The Centre for Heritage have organised a ‘Heritage and Wellbeing’ workshop, which will be taking place at The Beaney House of Art and Knowledge in Canterbury, on 7-8 June 2018.

Beginning with the development of art therapy in the 1940s, social prescribing of arts and culture for the enhancement of health and wellbeing has now extended to such contexts as museums and heritage sites. Where health services are pushed to their limits and much of their vital resources being used to address symptoms linked to loneliness, depression, stress and anxiety, the potential benefits to the health and wellbeing of individuals and communities from engagement with museums and heritage sites presents a new role for museums and heritage organisations to explore.

This two-day workshop, organised by the Centre for Heritage at Kent and funded by the Eastern ARC of Kent, the University of Essex and the University of East Anglia, has been designed for academics, students and heritage practitioners interested in gaining a deeper understanding of the potential for heritage sites within social prescribing. Bursaries will be available to postgraduate students.

For more information, please see the page here:
https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/heritageandwellbeing/

Think you can’t run? Surprise yourself! Just because you don’t run doesn’t mean you can’t. If you can walk for half an hour, chances are that you can pick up the pace and give running or jogging a try. This summer, Kent Sport is bringing you the Couch to 5K ‘Fit for Summer’ challenge; over 12 weeks you will work on your running, with the goal that by the final week you will be running for half an hour, or approximately 5K. The sessions have been specially designed for people who have done little or no running and you will supported by our enthusiastic staff, who will be with you every step of the way. This challenge builds in time and effort, so you’ll constantly be impressed with what you can do if you push yourself a little.

New for the summer term; an additional weekly session to support you in completing the challenge. The program runs for 12 weeks and you are welcome to attend one or both of the sessions each week.

Session 1: every Wednesday starting 18 April 2018, 12.10-13.00 – meet at the Sports Centre reception

Session 2: every Monday starting 23 April 2018, 17.10-18.00 – meet at the Sports Centre reception

Please note the 50 minute sessions include warm up, cool down, stretches and you therefore won’t be active for the full session. Comfy clothing, footwear and a water bottle are advisable. The sessions are £1 per person (free for Kent Sport Gold and Silver members) and there is no need to register. Just turn up at the Sports Centre reception where you can pay for the session if required.

If you have any questions about the ‘Fit for Summer’ challenge, please contact sportsdevelopment@kent.ac.uk. Follow our Facebook page for event reminders.

Dr Axel Stähler, Reader in the Department of Comparative Literature, has just been awarded a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship for a project entitled ‘Jerusalem Destroyed: Literature, Art, and Music in Nineteenth-Century Europe’.

The project proposes to interrogate representations of the destruction of Jerusalem in 70CE in relation to negotiations of Jewishness in nineteenth-century European cultural production. It encompasses primary material as diverse as drama and historical fiction, paintings, oratorios, operas, and libretti from Germany, Britain, and Italy. Each country produced a specific response to the subject which became manifest in distinctive narrative emphases and in preferences for different media and genres. Situating these developments in their respective cultural-historical, social, and political contexts, the project investigates the individual trajectories of the engagement with the destruction of Jerusalem against cross-cultural and transnational influences and similarities.

For more details about Leverhulme Research Fellowships, please see the page here.

Update from David Nightingale, Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost:

Further to my email yesterday, the GDPR information sessions for staff have proved to be very popular and so we have moved the Canterbury venues to Keynes Lecture Theatre 1. If you have tried to register and been told it’s fully booked, you should now be able to book using the links below.

Also, to clarify, all staff from all departments are welcome to attend any session. If you are part of a faculty, you may find it more helpful to attend one focused on your area as the questions in the Q&A portion of the session may be more pertinent to you. Should you be unable to attend, or should your team require bespoke information, please contact the Information Compliance team or the Development Office directly.

The sessions will include an overview of GDPR, what it means for Kent, and how we are preparing. There will also be an opportunity to ask questions. The Information Compliance team and the Development Office will use the sessions to determine the main points of concern for staff in order to develop resources and guidance which will subsequently be made available on the Information Compliance website.

A reminder of the sessions:

• Tuesday 17 April 10-11.00, Keynes Lecture Theatre 1 (Social Sciences) Register here.
• Friday 20 April 10-11.00, Keynes Lecture Theatre 1 (Humanities) Register here.
• Monday 23 April 10-11.00, Keynes Lecture Theatre 1 (Sciences) Register here.
• Thursday 26 April 10-11.00, Pilkington Building, Room 130 (All), Register here.
  NB change of venue

I hope you will find the sessions useful.