Kentish Town students at college run by disability charity produce magazine

FLIP magazine was created by students of Leighton College, run by Elfrida Rathbone Camden for young people with disabilities.

Academics co-ordinator Sousan Luqman told the Ham&High: “We found that young people have a lot of opinions about current issues and we wanted to give them a voice.

“All the students at the college are disabled but we found that when they were speaking about their experiences, they were very articulate and that stated the ball rolling.”

The magazine written and designed by the students contains stories about the day-to-day issues that disabled people encounter and how they deal with them.

Every student was given a section of the magazine to work on and the students who are non-verbal contributed by designing it.

The college has 20 students who are enrolled on two-year courses with the option to study for an extra year.

Along with subjects like English and maths, they are taught life skills including how to live independently and travel alone. The course administrators at the college said the decision to produce the magazine was a democratic one – a group of five or six had the idea, which then saw everyone at the school get involved.

The students also wrote about their romantic experiences, travel and sports.

Sousan, who was very encouraged by the reception of the magazine, said the charity was working towards making it a regular thing.

“We are very much dependent on fundraising but it would be lovely to create it [the magazine] as a part of every term as it gives students an opportunity to express themselves.

“We are trying to have a budget of around £200 allocated for it.

“We invited a lot of people for the launch and the event was entirely student run.”

The college also operates the Leighton Café – open every Thursday from Elfrida Rathbone’s site in Dowdney Close, which is also run by the students.

They create the menu and cook the food themselves.