Author Archives: Wendy Raeside

Will Wollen contributes to ‘Talk to Me’

Will Wollen, actor and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Drama and Theatre, has lent his voice to a series of talking sculptures to go on display in King’s Cross from this Friday.

The installation ‘Talk to Me’ has been designed by Steuart Padwick and will be displayed as part of the festival ‘designjunction‘, running from 19 to 22 September 2019 in the N1C area of London.

The installation consists of two monumental interactive sculptures of cuboid wooden figures. As people walk by, a proximity sensor is triggered, and the figures will begin to voice poignant and uplifting words. These conversations start to crack the ‘burden’, provoking conversations about mental health. ‘Talk to Me’ is a hopeful piece, reminding us that through communication with one another the weight so many of us carry, can be lessened.

Will joins actors and perfomers Niamh Cusack, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Tom Goodman-Hill, Joelle Taylor, Adam Kammerling and Chris Thorpe, in voicing the talking sculptures.

‘It’s been a pleasure to be involved in this important project,’ said Will. ‘Being available to talk and listen to our fellow human beings can be life-saving.’

The sculptures will be situated along King’s Boulevard in Kings Cross, London, until 22 September.

For more details, please see:
http://www.steuartpadwick.co.uk/talktome/

Film by alumna Nimasu Namsaren features at Pushkin House

Nimasu Namsaren, who graduated with a BA (Hons) in Film this summer, will feature in an ongoing series of events on ‘Exploring Identity in Student Filmmaking’, at Pushkin House in London on Friday 27 September 2019.

The series aims to explore questions around the concept of modern Russian identity and how it has evolved and manifests in young people. The first in the series will feature a presentation by Nimasu followed by a screening of her short film Mavzhuda.

Mavzhuda, which won the Best Film award at the Canterbury University Film Festival 2019 and was selected for the Lift-off First-time Filmmaker Sessions and the Zlaty Voci Student Film Festival, tells the story of the eponymous 12-year-old girl who immigrates to Russia from Uzbekistan with her family. Her new life in St Petersburg is challenging and in order to fit in she starts to forget her own culture and language and loses the connection with her grandmother. One day after school, Mavzhuda ignores her while walking together with other kids, and the pain that she inadvertently brings to the family helps her to find her own place in the hectic world around.

Pushkin House is a Registered Charity which aims to support and promote Russian culture in London and beyond, and provides a focus for Anglo-Russian cultural exchange, education and information about the Russian language, arts, literature and music. In pursuit of these aims, Pushkin House has developed a varied cultural programme on Russian literature, art, film, music, theatre and dance, as well as history, philosophy and politics. Events include lectures and talks, seminars, conferences, exhibitions, films, concerts and readings.

To attend the event, you need to become a member of Young Pushkin. Membership includes free entry to thought-provoking talks, £5 tickets to Music Salon concerts, a curated programme of completely free events and creative networking opportunities. You can sign up for membership here: www.pushkinhouse.org/young-pushkin

More information about the event is available here:
www.pushkinhouse.org/events/exploring-identity-in-student-filmmaking

KMMS inaugural virtual open day

Kent and Medway Medical School held its first Virtual Open Day on Tuesday 10 September. The event was hosted on YouTube and featured presentations from the founding Dean, Chris Holland and members of the senior academic and clinical team. The event was hosted by Louisa Britton from KMTV who also supported KMMS technically.

The live event attracted 204 participants and at its peak had 75 concurrent viewers. The audience had an average screen time of 28 minutes and questions flooded in throughout the two-hour broadcast. Overnight the recorded stream had over 80 more views with international visitors from India, Spain, Italy and Lebanon to name a few.

Mary Langford, Communications Manager says: ‘As we have a relatively short admissions window (KMMS applications close on 15 October) we wanted to try doing something online to allow prospective students to hear more about us without having the expense of travelling to Canterbury. We ran it in the early evening to allow people to get home from school or work and then tune in.’

Philip Chan, Admissions Lead says: ‘At KMMS we are committed to innovation in all areas. We felt that running a virtual open day allowed prospective students to engage with KMMS in a new way – to hear from the senior team and ask live questions from their mobile devices. We were really impressed by the quality and variety of questions we were asked and the number of people who engaged with it live – we will definitely do this again.’

Free water bottles to replace plastic cups at Kent

The University is adding to its green credentials with a move to replace plastic drinking cups across campus.

All new students staying on campus will once again receive an eco-friendly reusable Bamboo coffee cup and a fully recyclable, sustainable water bottle.

And, for the first time this year, a free water bottle will be offered to all staff too. The bottle, made from sustainable sugar cane, is fully recyclable and has a negative carbon footprint. As well as the University of Kent logo, it includes a QR code which users can scan to find the nearest available refillable water station.

The bottles will be available, on production of a KentOne ID card, from next week (wc 16 September) at Kent Hospitality outlets across Canterbury and Medway campuses. Bamboo coffee cups will also be available at the same outlets at a cost of £5 each.

The new bottles and cups are part of a package of measures at Kent to reduce our carbon footprint and increase our sustainability. This latest initiative has been led by members of Kent Hospitality, working alongside Kent Union, Estates and Procurement as part of the University’s Sustainable Food Steering Group, which oversees our sustainable food strategy.

The initiative also fits in well with the University strategy, Kent 2025, which states that, we will ‘embed sustainability through building the UN Sustainable Development Goals into our research, education, leadership, operations, administration and engagement.’

Kevin Stuckey, Director of Commercial Services, explains: ‘We were already working with Kent Union’s President Sasha Langeveldt to provide sustainable drinking cups and bottles. However, our Vice-Chancellor was keen for us to extend this across campus and eventually remove the need for any single-use plastic cups.

‘We therefore doubled our order for new water bottles this year so we could offer staff, as well as new residential students a sustainable alternative. We hope this will be welcomed by not only our staff, but the wider community, as Kent does its bit to reduce its carbon footprint.’

Preparations for TEF – staff talk on 13 September

Colleagues are invited to an update on Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes (TEF) Framework and Subject Level Pilots, by Professor April McMahon, Deputy Vice-Chancellor Education. The update will take place on Friday 13 September from 13.30 to 14.30 (Grimond Lecture Theatre 2).

The presentation is part of our preparations for the next round on TEF. It will include a general update on the TEF framework and its development following the completion of the second year of testing pilot options for subject level assessment. The presentation will also outline what TEF is, how it works, and what it is for, and consider some of the challenges and benefits of including a subject level perspective.

April will discuss some of the work we are doing at the University of Kent to prepare for subject-level TEF, and how important it is for us to approach this as a university community, with academic, professional and student perspectives all contributing and everyone having a role to play.

We hope to see as many of you as possible on 13 September. If you are unable to attend, you can listen to the event via this link (available to anyone with a Kent IT account).

EDA collaborative project shortlisted for Lumen Prize

The collaborative project “Licthsuchende” by Rocio von Jungenfeld, Lecturer in Digital Media at the School of Engineering and Digital Arts and Dave Murray-Rust, Lecturer in Design Informatics, School of Design, University of Edinburgh, has been shortlisted for the Lumen Prize.

Lichtsuchende is an interactive installation, built using a society of biologically inspired, robotic creatures who exchange light as a source of energy and as a means of communication. The robotic creatures are reminiscent of sunflowers, turning their heads to face the sun in order to absorb its light. However, at the same time they also generate light in order to engage with others. Each creature is relatively small, but when a group of Lichtsuchende are brought together in an installation they form an expanding photo-kinetic social environment in which visitors can become immersed.

Based on simple cybernetics combined with human and animal psychology (Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs), the Lichtsuchende sleep, dance with each other and with visitors while constantly seeking light sources to play and communicate with. They are curious and, when awake, they are keen to interact with any source of light and to exchange photonic information.

Visitors are invited to engage with the installation by using high power torches. With these torches they can explore the environment of the cybernetic light seeking creatures, influencing their movements and provoking reactions. The embodied algorithms give rise to emergent behaviours which have communicative and emotional resonance, allowing a duet between the humans and the cybernetic beings.

The Lumen Prize for Art and Technology celebrates the very best art created with technology through a global competition, exhibitions and events worldwide. Winners will be announced on 24 October 2019.

Blood pressure checks on campus 9-13 September

Our Occupational Health team will be offering blood pressure checks at Canterbury and Medway campuses to mark Blood Pressure UK: Know Your Numbers Week 09-13 September 2019.

Do you know what blood pressure is? More importantly, do you know what YOUR blood pressures is? Having your blood pressure taken is a simple and excellent way of gauging the health of your cardiovascular system, that is, your heart and your blood vessels.

Blood Pressure UK campaigns to increase knowledge of how to stay healthy and manage blood pressure. Each year they run a Know Your Numbers campaign encouraging people to have their blood pressure checked. Occupational Health has engaged once again with this campaign and is offering blood pressure checks for staff at both Canterbury and Medway campuses. The checks are only available on certain days across the week of 9-13 September – for details see the Blood pressure checks poster

A check is straightforward, doesn’t involve any invasive testing or needles and only takes 5-10 minutes of your time. You’ll be advised straightaway of what your blood pressure reading. If it is higher than expected you will be recommended to visit your GP to have it checked again.

If you are interested in booking on a Campus Blood Pressure check please contact Occupational Health either by ringing Pat Armstrong, the OH Technician, on extension 4691 or by emailing occupationalhealth@kent.ac.uk

For more information on blood pressure, follow these links:

http://www.bloodpressureuk.org/BloodPressureandyou

https://patient.info/heart-health/high-blood-pressure-hypertension

https://www.nhs.uk/common-health-questions/lifestyle/what-is-blood-pressure/

University of Kent Players’ play about Alzheimer’s 5-7 September

The University of Kent Players are proud to present Gail Young’s ‘Bothered & Bewildered’ this September.

The play will be performed at 19.30 from 5-7 September at the Gulbenkian Theatre, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NB.

Tickets are on sale via the Gulbenkian website in person at the Gulbenkian ticket office, or over the phone 01227 769075.

Bothered & Bewildered is a comic drama that follows Irene and her two daughters Louise and Beth as they begin a long journey in which the girls lose their mum in spirit but not in body. As her family struggle to come to terms with her Alzheimer’s, Irene’s past passion for romantic fiction blurs with reality. She discusses with her unseen and witty companion Barbara Cartland (Irene’s favourite and now deceased world famous romantic novelist) how best to write her ‘memory book’, disclosing to Barbara long kept family secrets that she would never reveal to anyone else.

New Home Office role for cyber security expert

Dr Richard Guest of the School of Engineering and Digital Arts and core member of the Kent Interdisciplinary Research Centre in Cyber Security has been selected to join the UK Home Office’s Biometric and Forensics Ethics Group.

Appointed by the Home Secretary, Richard Guest will join the independent group of leading multidisciplinary experts to provides advice and guidance to ministers and government on issues of biometric and forensic data use and systems implementation, such as the use of facial recognition technology.

Richard Guest’s appointment builds on the success of biometric research at Kent within current projects such as the AMBER Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network, the Hummingbird interdisciplinary project and collaborations with organisations such as the UK National Cyber Security Centre.

Thank you!

Thank you to the hundreds of staff who took the time yesterday to call the Clearing hotline to help with the stress testing needed to ensure that we were fully functional in time for this morning’s Clearing activities.

Although we offer our applicants a web-first approach, we receive calls to the hotline not just from applicants, but from prospective students asking about a wide range of issues ,from grade outcomes to accommodation, and from those wanting reassurance about their offer of a place.

Thanks to the efforts of staff, and those of the specialist teams in EMS, IS and Estates, we opened the hotline at 07.00 today (Thursday 15 August) confident that it would be able to handle the volume of calls we are expecting.

A special thanks also to the hotline operators, a team of 60 students, for all their hard work in testing the hotline.