City of Southampton Award
We are now in our 22nd year of the prestigious City of Southampton Award. The Award Scheme was set up to recognise individuals or organisations who have given particular service to the city.
2024 award winner - David Hamilton
David Hamilton, known to generations of Southampton people as DJ Hammy, has had a profound impact on the cultural and social life of the city for more than four decades. Since 1980, Hammy has been a fundamental part of the Southampton and the south coast music scene. He is far more than just a DJ; he has supported and encouraged new acts, and used music as a way to bring people together and create community. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Hammy took his craft into the virtual world, providing a lifeline for hundreds of Southampton people and their families, and creating a new community and new friendships that are thriving to this day.
Born and raised in Swaythling, Hammy still lives in the house where he grew up. A lifelong Saints fan, he is Southampton through and through. And during the pandemic, when so many people were cut off from the ones they love, it was from that Swaythling home that Hammy created an online community, playing his DJ sets each Friday night, late into the small hours, to audiences of hundreds of Southampton people past and present.
Although Hammy lost his income overnight during Covid, he kept access to his online space free to all, and only asked for donations from those who could afford them. To this day, although he has now mostly retired from live DJing due to ill-health, he continues those Friday night and Sunday morning online sessions. Hammy’s kindness, creativity, generosity of spirit, and love for music, for his community, and for his city is at the very heart of that community; and that is why he is so very deserving of the City of Southampton Award.
Make a nomination for the City of Southampton Award
Nomination form for City of Southampton Award
