The Shine Media Awards

Recently, Sixth Sense, our college magazine, was crowned with various awards. Karen McCann, Editor-In-Chief of the nominated issue, reports on the award winning journey...
After we discovered the 'Shine School Media Awards' online, the day before deadline date, I rustled up some information about 'Sixth Sense' and quickly sent away the application.
A couple of weeks later, they contacted us, asking for more information about our work.
A couple of DAYS later, we were told we had been shortlisted in two categories: 'Most Enviromental' and 'Best Commercial Plan'.
To say we were overwhelmed is an understatement!
We didn't know if we would succeed towards the final, however, Steve received an email inviting us to the 'Stationers Guild' in London for the award ceremony!
WOW!
The day came of the awards and Abby, Jack, Steve and I all arrived bright an early, to Poulton train station, all dressed up and raring to go.
When we had completed the 3 hour journey to London, Steve took us on a sight seeing taxi tour until we reached the location: what an amazing place for the award.
The street in which printing first took place. Steve was so excited (not surprising since English A Level- Language Change, includes the original printing and how it was done... and Steve was at the home of it all!)
We were welcomed to refreshments and a personal tour of the building, seeing original stained glass and the first printed bible.
There was also numerous stalls which investors and supporters of the awards set up on and gave away freebies- the bamboo pen drive was my favourite. This gave us the opportunity to look over the other magazines in the final and get some inspiration and ideas about what competition we had.
Provided was a great buffet, with magicians (who showed us a tonne of mind-boggling tricks) and caricatures.
The awards started soon after.
It was exciting to see the winner and the work they had done, what the judges thought of their work and mostly, being all tense for when our sections were announced.
First was the 'Best Commercial Strategy', sadly we didn't get first prize, however we got a highly commended framed certificate.
Next, 'Most Enviromental', FIRST PLACE, beating 'St Paul's: Public school'- RESULT! I went up to achieve our Quark system and extremely heavy slate plaque.
We thought we were all done and dusted, being so proud of what we had already achieved...
But the Bronze award got announced: the presenter talking about the great content, business plan, college attitude and... ecological printing: WE HAD WON!
All 3 of us made our way to the stage, stunned! I swear I even saw Steve get a little emotional, or maybe my eyes were just blurred with shock!
Thats £1000 for the magazine kitty, basically refunding the funds we devoured over our years running- Johnny, you'll be please now! AND, a workshop at the Times Education Supplement- CRAZY!
We really were on cloud 9, so proud: the other schools came an congratulated us after the ceremony, saying how well we had done- and we really, really had done well!
The rest of the day was spent lugging around massive plaques (which were so back breaking, but was a good pain, because it proved our hard work.)
We celebrated over a bottle of bubbly outside St Paul's cathedral, ringing the other English faculty, families and updating our Facebooks!
Dinner at Maxwells, resulted in us being a minute too late for our train, having to wait a hour til the next one- we didn't care, besides the 29 degree temperature, leaving us with drips of sweat (attractive, eh?) we didn't mind the wait, it gave us more time to talk about our success.