Manx singer Ruth Tickle has been awarded with this year’s Cleveland Medal at the Manx Music, Speech and Dance Festival.

Ruth won the top prize at this year’s Guild after singing ‘Hear Ye, Israel’ on Friday evening, beating five other finalists to the medal by achieving a total score of 93 - the highest across this year’s festival.

The other finalists consisted of Karen Elliott, Christine Edmundson, Matthew Quinn, Graham Crowe and Terence Qualtrough.

Talking to Manx Radio about winning this year’s medal, Ruth said: ‘I’m very excited and honoured to have won!

‘The work started in about October last year when the syllabus was released and I started picking songs.

‘Since then, I've been learning the songs and singing them every day if I can. There is a lot of hard work behind the scenes that goes into learning them.’

The festival began at the Villa Marina on Saturday, April 26 and ran until Saturday, May 3, with eight full days of competition packed with all genres of music, speech, drama and dance.

There were 1,375 entries overall across the week, ranging from solo performers to choirs of over 25 people.

On opening day, Dance group Skeddan Jiarg were the winners of both the Doris Larsen Cup for Manx folk dancing and the Sheila Corkhill Memorial Cup for country/national dancing, while cornet-playing Teddy Price was the overall winner of the Brass Instrumental Solo class (Years 7 and 8).

Sunday then saw more dance classes, with Thomas Brown winning the Modern Dance Solo (Up to Year 6), while Ian Astill from Douglas Town Band won the ‘Best Soloist’ award during the brass classes.

Max Lin received an outstanding mark of 91 to win the Piano Solo (Grades 1 and 2) class on Monday, while Christine Bregazzi won the Reading from the Bible (Adult) Senior class later on Tuesday.

Individual voice trophies on Wednesday were awarded to Morag Withey (soprano), Christine Edmundson (mezzo soprano), Simon Bampton (tenor), Neil Taverner (baritone) and Terence Qualtrough (bass).

On Thursday, Parker Kissack came first in the Monologue (Up to Year 6) class with a mark of 87, while Contemporary Manx (Years 11 and Over) was won by Alison Carroon with the same mark.

As well as the Cleveland Medal final, Friday evening also saw the Adult Pop Song Class for the years from 1921 to 1979 which was won by Maia Haddock, while Debbie Gooding and Jane Murray came out as the overall winners in the Vocal Duet Class.

The final day of the Guild on Saturday was then dominated by folk songs, with Lowenna Joughin winning the Years 4 to 8 class, Kasia Ashton winning from Year 9 to 13 and Richard Costain winning the Adult class.

Secretary of the Guild, Sandra Loach, commented: ‘We feel it was an amazing year with more entries, more performers, and more people watching and supporting.

‘There was such an array of talent across the disciplines, of all ages too.’

Zoe Cannell, who is involved with the press and PR of the festival, added: ‘There was a lovely atmosphere down at Villa Marina.

‘Everyone had each other’s backs and were willing their fellow performers to do well.’