Working on the project
We met ten times as a group to discuss the Magazine.
All of the meeting minutes are available here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/118irwsMMsJCfr-m2cAzow0vgndIvxinU?usp=sharing
SUE TYLEY
Sue Tyley is a copy editor who has worked with my art taecher Melanie before on a magazine called, the Mechanics’s Institute Review:
My Involvement
Generating Content: It was my job to commission content for the magazine. The main areas I was working on were getting the forward from Helen, interviewing Artists, and getting the comic from Jade.
The foreword
Helen is the headteacher of Treasure House and the group decided that she would be the best person to write the foreword. I wrote her an email and Melanie passed it on.
Helen wanted some guidance on what to write in the foreword, but we needed to wait until the magazine was almost finished. Once it was at the mockup stage, I sent her this:
“It would probably be you have a look at the magazine (link below) and write about a paragraph introducing it, just perhaps congratulating the students on their hard work and mentioning a few of the interesting things that can be found inside?”
Me to Helen
Treasure House is well-known for its diversity and there couldn’t be anything more diverse than the Treasure Magazine. Fascinating from cover to cover, the wealth of talent is extraordinary covering articles on the music business and martial arts, critiques on ballet, lessons in horror makeup, photography and conspiracy, the list goes on and on.. It has been a pleasure to discover interests and skills we were not aware of. I congratulate you all on the range and quality of the contributions. I feel I know you all better, now.
Helen’s Foreword
Helen then sent this back, which I read out in the meeting and the group really liked it, here it is in the minutes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BQtgJgmfo4VM0EGPGOroicFm_nAMfIzp/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=104421086778194010455&rtpof=true&sd=true
I also aksed Melanie to write an editorial comment for the final page. I asked her in person in my lesson and she wrote this:
The Arts Award is a constant surprise to me. When I started teaching it 4 years ago, I was just delivering the Bronze award to small photography class of two students. I had no idea at this point that it would take over the school! That almost every student would be involved, and that the creativity displayed by our students would be so vast. Students told me they wanted to learn to play instruments, to make sculptures, edit documentaries, create characters and illustrations, to act and make movies to make social commentary, or just to have fun. I have had to learn a lot of new things as I delivered this program, I have had to act in student movies and sing in a lockdown song. And I have met some amazing artists along the way who have worked with our students. Special thanks should go to Alex Petropoulos and Kate Davis who played flute on one of our student compositions. To Barbara Jones and Izzy Parker who sent online art tutorials during lockdown, to Neil Baxter who has given the whole cohort a chance to develop professional skills that use their creativity. And to Sue Tyley who shared her publishing knowledge with us as the students put together this magazine. But most of all, I congratulate the students. They have worked hard, pushed themselves beyond expectations and produced a magazine that really celebrates the individuals here at Treasure House. From gory makeup tutorials to beautiful collaborative music, this magazine brings together some wonderful artwork that the students should be extremely proud of.
Melanie’s editorial
I also shared this in the meeting and people were happy with it.
I used Google Drive to add both of these things to the magazine mock up:
Meet the Artist
I suggested that we put in some artist pages to inspire readers. I offered to contribute an artists page myself. I asked Melanie, Oliver and Kristin to contribute some art as well. I got the art from them and some info and then I uploaded it to the mock up:
Here I have shown the content I was directly responsible for. However, I uploaded a lot of the other pages like Cael’s article about spoilers and his lockdown song.
Every piece of content was discussed by the group and we all made comments on what to include. You can see a lot of the decision-making in the meeting minutes.
I also took the minutes on a lot of occasions. This is a good skill because you have to make sure everyone is represented fairly.
Meeting my leadership skills
Lead by example, work hard so that others will be inspired to work hard | Even when I couldn’t come to school because of my anxiety, I attended the meetings virtually and did lots of work at home without being prompted. |
Take the initiative on ideas, go ahead and make decisions without checking with teachers | I came up with several ideas for the project including the meet the artist pages. |
Encourage others to be involved, and make them feel good about themselves | I encouraged Jade to submit her comic, she was very nervous about having her drawing in the magazine. |
Listen to the ideas of others and incorporate them | I took the minutes a lot so I had to be careful to listen to others and make sure their views were recorded |
Understand that everyone has a different range of skills and help them to contribute at the right level for them | I did this a lot but specifically, I wanted Cael to be included even though his project is a music one, so we ran a profile on his lockdown song. |
When we decided to make a magazine, Sue came to speak to us all in a Zoom meeting. You can see the minutes of this meeting in the minutes folder, it is meeting one.
Sue gave us a planning document to use: