Gennaro Costanzo, third-year student, BA Journalism, Film and TV Studies on the celebration of the successes students have had in a challenging academic year.
Date: 13 May 2021
This Wednesday, the Creating Packages module came to an end for us third-year Journalism BA students. The annual London Met Magazine Awards have been a great way to celebrate the many successes we had throughout this rough academic year.
Like many other students, I completed this magazine journalism module virtually from my home — in my case, from Italy. Online meetings haven't exactly been the most efficient way to put together everybody's work but, with each group's efforts, the final results were unexpectedly striking.
Although the experience of the last year wasn't what I hoped for, Creating Packages has given us the chance to express our creativity with the realisation of our own magazines.
This year's competition included five different publications: Craft, Diaspora, Sappho, Vox Cultura and Young.
The opportunity to be judged by experts of the industry as well as other students from the University, made each one of us proud of the work we did, regardless of the prizes.
Sappho took home the Most Commercial Potential award, which included a cash prize of £250 and three months of mentoring under the tutelage of Accelerator, London Met's business incubator.
"It may not be the largest market, but a huge part of commercial success is differentiation and the team has identified an interesting niche," commented Simon Boot, Student and Graduate Enterprise Manager at Accelerator.
YOUNG and Craft won respectively Best Magazine Design (Print) and Best Web Design (online).
As the Creative Director of YOUNG, an international magazine for women, I was proud that we won in several categories, including Best Magazine Design and Best Multimedia. I was even more thrilled when I was the first runner-up for Best Print Feature with my article about the gender gap in the art world.
"Creating Packages is a very intense module, where students not only have to learn everything there is about magazines but also how to work together in a tightly-knit team. Sometimes that's great and sometimes it's not, which reflects real life," said Wendy Sloane, the module leader and organiser of the awards.
"The work students have produced this year has been top quality. I am very proud of what they have accomplished, and the fact that two of the five magazines were shortlisted for Student Publication Awards, which had over 1,000 contenders."
From a now-former student, Creating Packages is more than a simple module. It teaches you to learn about yourself and value the work of the team you're part of, as well as introducing aspiring journalists to the world of print and multimedia.
Pictured: An image from the cover shoot for student magazine YOUNG