FOND FAREWELL AFTER 16 YEARS
I
can remember way back in 2005, when my friend and former colleague, Isabel Appio, asked if I wanted to buy a magazine from her. She had launched Keep The Faith magazine with the help of the late Barbara Campbell the year before. They had only published three or four issues, but decided not to continue with the title. At the time, I had recently left my role as the former CEO of The Voice Newspaper Group, and had set up my own online newspaper, Black UK Online, with two ex-Voice colleagues: the late, great Flip Frazer - the first editor of The Voice newspaper and founder of the acclaimed ‘Black Heroes in the Hall of Fame’, and a superb journalist, Mike Best - the then editor of The Voice. Neither of my colleagues were very keen to work on Keep The Faith, but my spirit told me to go for it. So I purchased the title with my own funds, and have never looked back.
At Downing Street in 2015
08 Find us on Twitter and Facebook: @KeepTheFaithmag
Shirley with Bishop Joe Aldred and Bishop John Francis
Mike Best was the original editor, and he worked with a former designer from The Voice newspaper, but I decided to take over the role of editing and overseeing the design of the magazine from issue 20. I remember working on my first issue as editor and alongside our new designer, Becky, who was a young 20-something girl, still at university studying design. We both found it so hard to do the first issue - both of us were novices - and, although I had worked in media, my role was organisational, overseeing the team of professionals. Yet there we were, at 3am, trying to complete our first issue so that it could go to print the next morning. Becky was in tears; it was her first major design and she was stressed. And to add to her stress, at the last minute we decided to completely change the format, layout and design of the magazine, and our first front cover girl was the beautiful Carole Pyke. Becky excelled with the new design! 100 issues later, a married woman
with a beautiful daughter, she is still excelling at designing the magazine. The purpose of the magazine was to highlight people within the Black and Christian community, who were dedicating time and effort to better the lives and surroundings of others. We also wanted to support the small grassroots organisations, with the aim of raising their profile in order to garner support from the community. We were tired of the constant negativity around the Black community being spewed out by mainstream media. So, for Keep The Faith, choosing front covers was easy! But our covers were not without controversy. In 2006, the movie, Amazing Grace, was released, and there was great objection to the film’s content and worldwide calls to boycott the movie. We had included a feature about the words of the beautiful hymn and a great article about the film. At 7am - a few hours before the magazine was due to go to print - we still had no front cover! So I
