Almost three months since landing on these shores, and now the decision is made. The first issue of Live Magazine South Africa will appear in early November. It is decided, so it has to happen. It’s not just an arbitrary decision – the background is I’m feeling confident enough in the emerging model, team, scope, and partners to press the red button. And to have copies ready in time for when Cape Town is gearing up for summer, school holidays and the city coming alive.

The broad challenge for issue 1 of Live Magazine in South Africa is this: 1) give a life-changing experience to a group of underprivileged young people in the hope of lighting the touch paper of their future prosperity. 2) Producing something of value and overwhelming interest to a mainstream youth audience. 3) convincing commercial brands to invest in advertising in a youth-created magazine before it’s even launched.
The plan: to recruit up to 20 young people aged 18-25 as the ‘pathfinder’ group who will create Live Magazine issue 1. They’ll be working with our professional mentoring team over a period of two months to make the issue from top to bottom.

The criteria for young people: determination, attitude, initiative, need. They don’t have to have the skills and experience, but they do need to have shown a spark, an energy, a motivation. We’ll be recruiting via our network of NGO partners that I’ve developed over the last two months, with a short process featuring an application form and a brief interview.

This is a unique phase of the project – creating this core team to make the first issue and then building the project out from there: adding on outreach workshops into specific communities, creating the mobile channel to scale content, and then creating additional editorial hubs in other cities. But hitting scale with the first issue through a large print run and distribution in both Cape Town and Johannesburg.

Live Mag SA issue 1’s production office will be embedded within Cape Town advertising agency 140BBDO in their office in De Waterkant, bringing the young people into town into an open plan space of around 90 square metres. BBDO are generous advocated of the project, offering us space, support through their networks, and access to creative mentors.

There are some exciting additional elements to issue 1 that I can’t wait to confirm – including some nascent ideas around mobile video, an overnight design challenge and a small posse of international visitors – all TBC.

The core project team is now in place, with Claire Conroy and Nkuli Mlangeni at the controls of commercial/brand development and project co-ordination, having worked with me on the Ikamva Live project. I’m also in disussions with Lynne Stuart, who oversaw the IkamvaLive design, to play an overseer role again, with photography mentoring from Chris Saunders, Jo’burg-based fashion photographer.

The only missing link: an editorial mentor – one of the most crucial roles. Recruitment is underway, and we’ve had an amazing calibre of applicant so far. Applications close on Wednesday.

Things are lining up, and excitement is bubbling away. On Friday we had our first day working together at BBDO, plotting, planning and aligning schedules and objectives. But what we all got most hyped about, once the main agenda was dealt with, was the work that this group, whoever they may be, are going to create… I can’t wait to see it.