The High School Student News Site of The American School in London

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The High School Student News Site of The American School in London

The Standard

Darkroom: Meet ASL’s new online student publication

Darkroom%3A+Meet+ASLs+new+online+student+publication

“Raw,” said Grace Gallagher (’20), co-founder of Darkroom, when describing the new student-run online magazine she created this semester alongside Catherine Bennett (’20) and Margot Sarfas (’20).

The creation of Darkroom, Gallagher said, sprang from a combined love of photography and creative writing. She added that the founders felt that the other school publications require more prior experience, and they “wanted to create a space where it was comfortable to mess up and where everyone could be included regardless of how much they knew.”

Echoing Gallagher, Darkroom advisor and English Teacher Mark Mazzenga thinks that the project promotes qualities that the school hopes to cultivate within the community. “It gives students a forum to take risks with their voice and their artistic endeavors,” he said.

The current format of the publication is different from other student publications as the focus is not on polishing the works, instead, as Mazzenga explains, Darkroom focuses on publishing “expressions of creativity” in an unedited state.

The idea of inclusivity is also important to the founders. “Anyone can submit. You don’t have to apply. It’s a place for people to access [and] show off their work even if it’s unpolished,” Bennett said.

Without an editor, Gallagher explained, “it’s much more raw, … you can submit whatever you want, whenever you want.”

With this alternate approach, the founders hope their audience will be able to follow along as their contributors grow and mature as aspiring writers and artists.  

So far submissions have included photographs, pieces of literature, student-made movies and poetry.

In the future, the founders hope they can expand Darkroom perhaps by hosting lunches to collaborate with other aspiring student artists, possibly creating a physical copy from their visual and literary submissions, or even having an exhibition to display the work that students have submitted.

Students who are are interested in submitting work should either send a JPEG, a selected piece of writing or a Youtube URL for videos to darkroom@asl.org. (Submissions should include the creator’s name and the creation date of the work).

 

Written by Managing Editor: Online Christina Leonard

Photos from web1.asl.org/darkroom

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