Meet The Judging Panel

All live events  will be judged by  a national team of multi-platinum selling songwriters
and leading music industry figures from record labels and music publishers.

​Here  are just some of the judges who have offered to give ​ their time to  support our chosen charity:

Ian Dench

Multi-platinum selling songwriter behind massive hits "Unbelievable" (EMF),
"Beautiful Liar" (Beyoncé & Shakira) and "Red" (Daniel Merriweather)
​
read more

Michael Garvin

Michael has an amazing 22 No.1 songs to his name including
"Never Give Up On A Good Thing" (George Benson) and "Waiting For Tonight" (Jennifer Lopez)
​
read more

Jez Ashurst

Multi million selling songwriter and producer who has written for Leona Lewis,
​Gabrielle Aplin and recently hit the UK top 10 with "Secret Love Song" (Little Mix and Jason Derulo)

​read more

Mike Rutherford

Mike is a legend, with a career selling over 100 million records. Mike was a founding member of Genesis and one of the band's only two original members. In addition to his work with Genesis, he formed the highly-successful band
Mike & The Mechanics,which became a chart-topping act and earned him an  Ivor Novello Award
for the 1988 single "The Living Years”
​
read more

Chris Neil

Chris Neil is a multi platinum producer and songwriter who produced "Think Twice" (Celine Dion)
​and "The Living Years" (Mike & The Mechanics" amongst many other hits for global superstars
​
read more

Emma Stevens

Emma is an exciting new artist who's song “Riptide” was selected as iTunes Single of the Week
and was downloaded over 200,000 times! She has also had four of her singles consecutively
playlisted on BBC Radio 2. Since losing her Mum to cancer in 2012,
Emma has dedicated her life to her music with messages of positivity, hope, and love

read more

 ** The Songwriting Academy reserves the right to change judges at any time**