Frequently Asked Questions
What is Roadster?
What does #kidswhoLOVEtheroad mean?
Roadster! is an automotive magazine for children. It aims to educate, inspire and entertain #kidswhoLOVEtheroad in all things automotive. Each issue is a variety of road safety, advice, STEM, English, Geography, History, fun, jokes and puzzles and far more!
The best way to find out about it is to take a look!
How can a child so young be an Editor?
Involve.
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Children lead on producing content for Roadster! with the support of adults. This could be the adults working in companies facilitating visits, interviews or experiences, their parents helping them to produce content, or something else.
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Adults open the door for children to find their own way, with support, direction and barriers lifted.
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The project builds confidence, life skills and interests. There's a view that it is better to help ignite a child's passions now, rather then let them wander into adulthood without focused aspiration.
Is Sam the youngest magazine editor in the world?
We think so, but that's not official. Sam is not recognised by Guinness and he doesn’t hold any records.
We have investigated the record with Guinness. There is a female record holder but no male record so, as far as we are concerned, it is Sam’s record for the taking.
However, whilst Sam is eligible to apply for the record of Youngest Magazine Editor (Male), Guinness’s record bar is extremely high. Roadster! would have to be a monthly magazine rather than termly, AND it would need 1,000 copies in commercial circulation EACH MONTH!
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Given the huge number of really quite silly records Guinness officiates over (Fastest marathon dressed as a telephone box anyone? Or how about Most Smarties/M&Ms eaten in one minute blindfolded using chopsticks - it's just 20 by the way), we feel that this bar is disproportionately high and it isn't particularly encouraging to youngsters such as Sam.
Without being disparaging, we've looked into the female record holder's magazine - a commercial glossy from a sizeable publishing house with a complement of adults working on it full-time. Whilst we have no doubt the female record holder has a number of editorial duties (Guinness lists attending launches, creating editorial concepts, market research, writing the monthly editor’s letter and reviewing the magazine before print), we believe Sam's role goes much further than this - he's involved in ALL of the magazine's content. The amount of work Sam does as child editor on Roadster! would be unsustainable for a monthly - so we would be surprised if those editorial duties stretch as far as Sam's.
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We believe the Roadster! model is an unconventional model which Guinness criteria doesn't make room for. Sam works extremely hard for Roadster! and is, legitimately, fulfilling the role of Editor in all sorts of ways. If Guinness were to look they would see.
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We have a few lofty ambitions for Roadster! but satisfying Guinness eligibility criteria is not one of them. It's a great shame as he deserves his achievements to be recognised.
What is your circulation and how many followers do you have?
How often is Roadster published?
Termly. That's the aim at least. The idea is that kids work on it evenings, weekends, and half term holidays, and the actual magazine is published aligned to the main school holidays (Christmas, Easter, Summer).
How do you manage working on Roadster! alongside your school and work commitments?
Very easily!
Sam's schooling is really important and his Dad cares passionately about his work, so we only work on it when we are together on evenings, weekends and holidays. We make it in our personal time, working on each issue gradually.
What is the Roadster Advisory Board?
An idea. We aim to be a not-for-profit child-led endeavour. We need advice to help us get there, someone to hold us to account, and provide a consensus steer on the direction the project should take.
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We are on the hunt for advisors who would be willing to give up a regular amount of their time in order to help the project grow.
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Who writes Roadster REALLY?
Ah! A question we are asked frequently! It really is a joint effort, but it would be churlish to expect a child to do all of this. The key word is INVOLVE again. Sam is involved throughout the creative process. Consulted on everything, his ideas are thrown into the mix, and we sketch out a framework for a feature together.
Where an interview is involved we get together and plan out questions for Sam to ask. We do this together in order that the questions mean something to Sam when the actual interview takes place.
We also use tools such as questionnaire and templates to help Sam write reviews and such like. Structured questions and a guided approach helps Sam to produce a skeleton piece we can work with for the feature.
Sam does, for the, moment, tend to leave the adults to the majority of the writing, but we do ensure that, for most pieces, we have some kind of statement from Sam - reflections on an encounter or opinions about certain things.
Tell me about your approach to Safeguarding?
The magazine is aimed at junior car lovers, mechanics, engineers, designers, civil engineers, racers, truck fans.... think of anything to do with "the road" and you'll find it in Roadster!
What does child led actually mean?
Sam is the key decision maker - the person who decides whether something happens or not. Often when Roadster is invited to participate in something Sam is the centre of attention (rightly so), but this CAN make him uncomfortable. You are essentially asking a young child to participate in a very adult envirnment. Sam does say no on occassion.
Respectfully, these questions feel a little irrelevant right now. We've been going two years, and our first year was just us messing around really - finding a model that worked for us and establishing whether we could really make a motoring magazine for kids. It was about us rather than anyone else. It is only from our Spring 2024 issue that we've really tried to get our idea out there and find more readers. We've been going to events, showcasing our magazine, and we've opened online sales. But if people aren't aware of it, they aren't going to buy it. It's going to take more than just a year. Our profile is growing all of the time, but we our bound by our own limitations (we can only afford to produce so many copies of each issue), and we aren't really chasing social media followers - our primary readership is kids aged between 8 and 12... we aren't sure kids of this age should be ON social media! Besides, we’ve only been really trying for growth over two issues - it's far too early in our life for questions about circulation and followers... what's more important is what we are trying to do!
Roadster! is a project that is scaling up! The project started with a father and a son, then some family friends got involved and with each issue more children and families are getting involved. As we scale up we are invited to do more activities, and conduct outreach and sales events.
We are also very keen that more and more children participate in Roadster! The project is for them.
Every group or organisation in the UK has a duty to safeguard children and young people in their care. This includes making sure that all children who attend events and activities are kept safe. Roadster! is led by a DBS checked adult who is a civil servant with a strict moral code, and an interest in providing for children - working as a primary school governor for a number of years.
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For more information see our Roadster! policies page.