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March 18, 2010

Scottish Big Issue turns Wee Issue for schools

By Oliver Luft

The Scottish version of The Big Issue will next week launch a special edition of the magazine to be distributed for free to all secondary school pupils in Scotland.

The one-off magazine, called The Wee Issue, has been put together by a team of ten 13-17 year-olds from across Scotland, who planned the edition, conducted interviews and helped oversee production at The Big Issue’s offices in Glasgow.

More than 300,000 copies of the 32-page magazine, which will carry no advertising, will be distributed to schools across Scotland next Wednesday.

The Wee Issue has been in the planning for nine months.

The project is a joint initiative between the Scottish Big Issue, The Big Lottery Fund, which provided funds for printing, and Learning and Teaching Scotland, which will distribute the magazine to schools.

Paul McNamee, editor of The Big Issue in Scotland, told Press Gazette: “I was very keen to do this, to get young people involved in the magazine, because it is essential that we grow a new generation of readers and journalists…

“We [Scottish Big Issue and the Big Lottery Fund] had both been trying to run similar projects to this, so it made sense to do something bigger and more involved.”

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The Wee Issue will feature an interview with singer Paolo Nutini after the Big Issue flew a young journalist and photographer to Dublin for the piece.

It will also feature an interview with Scottish education secretary Mike Russell, after two students were dispatched to Holyrood, alongside other features, competitions and giveaways.

McNamee added: “We tried to make sure that everyone was involved in something they wanted to do. After that my team went away and set up interviews and allowed them to decide who would do what.

“They [students] decided amongst themselves what aspects they wanted to work on.”

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