The 81st annual Peabody Awards are approaching and winners are slowly being announced along the way. Among the early winners is ARRAY founder Ava DuVernay who has received Peabody’s Institutional Award, as reported exclusively by Deadline. Previous winners of this award have included The Simpsons, 60 Minutes, Sesame Street, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Kartemquin Films, FRONTLINE, and ITVS.
“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, I truly treasure the Peabody because of the way in which it is determined,” DuVernay told Deadline about what she noted as a “tremendous honor.” The Oscar-nominated director added, “The body that decides this honor is diverse, in cultural background, but also in professional expertise and areas of interest, it’s just a beautiful honor.”
As the official recipient of the Institutional Award, which is the Peabody Board of Jurors, DuVernay’s ARRAY fit the bill of the requirements for the ideal candidate – a group, project or outlet highlighted “for their enduring body of work and their iconic impact on both the media landscape and the public imagination,” according to the Peabodys themselves.
In a video celebrating ARRAY’s success, fellow executive producer of Queen Sugar Oprah Winfrey shared a few words about the lasting impact of DuVernay’s work: “It was 10 years ago when Ava DuVernay created a unique, multi-platform arts and social impact collective dedicated to narrative change. Now, this vision manifested into a production organization led by a quartet of mission-driven entities. The film distribution arm, ARRAY Releasing. The content company, ARRAY Filmworks. The programming and production hub, ARRAY Creative Campus. And, the non-profit group, ARRAY Alliance.”