February edition

Contents

The Mentoring Programme

GA in Belgium

“Mum I love you, I promise I won't die”

Visit from Maajid Nawaz

Spanish Trip to BFI

Youths Choice

The mentoring programme is a programme where we, the students are paired with an industry professional. This may include people from events management, the visual side or the audio side from Global. My mentor is Rowena Mclntyre,

she is the Senior Fulfilment Manager for Global's events and festivals. This means she organises the Jingle Bell Ball,

Summer Time Ball and so many more events in different countries. We meet once a month for two hours where we

discuss my goals and achievements for the future and anything I need to do now so that I'm set for working life.

When I first met Rowena, I was very nervous as I knew her name but not her face. This meant I had to read everyone's

name tags to find my specific mentor. However, once I found her within the first minute we had so much in common and it worked out that we are interested in exactly the same things,

the production of theatre, putting on events and musicals. This automatically put me at ease and made the session much

more enjoyable as we had a lot to talk about.

I'm excited for the future and believe that with Rowena's knowledge and guidance she can help me find what job is

best suited for me and what will enhance my qualities.

THE MENTORING PROGRAMME

Emily Parrott, Year 13

ARTICLE WRITTEN BY

GA IN BELGIUM

Katarina Sullivan, Year 12

ARTICLE WRITTEN BY

This half term, myself and two other members of Global Academy got the opportunity to go on a trip to Belgium and France. The trip,

lasting 4 days, was with students from a variety of secondary schools both in the area and around the UK. The purpose of the

trip was to learn about the 1st World War through visiting locations in which major events from this time took place. From

visiting the Somme in France to taking a pottery class in Belgium, we did our best to learn about how we can remember those who died to protect our country. The pottery class particularly stood out, as it was part of the ‘Gone West/Reflections on the Great

War’ commemoration project. Thousands of people from all over the world have taken part in the making of the installation by

moulding 600,000 sculptures out of clay. Each sculpture represents one of the 600,000 victims who lost their lives in

Belgium during the First World War. Having the chance to create my very own sculpture for the project is such an honour, and I will

use this experience to remember and reflect upon this tragedy.

Although the trip is over, it doesn't mean that myself – or anybody for that matter – should forget the war and its horrific

consequences. As part of Global Academy's legacy project, myself and Andrew are creating media products all about what we learnt during the trip. Look forward to July, when we plan to reunite with the wonderful people we met on the trip, in addition to releasing

our final products which we started all those miles away in France and Belgium.

“MUM I LOVE YOU, I PROMISE I WON'T DIE”

Cheyanne Howat. Year 10

ARTICLE WRITTEN BY

Last Friday, 2nd February the whole of KS4 were brought down to the Main Theatre for a special assembly from

'Stopwatch Theatre Company.'

The story was about a 16 year old boy named Dan who convinced his mum to let him go to a party, which in fact,

was an illegal rave.

On that evening Dan went off with his friends, who decided to buy a large amount of MDMA. That night Dan decided to

try MDMA and his body reacted very badly to it. Over the next few days the effects grew and his body deteriorated,

he later died on Monday 20th January.  

I learnt so much from this production which addresses the dangers of drugs, all of which I didn’t know before. The true story of Dan touched my heart and really made me

reconsider possible choices I will make in the future.

Overall the show brought a tear to my eyes and I think other students and staff can agree that it was a very

touching an emotional show. I would recommend this to all my friends and family. 

LBC. Leading Britain’s Conversation. It’s something that doesn’t appeal to many young people. People tend to think that LBC is a “rolling news” station, and they’d be right, it can be, during exceptional circumstances, such as during any of the far

too many terrorist attacks during last year. For the most part though it is, and I think Majid Nawaz put it in far better way I ever could during his visit, a “social

action station”.

Social action means the topics covered aren’t just to do with Brexit, Theresa May or inflation. Social action is opening a conversation about possible changes that could be made to society. This could be anything and everything that is likely to get a reaction from callers including Votes for 16 & 17-year old’s, Minimum wage

and even highly controversial topics like switching of life support.

Students at the academy had the pleasure of meeting Majid Nawaz, who presents a show on LBC during the weekend from 12 -  3pm. During his talk he gave us an

insight into what LBC was all about and gave a talk about hate crime. As a person who held extremist views for 13 years in the past, that even managed to get him

five-year stint in an Egypt prison, he was the best man for the job.

Majid Nawaz now spends his life work attempting to prevent the radicalisation that he had been a victim of. He founded the think tank “Quilliam”, an organisation

that labels itself as “The world’s first counter-extremist organisation”. He has held talks on the topic for the well-known, idea spreading organisation “TED”.

It won’t hurt to turn the dial to 97.3, if people still use traditional radios these days, or press the play button on the LBC website. The even easier option, download the “Global Player” app on the Google Play or Apple App Store and switch over from Capital or Capital Xtra and have a listen for just two minutes. I’m sure your

opinion of the station will change. 

VISIT FROM MAAJID NAWAZ

Ben Edmonds, Year 12

ARTICLE WRITTEN BY

I'm glad to say that I recently attended a Spanish trip to the BFI Centre on Southbank. Not only was I able to cover any grey areas

and refresh my memory of what we had learnt, but I was given the opportunity to see where other Spanish A-Level students were at within their studies and how far their knowledge extended within the same topic that we had all covered at school: films about the

Spanish Civil War.

At this presentation, I was able to experience what a large lecture is like and it was almost entirely in Spanish. I enjoyed the fact that

the audience were engaged with the speakers; we were asked questions and were given the opportunity to reply in Spanish to practice our speaking. Although I study Pan's Labyrinth, I also

learnt about another Spanish film based on the Civil War, called Las Trece Rosas as this is what some schools are doing. This was

great to be involved in as I was able to acquire a deep understanding of a whole other film within a relatively short

amount of time. The session was ended with a screening of Pan's Labyrinth in the fantastic cinema which made the experience of the

film even better than all of the other hundreds of times I had watched it. In addition, I was also able to spend the day with the

two other year 12 Spanish students and see how they were getting on and finding the subject.

Generally, I would say the trip to the BFI Centre was definitely

worthwhile and educational. I learnt a lot and it helped me explore films about the Spanish Civil War in another way. 

Izzy Wachtendorff-Rainbow , Year 13

ARTICLE WRITTEN BY

SPANISH TRIP TO BFI

Philip Rowley , Year 13

ARTICLE WRITTEN BY

Hi, I’m Philip I’m the Head of Music for the student station Youths Choice at the academy. Within this role I work with everyone to decide what songs we are going to add, drop and bring back to

the playlist.

I also do a lot of work with the backend system of Zetta, GSelector. This is the software that Global use to schedule all the

music. We go through each song and rate the mood and give GSelector the information it needs for it to sound slick.

We have a lot more things planned for after half term. Introducing specialist shows! We have currently got two shows nearly ready to go live, a Rock show on a Saturday with Joe Sullivan and Matt Hazel, and a Theatre show on a Sunday with Emily Parrott. We

also have two other shows in the works, a DJ/Remix show for the weekend and a podcast show which will show off podcasts

created by people at the global academy.

Doing all of this I have learnt so much on how the backend of Zetta, our playout system works with GSelector. We have a lot

more things planned for more shows on the station.

Want to be a member of the Student Magazine Team? 

Email gamagazine@globalacademy.com