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
10th February 2026
Freddie and Bella on passion, detail and writing about ‘what makes you jump’
This week on ‘Ask the Winner,’ I’m talking to Freddie Hayles and Bella Coombes, who transformed their school politics magazine The Eagle from “magazines that basically just looked like Word documents” into something that had their schoolfriends asking “when’s the next edition coming out?”
Freddie served as graphic designer, Bella as editor-in-chief. Together, they reorganised the entire structure of The Eagle – introducing proper application processes, defined roles and thematic organisation across three issues.
“What was different when we stepped up was the reorganisation of the roles,” Bella explains. “Previously there was just an editorial team and people could just join if they wanted to. The editor was left designing it. We’ve had magazines basically just looking like Word documents before.”
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
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