“And the award for the best Offline: Kiosk, Installation or On-Site Application goes to” …you could cut the tension with a knife… “Cogapp and their interactives for the Great North Museum!” Cue cries of joy, surges of adrenalin, and all round jubilation.

On Thursday 19 November we were proud to take home a British Interactive Media Association Award from the ceremony at Camden’s KOKO. Having started way back in the digital olden days of 1984, the BIMAs are one of the oldest and most renowned awards of their kind - so it goes without saying that our shiny new trophy is standing with pride amidst its brethren in the office. Its also by far the most dangerous trophy we’ve received - made of stainless steel and slightly reminiscent of a Klingon bat'leth.

The category we won was in recognition of ‘the best use of interactivity in a physical setting’. For our entry, the uses of interactivity were, as stated, our Great North Museum interactives, including an interactive guide to animals, wall-sized recreations of oceans and ancient temples, a journey through the Egyptian afterlife and more (find out more about them here, or Ian's thoughts here). We were up against stiff competition, particularly Imagination’s Travel Stations, which use a rather nice 3D interface to present information about different international locations from touch screens at airports.

Winners of other categories included Preloaded’s truly addictive 1066 game for Channel 4 (taking home the prize for Best Online Game), and the BBC’s no-introduction-needed iPlayer (Best Website). The evening was made all the more exciting for the fact that we genuinely didn’t know that we’d won (no, really).

KOKO is a great venue to see, well, anything, and we were treated to all manner of goodies, both edible and aesthetic. After the awards were handed out and we’d all patted each other on the back, we couldn’t leave without making the most of the venue’s luscious sound rig. We sampled the rude tunes of Beardyman and his electro-operatic vocal trickery, and to round it all off, there was some extremely satisfying VJ-ing by the chaps from Addictive TV. This was at first simply William Shatner’s face being time-stretched to dance to techno music, before they started having some real fun with their software (I’m pretty sure it was Max/MSP), bringing in all manner of effects, executed perfectly.

I digress. There’s a long list of people to thank for such a large project; at the museum, at Nick Bell Design, Casson Mann and many more. Congratulations to everyone involved - the award was both hard-earned and thoroughly deserved.