The award judge: Tanika Gupta

Playwrights don't often get recognition for their work. Apart from anything else, we tend to be fairly anonymous people, sat behind our laptop screens, tearing at our hair as we wrestle with words, scenes, structure and dialogue, cooking up those ingredients for a piece of live performance. We are not the beautiful actor at ease with our physical bodies on stage, instantly recognised by an adoring public, and we may not be on public display, but without us there would be very little theatre.

I felt privileged to be asked to be a judge for the 2013 Bruntwood prize for playwriting. Having won some awards myself, I know what a difference it can make for new writers – enhancing their self-belief, motivating them to keep writing and in this case giving them a share of £40,000 of prize money.

There is not a lot of money to be made as a playwright so this really can make a difference. However, even the money is not as important as recognition by your peers. The last award I received was earlier this year on the back of Ibsen for my adaptation of A Doll's House for BBC Radio 3. I got a glass trophy, a pat on the back from three eminent judges and a kiss on the cheek from David Tennant. I was a very happy writer that evening.

The Bruntwood is important precisely because it celebrates writers, and the process is extraordinarily open. Thousands of plays are submitted each round; plays that are at least one hour long and which have never been published and performed. They are read by readers from all corners of the industry – directors, actors, dramaturgs, critics, readers attached to leading theatres in the UK – a total of 50 people. Each and every script is read in three distinct phases before a shortlist of 10 is identified.

As a judge, I have been asked only to join at this last stage, reading the scripts that have been selected through this meticulous process. I can certainly testify to the quality of the plays that have come through to this final stage.

The winning playwright – this year Anna Jordan for her play Yen – gets a year-long attachment at the Royal Exchange in Manchester. Three runners up are also offered intensive support for their play to be ready for production.

It's extremely difficult to judge one play against another as each is unique. Indeed, originality is a key criteria for us to apply in making our choice. There is always vigorous dialogue and some passionate defence and critique of different pieces. In short, the tension and drama at the judge's meeting could be ripe for a new play.

Tanika Gupta is a playwright and judge for the 2013 Bruntwood prize – follow it on Twitter @bruntwoodprize

The award winner: John Smith

I'm a bit of a hypocrite when it comes to competitive awards – I'm not sure that I approve of them but I definitely enjoy winning. It's not that I particularly disapprove of competition, just that the evaluation of any creative endeavour always involves a high level of subjectivity. It's patently ridiculous to assert than any one artist or artwork is "the best" so objectively I think that competitions should be reserved for spelling and arithmetic. But I do so like to be a winner!

Film London hopefully won't mind me mentioning that I hesitated before accepting the nomination for the Jarman Award shortlist. In fact I wrote a rather persuasive email (which I later retracted) explaining why it was inappropriate for me to be considered for this award.

I mentioned that I was from a different generation than all of the other artists, who were very likely to have been shown my work at art school. I mentioned that we were at different stages in our careers, and that I started making films around about the same time as Derek Jarman himself. I mentioned that although I would find the recognition and the money very welcome, they would make a lot more difference to a younger and less established artist who needed to pay the rent.

As soon as I'd sent the email I started to have second thoughts, and proceeded to make the case to myself as to why I should accept the nomination after all. Awards like this had never existed when I was younger, so why shouldn't I take advantage of them now? Didn't I have a duty to the film and video artists of my own generation to remind the art world of our continuing existence?

My friends told me I should go for it too. So I did. But having finally accepted the nomination, I dreaded winning. I'm often on the other side of the fence. I've had to assess students at art schools for many years now, and although I'm well aware of the subjectivity of this exercise I find myself arguing passionately about why someone should get 68% rather than 65%.

I have also sat on quite a few film festival juries. On one jury in Germany a few years ago we unanimously agreed on the film that should be awarded the Grand Prix: a Polish documentary about the transportation of a party of people with severe disabilities to Lourdes by a group of Catholic priests.

It was only at our final jury meeting I discovered that a film that I saw as a devastating indictment of the Catholic Church was considered by a Catholic member of the jury to be a heartfelt celebration of the same institution. We went ahead and awarded the prize, agreeing to differ about the reasons for our consensus.

Although this is an extreme case I think that all jury decisions should be taken with a pinch of salt. Juries are frequently as diverse as the work they have to judge, and in my experience the award-winning work can occasionally be the one that everybody thinks is alright but nothing very special, as the jury can't come to a unanimous decision on anything else. By its very nature the most exciting and radical artwork often repels as many people as it attracts.

Having said all this, I don't want to put down prizes; I just want to be realistic about how much or little they mean. I was ultimately very pleased to receive the Jarman Award and realised that my reservations were probably more due to a fear of losing than of winning. Awards raise the profile of the arts and artists, bringing them to the attention of a wider public and inviting that public to engage with them critically.

They create controversies and generate heated debates, around what art is, and what it should be. And the more prizes there are the better, undermining the media monopoly of the Turner Prize, which leads television viewers and newspaper readers to believe that the art world agrees upon a single "best" artist every year. That being said, I'm rooting for Laure Prouvost, my second favourite ex-student from Central Saint Martins.

John Smith is a film and video artist, and winner of the Jarman Award

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