Earlier this month (June) the Memorial Awareness Board (MAB) announced the winner of a new competition it launched this year to find the most unusual or original memorial in the UK.

The contest was announced at rather short notice but a photograph and the owner\'s permission was all that was required to enter and several companies got their entries in before the 25 May deadline.

The main point of the competition was to achieve local media coverage for the entries as part of the continuing MAB campaign to raise the profile of memorialisation.

MAB have also now introduced a consultancy service for members of the national Association of Memorial Masons (NAMM) wanting help to generate press coverage locally to their businesses. NAMM members can call MAB for free consultancy on Tel: 020 7463 2020.

Meanwhile, MAB continue to run the successful Cemetery of the Year Awards. The awards work to raise standards in cemeteries to make them better places to visit and so encourage more people to take an interest in memorialisation.

Since the launch of the 2005 awards, MAB has conducted 22 radio interviews about them, giving it the opportunity to raise wider issues of cemeteries and memorials.

MAB also still has available a range of leaflets, including \'Say it in Stone\' and \'Don\'t Scatter Fond Memories\', designed to help memorial masons sell more stone, while the \'Ideal Cemetery\' and \'Defining Grave Spaces\' brochures are intended to encourage cemetery managers to offer more freedom of choice.

This year MAB hopes to hold a seminar at the House of Commons to highlight the potential of burial grounds and the need for resources in this area, as well as answering some of the questions raised by the consultation paper on Burial Law & Policy.