People in the AQA community resource one another through sharing their experience.

They might do so through our Peer Mentor program, as Peer Coaches for our personal development workshop Discovering the Power in Me, in meeting face to face and online through our Community Networks, or in contributing and sourcing powerful stories published on our website and in our free bimonthly magazine, NewsLink.

Magazine remake
Over most of our history, AQA has published a bimonthly newsletter or magazine, NewsLink, that brings readers relevant news and helps people to empower others through sharing experience.

Over 2021 we have resourced production of the magazine by creating a role for a Publications Officer, and have benefited from the extensive pro-bono input of design professional Grant Maynard.

A streamlined content development process has helped us to make the feature articles carried in NewsLink more engaging. NewsLink remains deeply resourced by contributions from the AQA lived experience community – people submit articles and images they have produced themselves, or offer their experience as a resource for our writers. Many of the best stories are also posted online at our website.

Among some of the compelling articles NewsLink has carried this year:

What it was like to compete at the Tokyo Paralympics;
What it is like to share your life with a highly trained assistance dog;
How it feels to find pain relief in medicinal cannabis;
Why it is so much fun to drive an impractical ute when you’re using a wheelchair;
Ways in which people living with spinal cord injury have learned to sustain themselves through dark times.

NewsLink is free, and is distributed by web page, by email, and by mail. You can check out current and past editions at the Newslink page of our Spire website.