Live Magazine – the free quarterly publication produced “by young people for young people” – has launched the first issue of its South African sister magazine, Live SA with support from Dazed & Confused...
Who: Live Magazine – the free quarterly publication produced “by young people for young people” – has launched the first issue of its South African sister magazine, Live Magazine SA, with support from Dazed & Confused.
What: Following in the footsteps of the UK version, Live SA encourages and enables South Africa’s emerging talent (all material has been produced by first-time contributors aged 15-25) to provide a fresh, germane outlook on arts, entertainment, fashion and youth issues and culture. From their Cape Town office, the Live SA team assembled the first issue in just six weeks, under the guidance of professional journalists and creatives, including Dazed & Confused editor Rod Stanley. Its content includes a sheep’s head eating challenge, complete with a sheep’s head curry recipe for the ovine-curious; an up-to-date slang dictionary supplying cross-references in the country’s different languages; and a “dummies guide” to ANC Youth League president Julius Malema, with an opportunity to vote him hero or villain on Live SA’s YouTube channel.
"In a country where little media specifically addresses the youth and issues relevant to them, it feels that Live can make a big impact"
Why: Dazed & Confused have a longtime interest in the support and wider exploration of cultures outside of Britain's own – in 2000, they published a solely African edition of the magazine with a combined focus on a selection of the continent’s inspirational figures and some of the major problems it faces, namely the HIV pandemic. On the importance and aims of the launch of Live SA, Stanley explains “In a country where little media specifically addresses the youth and issues relevant to them, it feels that Live which aims to reach ‘ALL SA youth’ can make a big impact, not only entertaining but providing a shared space for discussion of key issues (i.e. poverty, crime, drugs, sex) and also providing opportunity, experience and education. But most of all it makes connections between young people between themselves, and with wider society.”
50, 000 copies of Live Magazine SA will be distributed quarterly in youth-friendly parts of Cape Town and Johannesburg.
Text by Daisy Woodward
