The Bush School Wins 2024 InspirED School Marketers Brilliance Award

The Bush School has received a Bronze InspirED School Marketers™ Brilliance Award for its 2024 edition of Experience Magazine. This award, conferred by a panel of seventy-two marketing experts from across the globe, is part of the only international competition that honors excellence in marketing and communications for private and independent schools. The entries were assessed on criteria such as originality, persuasiveness, copy/script/dialog, visual elements, execution, and overall appeal, with judges citing Experience Magazine’s “fresh” approach to an anniversary magazine, its attractive layout that combines old with new, and the use of art on the cover, making it an attractive tabletop conversation piece.

Experience (formerly the Alumni Magazine) has been a Bush staple for over fifty years. The time-honored publication is known for its striking visual highlights, student success stories, and thoughtful letters from faculty, staff, and senior leadership. The 2024 publication featured cover artwork from Bush alum Cameron Martin ’89; a 2016 work created with oil on canvas called Sensate. His beautiful design features adjacent angular shapes, the shade of each influenced by its neighbors, something the school felt evoked a visual representation of the ways community members spanning Bush’s 100-years have written the school’s history.

This centennial edition of Experience tells the story of 100 years of The Bush School through 100 voices. Preparation for the publication began years in advance and included the careful collection of oral and written histories, archival documents and ephemera, and extensive research into the history of the school and its founder, Helen Taylor Bush. The result is a publication that invites readers to experience a century of Bush through the memories and musings of the people who have and who continue to make the school so special.

“The goal for our centennial year publication–to tell the story of 100 years of The Bush School through 100 voices–was set nearly four years prior to the start of the anniversary,” Associate Director of Alumni Relations Tiffany Kirk said. “Our team knew collecting stories from 100 people was an ambitious hope, but we also know how passionate this community is about the school and its history. With the help of an archivist (Cali Vance) who not only digitized the content of the physical Bush archives but also conducted and transcribed interviews, we found that the real challenge was not in collecting enough voices, but in having to limit the content (the publication could’ve been double the size)!

We are all very proud of the publication. Our hope was that in telling the story this way, readers would feel the history–the joy and hilarity of alumni memories, the pride radiated by faculty as they realize the impact they’ve made on the school and the lives of so many former students, and the remarkable determination of a woman whose ideals were so progressive that they guide the school today, 100 years later.”