What is The Beacon?

If you were to look up ‘beacon’ in the dictionary you may get a description of a fire or light used as a signal or celebration. This is actually a pretty apt description of our school magazine, The Beacon, the highlight of the school calendar used to signal the end of the school year and celebrate the good times it has brought.

The Beacon is eagerly awaited by every pupil of the school (and most of the staff too), it’s always crammed full of articles and art which that year’s team feel sum up the school year. While the magazine does have a few recurring favourites such as the Teacher Awards (highly prestigious) and statistics about the pupils (always informative) the content of the magazine is almost entirely up to the team that creates it. This means one lucky team of year 12s are given the dizzying power to take over something the whole school will read, as well as the joy of seeing their names and faces splashed about in the glossy pages.

The Beacon usually consists of a mixture of pupil artwork, book and film reviews, school gossip and the odd serious article to give it some bite. The team are also responsible for making sure that all the writer’s hard work is presented to a high standard with organising page layouts, photos and colour schemes. Working on the Beacon does carry a certain amount of prestige and bragging rights but mainly it’s about hard work; you can’t put together a whole magazine in one week! If you’re a member on the Beacon team you have to be committed to weekly meetings and making sure that all your work is completed on time (or, if you’re the editor, making sure everyone’s work is completed on time). If you’re on the art side of the team you may also have to devote your amazing view of events like Miss KE to the cause, making sure you have the best photographs to put in the issue. The arts members are usually very busy at the second half of the year, while the writers are busy trying to give them something to put their art to in the first half. The editor and sub-editor are busy all year round!

The Beacon is almost as old as the school itself and part of a long tradition. While The Beacon does require commitment no team member has ever begrudged the effort put in, the lunchtimes missed or late evenings spent making sure you got your article just right. At the end of the year when, at last, you are presented with the finished product you will know there is nothing quite like being a member of The Beacon team.

Clemency Flitter – past Beacon writer