Deadline for all Content Call to be considered for print is Sunday, 20th of April 2025 unless otherwise stated.
Please reach out to the respective section emails or leave a comment below to claim a prompt. The prompts are simply guidelines, if you have other ideas that relate to the theme, you can of course still reach out and pitch your articles!
Travel - travel@palatinate.org.uk
Hi everyone! We hope you’re enjoying a restful Easter break.Our latest content call is now live on Substack, and the theme for this edition is all about Indigo in Bloom - a celebration of springtime, new beginnings, and nature.
Easter getaways - spending Easter away from the UK? Whether you’ve bee visiting family, traveling with friends, or returning to your home country, we’d love to hear about your holiday and how it’s been.
Spring in Durham - share your reflections and offer advice on how to make the most of spring in the North East, whether this means visits to old Durham Gardens or further afield.
Reconnecting with nature - have you recently gone hiking, camping, or explored a national park? Tell us about your outdoor adventures and how spring helped you reconnect with nature.
Flower Power - whether you’ve strolled beneath cherry blossoms in Japan, or wandered through tulip fields in the Netherlands - we want to hear about your travels.
As always feel free to reach out with any pitches!
Enjoy 🌸
Visual Arts - visual.arts@palatinate.org.uk
For this Indigo in Bloom edition, we are looking for a piece responding to one of these prompts, or anything inspired by springtime/nature/change:
Faux Florals - explore your favourite depictions of flowers. Think Georgia O’Keefe’s florals, Van Gogh’s sunflowers, Mat Collishaw’s burning flowers. You could explore the symbolism of certain flowers: how can one symbol represent love, decay, purity and more.
England’s Green and Pleasant Land - explore landscape paintings: Eric Ravilious, LS Lowry, Turner, and Constable may be good starting points.
Al Fresco Art - explore artworks that are displayed outside (Barbara Hepworth preferred her sculptures to be shown outdoors, for example).
Impressions of Nature - the Impressionists were inspired by scenes of natural beauty. Explore your favourite Impressionist paintings.
Restorative Art - “Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable”: discuss some soothing artworks as we head into the stress of exams.
Articles should be 650 - 800 words. Please send your submissions to visual.arts@palatinate.org.uk
Creative Writing - creative.writing@palatinate.org.uk
For this edition, we are looking for writing around the theme of spring! Spring is a season of hope, renewal and blossoming. We have two prompts you may consider writing about for this print edition.
Write about hope and hopefulness. What brings you hope? What do you hope for from this season? You may think about the folkloric and religious history of Spring, and how these intertwine with feelings of hope.
Our favourite part of Spring is Spring cleaning, but what other rituals could someone have this season? Get creative and tell us about some weird and wonderful rituals to mark Spring’s association with renewal. Some rituals may include: foraging for flowers before every meal, making magic potions from daffodils, befriending a flock of baby ducklings, or hiding a mysterious Easter egg trail every year around Durham.
Whether in prose, poem, or creative essay, we want to be immersed in the pollen-scented atmosphere of spring! (800 word limit).
If you are not inspired by these prompts, feel free to send in creative writing at any time, with any theme or style, to be considered for online publication.
Stage - stage@palatinate.org.uk
Budding potential - with the Oliviers over, a new theatrical season is beginning! Write an article on the season that just passed, or on the one that’s just beginning, summing up what has been, or what is to come!
A feature piece on a promising playwrite/actor/theatre/show/genre that you think is going to be the next big thing!
Reading what they sow - a feature article on the prologue and how this sets the scene. Possibly explore famous examples (like the opening to Romeo and Juliet).
A late Spring’s dream - an article about the global phenomena that is Shakespeare in the park that will be starting this Spring. You could explore how both professional and amateur productions seem to always keep this tradition alive, as well as nations who all seem to love this concept (look at NYC Central Park’s Shakespeare in the Park!)
Please also feel free to pitch any ideas you may have.
Features - features@palatinate.org.uk
Hey Indigo contributors!! We at the Features section hope your holiday’s been well-rested so far, whether you’ve been at home or travelling far from it, and are ready for another content call! As always, remember we love to read your article pitches no matter how unusual or outlandish they might seem. In our section, we love to celebrate underrepresented voices and highlight communities that don’t often get a say in journalism. If you think you’ve got an idea that would work well with our section (i.e. reflective pieces on student life - that sort of thing), then shoot us a message via email!
As you may be aware, the next edition of Indigo will focus on Indigo in Bloom. While this might typically entail writing about new beginnings or nature - and in a sense, we haven’t bucked the trend here - we would like to subvert expectations a little bit with some of our prompts. While Spring might represent change for some, there’s also plenty of continuities that flow on from the rest of the year; new growth can often be the result of some form of decay. We’re very interested in seeing how you feel about such notions. Is Spring always a time of an explosion of new life, or is it also a silent killer?
We’re planning to do a dual contributor piece, featuring juxtapositional articles, which cover these issues sensitively and reflectively. Here’s some ideas and prompts to get you started with your writing!
Winter’s ghosts - while Spring is supposed to be a time of new beginnings, there’s always parts os us that remain weighed down by the cold of winter. No matter how much life tries to coax us onwards, sometimes we still remain trapped in the same old mindset we held in the depths of winter. Have you thawed those unresolved issues or lingering feelings, or do they continue on into the warmth of Spring? This prompt should talk about how you might be saddled with the baggage of a past persona; a persona you left behind in the snow.
Light and blindness - Spring is a time where the world comes alive again after the dreary, monochromatic months of the year, and where you can reconnect with friends again. But that stifling sense of isolation can hang onto you throughout the year; it isn’t the sole preserve of winter, and the expectation that you should come into spring with a fresh love for your friends can be an overwhelming one. This prompt should consider moments where, in spite of what was expected of you, you felt distant from those you would normally call your friends.
Peace and quiet - though Spring at university can often be the season of beer gardens and nights out that begin to feel uncomfortably early, there is also a certain serenity to the season where nature can finally claw its way back into the world. Have small moments in the natural world given you a sense of peace that the physical, or urban, world sorely lacks? Does the sound of rain, the blooming flowers, or the longer days make you feel better after a depressing winter? This prompt should explore the serenity and beauty of Spring from your own standpoint, reflecting on how the changing of seasons and the beginning of new life can be an incredible thing.
Spring and the home - Spring can be, for many, a time of homecoming. Its beginning can represent a return home from university, or its depths can demonstrate much the opposite; the return to university, to reconnect with friends you haven’t seen in a month. What does Spring make you think of about home? Do you return to your roots, old traditions and the warmth of a familiar space? Or do you turn to it as a form of renewal? This prompt should explore how Spring makes you feel about your home, and what you consider ‘home’, whether that be in Durham or beyond.
Similarly to the section’s Valentine’s Day prompts, we’re aiming to look for some shorter-form pieces here. Think somewhere between 200 and 400 words, as we’ll need space to fit your lovely wordsmithing onto the page! When you’re drafting, consider if your scope would work well for a shorter-form piece. But remember that as always, we love to see longer-form pieces and will publish those we receive online if they can’t be cut down without compromising your message! Keep in mind also that we love to see article pitches, so keep those coming! Happy writing!
Film & TV - film@palatinate.org.uk
Genre revival - what genres/themes have we seen come back “into bloom” in film and TV? Could talk about the return of Romcom with films like Anyone But You, or the 2010’s and 2020’s return to musicals with films like The Greatest Showman or Wicked. Which genres have you seen a resurgence of, or which do you think deserve another chance?
Springtime on film - a discussion of films that bring a springtime essence and what cinematic features create this vibe. Could consider films like Marie Antionette or Emma, which use pastel aesthetics to create a ‘spring’ atmosphere.
Upcoming actors - which actors of the newer generations are coming “into bloom”, and what work has proven their successes so far?
We are also accepting any submissions on the theme of Indigo in Bloom, so this could include film/TV based on new beginnings, fresh starts, or springtime and nature. All can be sent to film@palatinate.org.uk, and we look forward to reading your submissions!
Books - books@palatinate.org.uk
Hey everyone! We hope you’ve had lovely Easters. The next print is themed Indigo in Bloom, and we’d love to hear from anyone looking for a break from revision… as always, comment to claim a piece and email submissions to books@palatinate.org.uk by 27th April. Below are some bits of inspo…
Books about new beginnings - write a piece on your favourite book centred around themes of ‘coming of age’ or new beginnings. Some ideas of books you might write about include The Perks of Being a Wallflower, or Little Women
Nature in literature - write a piece about a book centred around nature, for example The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. What is significant, or your favourite element of the depiction of nature in the novel?
Spring cleaning your bookshelf - give some book recommendations for revitalising your reading list this spring, or consider some popular stories to keep in circulation. Are there any new and upcoming publications to introduce?
We’re also open to any other ideas you might have, happy writing!
Image credit: Charles Lester
Hi, could I please claim feature 3?
Hi could I do 1 of creative writing - hope and new beginnings/ religious history ?