Scene & Word’s Gwobr Jonah Jones (Jonah Jones Prize) is an award scheme for young artists for which we raise funds through donations and sales from our not-for-profit Jonah Jones Store. In 2023 the fund contributed to the Young Artist Scholarship at the National Eisteddfod Llŷn and Eifionydd where Shauna Taylor won the Highly Commended category. In 2024 and 2025 the fund supported a series of workshops at Y Lle Celf in disciplines associated with Jonah Jones: lettering and glass work run by jeweller/craftsperson Beca Fflur at Eisteddfod Rhondda-Cynon-Taf in 2024, and ‘cyanotype’ prints run by multidisciplinary artist Ffion Pritchard at Eisteddfod Wrecsam in 2025.
Background and aims of the Gwobr Jonah Jones fund
As a working-class boy from a poor family who had no access to the arts when he was young, Jonah Jones was vividly aware how much he owed to those who had mentored and helped him in achieving his aim of becoming an artist.
His first employer, Mona Lovell, introduced him to new art forms and greatly expanded his experience of literature and music, besides helping him with painting materials. During the Second World War the Castle Bolton group of painters, notably Fred Lawson but also George Jackson, Muriel Metcalfe and George Graham, tutored him in his first chosen medium, water-colour.
Later Jonah learned much from his army comrade John Petts, the woodcut maker and fine printer, and after the war he was aided in his aspiration to become a sculptor and letter-cutter by Joseph Peter Thorp, a great facilitator for aspirant artists, who used his contacts to fix up a scholarship at the old Eric Gill workshop, where Jonah learned about stone carving and cutting from Lawrence Cribb, Gill’s assistant.
Finally, while he established himself he benefited immensely from the patronage of Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, who steered a steady stream of commissions his way to provide continuous income.
Jonah never forgot how all these people helped him get up and running, and he in turn was always passionate about helping young artists, whether it was through a word of advice at an art college review, a spell of training in his workshop or help in obtaining teaching work. Mindful of the fact that many young artists and makers today, as with Jonah in the past, need to build a “portfolio” career, combining their creative practice with received commissions, more commercial output and teaching in various forms, Scene & Word seeks to support this building process by awarding the Gwobr Jonah Jones prize annually to selected young practitioners to help them develop their careers at the crucial early stages.
Jonah Jones (centre) with Howard Bowcott (left) and Meic Watts (right), who together formed the Moelwyn Group for the second Cricieth Festival, 21 June-8 July 1989. All three worked as sculptors in slate and other materials. Bowcott, whom Jonah examined at Newcastle University, became a respected maker of public urban sculpture. Watts began training with Jonah in 1985, after graduating from Norwich School of Art, where Jonah was an examiner. He learned letter-cutting from Jonah and went on to establish himself as an accomplished carver of stone. He shared a workshop with Jonah until 1991.
Above, left: Jonah Jones (in white shirt) at Model House, Llantrisant, in 1992, working with local schoolchildren on a mural linking Llantrisant with its twin town, Nürtingen in Germany; right, pupils at Ysgol y Gader comprehensive, Dolgellau, who worked with Jonah in 1974 on Y Neges (The Message), a large outdoor sculpture in concrete in the school grounds, under a scheme he pioneered, ‘Artist in Schools’, for the North Wales Arts Association. The mural can still be seen at Model House but the sculpture is long gone.