Shine news

What does the school magazine look like in 2025? I think many teachers assume it needs to be expensively printed or involve professional design software. But the truth is that most schools that enter the Shine School Media Awards do so by contriving their own path to publishing.

I asked Sharon Maxwell Magnus, head of outreach in the school of Creative Arts at the University of Hertfordshire, about the real opportunities students can gain from a school magazine. Here’s what she had to say…

Right now is the best moment of the academic year to get started with your school media project.

We’re ahead of exams and the shorter spring term. Classes and schoolfriends are beginning to gel. Media projects create a completely new dialogue with the school community, offering nascent viewpoints and an opportunity for creativity and leadership. It’s also a chance to accomplish something beyond homework, building a story of togetherness and expression that could define their teenage years.

The Shine School Media Awards rewards students who excel at publishing, but the truth is, teachers are their fiercest champions.

Today, I’ve turned our blo over to the teachers of this year’s entrants, to tell you why they love the Shine Awards and the reasons you should get a school newspaper, magazine or podcast group involved in 2025.

The Shine School Media Awards has a series of categories that are aimed at young people who contribute to their school newspaper or magazine by devising the visuals that bring the stories on those pages to life.

As a graphic designer myself, one of the reasons I got involved with the Awards was to encourage young artists. I am thinking here of talented students who love to draw, paint, make or capture images.

Standing out. Showing raw talent. Making an impact. We know the most talented students achieve this by hard work. Some manage to get ahead, but it’s far from universal.

The purpose of the Shine School Media Awards is to offer brilliant teenagers one more step on the ladder to success. We’re agnostic to the origin of this talent, our goal is to offer recognition and opportunity.

As our name suggests, the Shine School Media Awards is open to all kinds of student publishing.

Increasingly we’re seeing blended media, with digital publications often combined with student podcasts.