Welcome to the Shine School Media Awards!
The Shine School Media Awards is a free national competition that rewards a diversity of talent from secondary schools across the UK who work on the writing, editing, design and fund-raising for a school newspaper, magazine or multimedia project such as a podcast or digital publication.
The annual culmination of each year’s Shine Awards is a gala ceremony held in central London every summer with student workshops and incredible guest speakers.
The significant benefits of starting a Shine project include an enrichment of the school curriculum, an incentive to creativity and the chance for pupils to win national recognition and in the process enrich their CV and applications for university or college.
The Shine Awards is an endeavour of The Stationers’ Foundation, the charitable arm of The Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers, one of the UK’s ancient livery companies.
Latest news
6th January 2026
Ask the winner: Maxi Jen on taking risks and trusting your instinct
This week sees the beginning of ‘Ask the Winner,’ a new original Shine podcast series we hope supports and inspires your students to create great school media.
Each week I will be interviewing previous Shine winners as they tell us what went into the making of their project and how it became successful.
This week, Maxi Jen, the winner of the 2025 Terry Mansfield Award CBE prize for Tomorrow’s Talent shares how his school magazine The Scientific Latimerian went from a folder of Google Docs to an award-winning magazine.
Our entrants speak...
“Creating a student publication is a wonderful way to involve pupils across a school and enable them to express themselves and be part of a community. It is then even more rewarding to be involved with the Shine Awards which celebrates their success and offers inspirational advice from industry professionals.”
Craig Cole, Head of Graphics, Photography & Printing Reed’s School, Surrey
More feedback from schools