The beauty of this day is that it allows students to go through the entire process of creating and editing a magazine. The course they’re on covers discrete aspects of magazine publishing and doing a condensed version like this shows them how all the parts fit together. It also flags up areas of magazine publishing they might like to pursue, for example graphic design.

With this particular group, that is young people who are slightly disaffected and have low traditional educational achievement, a big challenge is getting them to work as a group. They have the resources and skills on hand here to create a well-produced magazine and there is a feeling that the situation, including the deadline, is real. However much you talk about it, there’s nothing like producing a magazine in a real industrial setting, not a college. After a slow start they got really engaged and they got an industrious rush trying to bring the magazine out and a great sense of achievement when it was finally printed.