It’s always a great honour to be called to be a judge at a competition, but I was particularly pleased to participate in the first edition of Shine School Media Awards, a competition open to every secondary school in England and Wales to reward pupils that worked as a team to create a school’s newspaper, magazine, newsletter, website or online publication. Quark was the Technology Partner of this excellent initiative, which is promoted and managed by The Stationers’ Foundation in association with leading media trade bodies.
In judging the pupils’ work I was in very good company: entries from 129 registrations were scrutinised by a panel of experts including Lord Black, Executive Director The Daily Telegraph; Nicholas Brett, Editorial Director BBC Magazines; Susan Delgado, Assistant Editor the Times Education Supplement; Juliet Herd, International Managing Editor Hello!; Gary White, Marketing Design Manager at Cambridge University Press.
With a strong focus on copyright and sustainability issues, the Shine School Media Awards recognised young creative talent, helped develop literacy, business skills and teamwork and encouraged the students to consider the publishing industry as a career choice.
It was great to see pupils involved in both traditional print and digital publishing projects. The judges, including myself, were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the submissions, especially some of the online based contestants, who showed a lot of creativity and knowledge as how best to layout and produce an online publication.
Pupils gained invaluable skills that will help them in the future, should they wish to contribute to the broader publishing process and become designers, copy editors, freelance contributors, technical experts or partners.
From the printed word to online, the roles involved are many and varied. With the submissions for the Shine Awards, the pupils could experiment with multimedia formats at a time when the industry is subject to rapid change. Back in 2004, many were still just creating print, now the industry needs to be ready to deliver content in print, web, produce eBooks and publish to the iPad. In this context, world-class creative and technical skills are essential.
At Quark, we believe having only one tool to learn for print and digital publishing is key to deliver the 21st century requirements with a minimum cost base, so we provided free 6-month QuarkXPress site-wide license for schools that registered to participate in the Shine School Media Awards. We wanted pupils to devote their time learning their craft and not learning complex technology.
The Shine School Media Awards recognised amongst its categories the best cover, best overall design and layout, best original artwork and photography. There were ten category prizes for which Quark donated a site license for QuarkXPress 9 for the entire school worth £1,750.
Schools were awarded prizes for editorial content that reflects effort, enthusiasm and creative skills, articles that show literacy and accuracy as well as flair, but also recognised those projects that showed commercial strategy in making the publication viable. Pupils had therefore to work on a business plan, negotiate sponsorship or advertising deals and calculate the selling price. These are very topical issues in the publishing industry: many now face the challenge of effectively adapting processes and business models for new platforms as content migrates from page to screen and vice versa.
More than 100 teachers and pupils from 16 schools were represented at the awards ceremony for the first Shine School Media Awards at Stationers’ Hall, London, on Monday 27 June. The Gold Award winner, sponsored by the Copyright Licensing Agency, received £2,000, the opportunity for three students to attend a Workshop at The Times Educational Supplement, as well as receiving the Harrison Challenge Cup.
St Paul’s Girls’ School took the Gold Award for their magazine The Marble. The Silver Award went to SFM produced by Langley Park School for Boys and Blackpool Sixth Form College collected the Bronze Award for Sixth Sense. Natalie Stops of The Marist School, was chosen as Most Inspirational Teacher for the encouragement she had given to her pupils and the Most Outstanding Pupil, Amy Simcock of Gaynes School, was selected for the way she had led the publishing team and evolved as a leading member of the school in the process. You can download a copy of the Shine School Media Awards brochure to see the winning publications.
The competition proves that there is a generation of new talent that has the ability to make its mark on the future of the publishing industry.
