Culture@Colfes Magazine Launch
The Spring 23/24 issue of the Literary Society’s Culture@Colfes magazine was launched at a busy lunchtime event in the Library that was buzzing with excitement.
Culture@Colfes is written, edited and produced by a dedicated group of LitSoc students from Years 9 to 13, with oversight from a staff editor. The issue is packed full of features, news, reviews, short stories, poetry, and interviews, with illustrations and artwork provided by A-level Art and Photography students. The Spring 23/24 edition is the magazine’s third issue, and the second time it has been professionally printed.
Reviews covered everything from 1984 (William, Y9) and The Hunger Games (Emily, Y9) to a round-up of Oscar-nominated films (Joshua, Y13) and a review of punk band The Damned’s seminal album Damned Damned Damned (Xanthe, Y12). Both the novel and the theatre production of Hamnet were reviewed by Alex (Y12) and Eleanor (Y13) respectively, while Ned (Y12) gave a critique of Jack Thorne’s new play The Motive and the Cue. The newest release in the Indiana Jones film franchise was reviewed by Samantha (Y12), while House Drama winning director Joshua (Y13) provided very helpful insight into how to win the competition.
Plenty of original fiction, poetry and essays were included, with stories and poems from contributing editors Alexiy (Y12) and Emily (Y9), an essay on the perils of reliable analysis of scientific data, and an entertaining spread of Haikus from every member of the editorial team, while a Talking with the Teachers column featured an interview with Ms Gudge, Head of Art.
The magazine also announced the winners and premiered the winning entries from the two recent LitSoc competitions: the KS3 Fiction competition had a Dystopian genre theme, with stories published from winner Isabella (Y9), runners up Charlotte and William (Y9), Subodh (Y8), and Justin and Sohaab (Y7). The Sixth Form Poetry competition winners’ poems, based on the styles of Philip Larkin and Carol Ann Duffy, were also featured, with Alex and Xanthe sharing joint first place and Alexiy winning the commended category.
The pride of the editorial team was clear to see at the launch event, with comments including:
Alex: “I really enjoyed working on this, and it was brilliant to see it all come together and then when it was published it look like an actual magazine!”
Ned: “Being part of LitSoc and working on the Culture magazine is a great opportunity to explore creativity outside the curriculum.”
Teacher of English and staff editor Sarah Diamond said, “I am extremely proud of this enthusiastic and hard-working group of students. They have shown maturity and commitment in their roles as editors, and have worked collaboratively to create a really creative, thought-provoking and beautiful-looking publication. This is only the third issue of the Culture@Colfes journal, and I am really proud of the way it has progressed with each publication. We are already working on the next issue and we are very excited about what’s coming next.”
