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See Inside The Making Of ELLE's September Issue With Adwoa Aboah

Olivia Blair
·3-min read
Photo credit: LIZ JOHNSON ARTUR
Photo credit: LIZ JOHNSON ARTUR

From ELLE

For ELLE's September issue, we've approached things a little differently.

Teaming up with the Social Mobility Commission, we invited 12 students from across the UK to become part of the magazine's creative process.

Over several weeks, the students collaborated with us on everything from cover images to layouts, had a catch up with our cover star – model, activist and Gurls Talk founder Adwoa Aboah – received masterclasses on all things journalism and magazine production and were each paired with a mentor from Team ELLE for the foreseeable future.

Plus, inside the issue, Aboah penned an 'anti-graduation' letter for this year's class of 2020 who have found their future plans and access to education thwarted by the global coronavirus pandemic.

Photo credit: LIZ JOHNSON ARTHUR
Photo credit: LIZ JOHNSON ARTHUR

Commencing with the September issue, ELLE pledges its commitment to opening the door for more and more young people of varied backgrounds to enter the media landscape. As our Editor-in-Chief Farrah Storr explains in the issue's editor's letter, ELLE looked to overshadowed corners of the UK (from Stoke-On-Trent to Sunderland) to find our brilliant mentees, where opportunities are statistically at their scarcest, particularly for those leaving education.

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Everyone deserves a door to be opened for them… Who opens that door – a teacher, a family friend, a stranger you stumble across on social media – doesn’t matter. The important thing is that you walk through it. But the bleak truth is this: opportunity isn’t as fairly distributed as we’d like. From media to medicine, politics to law, there exists a discernible ‘power gap’; where those at the pinnacle come from the very top of British society. There are no shortcuts to addressing this issue, but there are ways of opening doors so that a wider section of society can pass through them. To contribute to that process, ELLE UK in partnership with the Social Mobility Commission (@socialmobilitystories) launched our mentorship scheme, to open a door into magazines and the creative industry for students from across the country. We invite you to think about the doors that have been opened for you and how you can pay it forwards for people that might not otherwise be given the same opportunities. #OpenTheDoor

A post shared by ELLE UK (@elleuk) on Jul 24, 2020 at 1:16am PDT

The result of this collaboration was our brilliant September issue, including a subscriber cover actually designed by one of our students, Gaby Reynolds. Assisted by numerous Zoom calls over several weeks, the students - Maria Isahac, Alexandra Palade, Esther Simuene, Gaby Reynolds, Malina Jitaru, Kelsey Hendricks, Megan Leigh Ross, Libby Austin, Wisdom Charis, Amy Clorley, Erin Haley and Anya Kidde-Hansen - gave their valued feedback, thoughts and opinions, resulting in the production of a landmark issue.

Photo credit: LIZ JOHNSON ARTHUR
Photo credit: LIZ JOHNSON ARTHUR

To see how the students had an impact on our issue, and exclusive behind-the-scenes moments from our cover shoot in Peckham, south London, watch our making of the issue video, above.

ELLE's September issue hits newsstands today (13 August).

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