Focus Storia

For the 2023/2024 school year, numerous initiatives aimed at teachers, students and families have been organised. All conceived by Focus, Focus Scuola, Focus Junior and Focus Wild, the brand leaders in publishing in Italy for the Mondadori Group, which, once again this year, are confirmed as promoters of innovative educational proposals for the school world.

With the start of the school year, the Focus Scuola website will, as always, be available to teachers with news, insights and useful tips to make their lessons more engaging and inclusive.

The Focus Scuola Newsletter, curated by the editorial staff of Focus Junior in collaboration with a team of specialised, professional journalists, is back. The Newsletter, which has more than 20,000 Italian teachers already subscribed to it, is aimed at primary and secondary school teachers. The main goal is to provide ideas and playful and innovative proposals to get the students more involved during lessons. Each week Focus Scuola Newsletter offers topical insights for lectures and group work, ideas for science labs, STEAM worksheets to make science a more exciting subject, in-depth features explained in a simple way to explain complicated topics, and features on innovative teaching methods and classroom management thanks to advice from top experts. In addition to being able to preview all Focus initiatives for the school world, teachers will also have the opportunity to share class projects with the entire registered teacher community.

Here is the link to subscribe to the Newsletter.

Starting in October, the Academies by Focus Junior, Focus and Focus Storia which, every year, involve hundreds of classes and thousands of students, will resume.
Focus Junior’s Journalism Academy, aimed at young people in primary and secondary schools and in which more than 500 classes and over 10,000 students took part last year, includes a three lessons course dedicated to media and environmental education. The first two events explain how to create a magazine, how to write an article, and how to recognise fake news in a simple and fun way, while the third deals with climate change and ecological transition. The goal of the Focus Junior Academy is to encourage critical thinking and inform the youngsters on two topics that are crucial today in order to become informed citizens. The Academy is organised in collaboration with the Italian Committee for the Investigation of Claims of the Pseudosciences (Cicap) and the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (Cmcc).

“Thanks to the Academies’ initiative the editorial staff of Focus Junior help schools and teachers throughout Italy to explain complex issues through engaging storytelling that captures the attention of the youngest learners,” said Sarah Pozzoli, Director of Focus Junior. “We journalists have the same goal as teachers: to raise future citizens who can think critically and adopt a more sustainable lifestyle”, she concluded.

The Academies of Focus and Focus Storia, aimed at students in secondary schools and in which more than 100 classes and over 2,500 students participated last year, involve a course of four events during which young people step into the shoes of actual editors for each issue, actively participate in source and image research, attend editorial meetings, and are involved in analysing the commissioned work and publishing content on the various social channels, where their proposals and ideas will be added and promoted.

Raffaele Leone, Director of Focus, thus reiterates the importance of establishing synergistic collaboration with schools: “The school world is doubly important to us: on the one hand because we feel that teachers and their educational mission are close to our hearts, and on the other hand because discovering a dialogue with the new generation, who increasingly keep themselves informed through additional tools and channels besides print media, is a strong motivation for us. We’re dealing with a positive two-way exchange: showing how to make a science magazine gets young people involved in the topics covered, in reading, in researching sources. Seeing how they draw on tools other than print prompts us to create formats and languages that are more suited to them. We can say that Focus is one of the most innovative tools on the market in terms of dissemination and multimedia, with its magazines, website, social media platforms, podcasts, Academies and live events that make the annual Focus Live a success,” concluded the Director.

Completing the Focus offer for schools for the 2023/2024 school year is a great new feature: the Focus School Camp, innovative educational projects aimed at all Italian schools on all levels, representing a revolutionary way of thinking about and experiencing educational trips. A comprehensive new proposal that starts with classroom training, moves through practice during camp, and ends with the development of a final digital project that will be presented in class and posted on the Focus School Camp digital bulletin board. The themes of the School Camp by Focus Junior, Focus Wild, Focus and Focus Storia are varied, and designed specifically to meet any educational needs of different school classes and age groups of students.

After the great success of two editions of the Focus Junior Summer Camp, the Focus School Camp is again collaborating with Sunnylife, the market-leading tour operator in the school trip and summer camp sector.

Finally, teachers will also be able to subscribe to the Focus brand magazines this year using their Carta del Docente and, from mid-October, the Bonus Scuola returns, allowing educational institutions to apply for a subsidy for subscriptions and magazines purchased during the school year by making a specific request to: sgc@mondadori.it.

Focus, Focus Storia, Focus Junior and Focus Wild launch the first School Camps edition, a new project conceived in partnership with Sunny Life, a company specialised in tourism and cultural travels for children between 6 to 18 years of age and affirmed tour operator of the Focus Junior Summer Camps.

The School Camps provide innovative and complete educational offers focused on students and teachers, starting from in-class training to on-field experience at the camp and ending with the drafting of final summary in digital format.

The Focus system brands pursue their licensing development through this initiative, by further extending their educational offer to educational trips: real training, interdisciplinary and customised courses – using the tested STEAM approach – to spread knowledge on scientific and mathematical subjects with the help of other disciplines such as art, history and architecture.

Such activity, designed for primary and secondary school students, aims to stimulate and involve the youngest by exploiting knowledge and developing skills. Such project asserts the attention of the Focus, Focus Storia, Focus Junior and Focus Wild brands towards both the education of the youngest and highly topical issues, such as sustainability and inclusion.

In addition to being real learning workshops, the 2023/2024 School Camps allow children to live truly unforgettable experiences under the guidance of professionals.

• Focus, a leading brand of scientific information, provides a package of ideas specifically designed for secondary schools and studied around the most current educational topics, with particular interest and insight into the technical, scientific and technological fields.
• Focus Storia, a magazine dedicated to the most striking historical and cultural facts and great protagonists of the past and present, offers a special catalogue conceived for secondary schools and designed to revive those places in which traces of our history are still evident.
• Focus Junior, a point of reference in the kids’ segment, suggests experiences developed to introduce topics such as innovation, sustainability and inclusion to primary and secondary school students – through a multidisciplinary and transversal approach – always according to the needs and age of such young learners.
• Focus Wild, an intergenerational brand dedicated to the world of animals and nature, provides primary and secondary schools with a vast repertoire of experiences conceived to specifically attract the students’ attention towards the most current and urgent environmental issues, always in an engaging, fun and exciting way.

Verona, Milan, Genoa, Rome, Pompeii and Matera are just some of the destinations planned for the School Camps of Focus, Focus Storia, Focus Junior and Focus Wild. All destinations were selected by the Mondadori Group brand among the vast range of cruises and school trips suggested in Sunny Life’s catalogue.

The complete and updated catalogue will be available on the following link: http://focuscamp.it/.

Focus Storia, the Mondadori Group brand dedicated to the personalities, events and curiosities of history, is enhancing its offer with new formats and content which, from the magazine to the web and social media, extends also to podcasts.

In fact, the magazine edited by Raffaele Leone has made available to the public the portal “Storia in Podcast” (History in Podcasts), Italy’s most complete audio library to enable readers and users to discover in a new way the protagonists and facts that have marked human civilisation.

An unprecedented and exclusive journey, with over 180 continuously updated episodes divided into 10 thematic areas that talk about the great events of the past in a simple but rigorous approach, thanks to the contribution of contemporary historians and commentators from leading Italian universities.

Enhancing the “Storia in podcast” series, an episode created to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the birth of Princess Diana is now available. From her origins, in Sandringham, in Norfolk, to her marriage to Prince Charles in 1981 to the tragic car accident in which she lost her life in the late summer of 1997.

A special episode that is part of the Focus Storia podcast collection dedicated to the events of the ever-popular British royal family: from “The Crown: from fiction to reality”, in which the writer and historian Hugo Vickers discusses the celebrated Netflix TV series, up to “Prince Philip” and “The Queen’s Corgis”.

A selection of content, available on the Focus-branded web site, that already reaches an overall audience of 6 million readers and users (Source: Nielsen Data Fusion, November 2020) as well as on the Spotify, Apple Podcast, Google Podcast and  Amazon Podcast platforms, where over 1.1 million listeners have been recorded, confirming the success of this innovative format which completes the o Focus Storia offer.

“Podcasts are an extraordinary tool able to attract a broad and complementary audience alongside the fans who already follow us on the Focus Storia magazine. Adding podcasts is part of a wider project aimed at making Focus an authentic multimedia world accessible across all platforms on the market. In addition, a history podcast, in a country like ours, that is full of entrepreneurial excellence that, while relevant to the present, also has an interesting, often local and family-based, past, will also enable us to examine this reality which is unknown to most people,” declared the editor of the magazine, Raffaele Leone.

The Focus Storia community has also been won over by the many episodes that look at great personalities for the present and the past: from the last King of Italy, Umberto II, in the words of his daughter Maria Gabriella di Savoia, to Dante Alighieri and Lorenzo de’ Medici, and the football phenomenon Diego Armando Maradona. And then the great interest in current events, with the success of an exclusive docuseries: from the story of Alfredino, 40 years after the tragedy of Vermicino, up to ten episodes on the kidnapping of Aldo Moro, with previously unseen photos and archive recordings that have never been heard before.

Jacopo Loredan has been appointed the new editor of the monthly Geo. Loredan, who will take over from the March issue, will also continue in his role as editor of the lifestyle monthly Jack.
At the same time Marco Casareto, who is stepping down as the editor of Geo, will concentrate more specifically on growing commitments related to the development of editorial initiatives based around Focus Storia and its system of brand extensions such as Focus Storia Biografie, Focus Storia Wars and Focus Storia Collection.

The new Geo, edited by Loredan, will be an even more international product, on the strength of a brand recognised for excellence in the international world of publishing thanks to the high quality of its images and reportage.

Jacopo Loredan, who was born in Venice in 1957, began his career as a journalist at ANSA where he became a professional journalist in 1982. Two years later he was hired by Lamberto Sechi at the newly-launched Nuova Venezia. In 1987 he moved to Epoca where he remained for seven years: first as a reporter and subsequently as a special correspondent and then as managing editor. In 1994 he was hired as a correspondent by Panorama. Two years later, in March 1996, he went to Focus, the Gruner+Jahr/Mondadori monthly, as deputy editor. In November 1999, having edited the first issue of the quarterly Focus Extra, he was asked to develop the project for Jack, of which he was to become editor.

Marco Casareto, 45, was born in Chelmsford (England). After studying physics at the University of Milan, he began to work with a number of different magazines including, from 1993, Focus. Three years later he joined the staff of the magazine and in 2000 was appointed section chief with responsibilities for the coordination of the brand extension Focus Extra. Managing editor from 2002, in 2004 Casareto became coordinator of the new Gruner+Jahr/Mondadori title Focus Storia, of which he became deputy editor in 2006 and editor in 2008. The same year he was also appointed editor of Geo, a position he held until November 2009, taking it up again in September 2010. He is currently the editor of Focus Storia and its related editorial offshoots, Focus Storia Biografie, Focus Storia Wars and Focus Storia Collection.