anglo-African group e2K. She continues to perform with her Mum, Chris While, a project close to her heart, and each December she takes to the road with The Albion Christmas Band alongside Ashley Hutchings, Simon Nicol and Simon Care.  

Jude Rogers  

Jude Rogers is an arts journalist and broadcaster, and the Guardian's folk music critic. Her book, The Sound of Being Human: How Music Shapes Our Lives, was shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year and the Penderyn Music Prize. She is also a documentary maker, writer and presenter for BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio Wales.

Philip Selway 

Philip Selway is a member of the band Radiohead. He is a multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter who has released four solo albums and has composed soundtracks for film, dance and radio. He has also played drums with Neil Finn, Lanterns on the Lake, James Yorkston and the Secondhand Orchestra, The Unthanks, Martin Simpson, Kate Rusby, John McCusker and Kris Drever.

Mark Radcliffe  

Mark Radcliffe has worked in radio for well over forty years, having started out at Manchester’s Piccadilly station in 1979. He has gone on to work for BBC Radio 1, Radio 2, Radio 3, Radio 4, Radio 4 Extra, Radio 5, Radio 5 Live, 6 Music and the World Service. He currently presents the Radio 2 Folk Show and weekend breakfast on 6 Music with Stuart Maconie.

Katch Holmes

Katch Holmes is a founder of the roots music festival Knockengorroch in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. She has programmed and developed this established event since its inception. She represents progressive trad/folk and crossover music acts through her live agency, Off Site Productions. A qualified Relational Dynamics business coach, she has coached artists, commissioned new music, promoted gigs and produced international residencies.

Jenna Reid

Jenna is a fiddler who was born and bred in Quarff, Shetland. Her fiddling began at a young age alongside her sister and brother, under the watchful eye of the late Willie Hunter. Jenna’s recently released fifth solo album, Working Hands, is a stunning collection of her compositions.

Georgia Ruth

Georgia Ruth is a musician and broadcaster from Aberystwyth, Wales. Using folk influences to create a truly unique sound, her debut album, Week of Pines, won the Welsh Music Prize in 2013 and was nominated for two BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. She presents a weekly music show on BBC Radio Cymru, showcasing the best contemporary music from Wales and beyond.

Jo Frost

Jo Frost has more than 30 years’ experience in the music industry as a journalist, curator and consultant. An internationally respected authority on music from around the world, she spent almost two decades as editor of Songlines and was instrumental in establishing the magazine’s global reputation. Now freelance, she works with a variety of publications and organisations, including Sound Roots, where she is a trustee.

Lynette Fay

Lynette Fay is a broadcaster and producer, well known through her work with BBC Radio Ulster, where she hosted Blas Ceoil and Folk Club. She presented the ground-breaking Fleadh TV on TG4, co-hosted Blas Ceoil and has made many TV music documentaries. She has been on judging panels for the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards and the RTÉ Folk Awards.

Alex Carr

Alex Carr is Head of Music at London’s KOKO. She has previously worked as the Contemporary Music Programmer for the Southbank Centre in London, where she worked across bespoke festivals like Meltdown, ESEA Encounters, South Asian Sounds and the Southbank X Montreux Jazz Festival Residency. She is also a freelance radio broadcaster and programmer for the PAC venue at Cheltenham Jazz Festival. Alex is a passionate advocate for inclusivity within the music industry.

Ben Edge

Ben Edge (b. 1985, Croydon) is a British contemporary artist based in North London whose work explores why human beings create myths, rituals and folklore, and what these traditions reveal about our relationship with nature, one another and modern life. Rather than treating folklore as a relic of the past, Edge understands it as one of humanity’s oldest ways of making sense of the world. Looking backwards to move forwards, his paintings ask how the stories we tell shape the world we create.

Amy-Jane Beer

Amy-Jane Beer is a British nature writer, naturalist and campaigner. Her 2022 book, The Flow: Rivers, Water and Wildness, won the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing. She is also co-director of Right to Roam.

Dónall Mac Ruairí

Dónall is a well-known presenter on Raidió na Gaeltachta and RTÉ, and a member of the renowned Clann Mhic Ruairí group alongside his brother Tony, Seán and Aodh, and his niece Megan. He is also a member of the groups Blunderbrau and Innisfáil.

Joe Boyd

Joe Boyd is a record and film producer. Born in Boston in 1942, he graduated from Harvard in 1964. After university, he worked as a production and tour manager for George Wein in Europe, where he travelled with Muddy Waters, Coleman Hawkins, Stan Getz and others, and at Newport, where he supervised Bob Dylan’s electric debut. In 1966, he opened UFO, London’s psychedelic ballroom.

His first record production was four tracks by “Eric Clapton and the Powerhouse” for Elektra in 1966. He went on to produce Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, The Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention, Sandy Denny, Richard & Linda Thompson, Maria Muldaur, Toots and the Maytals, R.E.M., Kate & Anna McGarrigle, 10,000 Maniacs, Billy Bragg, Cubanismo, Taj Mahal and many others.