Shine news

Every summer at the Shine School Media Awards, our prizes include Masterclasses for exceptional students. Last year was no exception – and because of logistics, sometimes these special days occur a few months after the prize is awarded.

A couple of weeks ago we covered Hillary Hanslin’s prize day, today we are focusing on Neelkantha Mukherjee’s Masterclass with Dr Simon Heffer and Dr Glenda Cooper.

At last summer’s Shine Awards, Hilary Hanslin from Ibstock Place School won the award for Best Non Fiction Piece for her deeply personal article, ‘Don’t touch my hair’.

This past week Hilary enjoyed her prize, a masterclass with Dr Simon Heffer and Dr Glenda Cooper. Read Hilary’s reflections on the day here.

The aim of the Shine competition is to encourage and reward communication skills, and this year’s designated topic is…

‘Freedom of speech’

Any form of media with a message can be entered into this category, whether it be a broadcast, a feature, a cartoon or photograph

After two years’ absence, Shine resumed celebrating the best of school journalism at Stationers’ Hall with a reception on 10 October for alumni – our former winners.

The highlight of the evening was an inspiring speech by one of those alumni, Bill Bowkett, who had been named ‘Most Outstanding Student’ at the awards back in 2017.

Since then Bill has embarked on a career in journalism – and we invited him to tell his story at the event.

After the student testimonials and teachers’ we’ve written about over the past few weeks, this seemed like a good moment to precis just why Shine is a great initiative for your school to get involved with.

This week we’re talking (and encouraging) great design.

We were extremely fortunate to have the fantastic Simon Esterson as a judge at this year’s Shine awards. Simon is an editorial designer and art director of Eye magazine and this week he has written some inspiring thoughts and helpful ideas which I feel sure will inspire your students.