From 12 April, we will be moving into Step 2 of the Government’s roadmap to ease the country out of lockdown. From Monday, non-essential retail can reopen along with some entertainment venues and hospitality outlets.

For example, on the Canterbury campus, Kent Sport will open its indoor gym facilities and other services as outlined on its website. The main Co-op store and Library Café will also reopen.

In line with the roadmap guidance, all staff should continue to work from home unless they are deemed critical or essential workers. If you are working on or accessing campus, having followed the latest Government guidance and are Covid-19 symptom-free, it is very important that you get tested twice a week. We are offering asymptomatic Covid-19 testing for both students and staff at both Canterbury and Medway. Booking is currently open at the two sites.

Graduations

We recently wrote to all our final year students confirming our delayed plans for this year’s graduations. While everyone will still receive their certificate so there should be no need to delay plans for employment or further study, it is important that every Kent student can enjoy the graduation ceremony they deserve. Unfortunately, we are unable to guarantee this for this summer – however, we will be welcoming all our final year students to celebrate their graduation at Canterbury or Rochester Cathedral next May.

Summer celebrations

We are working on joint plans with our Students’ Unions to make the most of summer and celebrate the end of term, including a festival fortnight of fun and community on our Canterbury and Medway campuses from 21 June to 2 July. We are aiming to have something for everyone, with music events, outdoor catering, sports programmes, screenings, workshops and much more to coincide with the planned removal of Government restrictions.

Watch out for further announcements on this soon, and I hope as many students and staff as possible can join activities when we can this summer and come together safely to mark the end of a difficult year for everyone.

Richard Reece | DVC Education and Student Experience

Are you interested in what is going on with Staff Wellbeing at the University? Are you involved in organising communications and events related to wellbeing in your local divisions or teams?

Then join the Staff Wellbeing Yammer group! This has been put together by Occupational Health and Wellbeing to form an energised and informed community focussing on staff wellbeing at the University. It’s for every member of staff, whatever role they perform.

The Yammer feed will keep you up to date with what’s going on. And, it will let you spread the word to others about the wellbeing events and initiatives you organise. The feed will promote discussion about wellbeing at Kent and foster a sense of community, which, in itself, helps to enhance people’s sense of wellbeing. The more people who join up, the greater the level of interaction.

Nothing to lose, all that can happen is that you are more informed!

The University has been rated highly for skills, enterprise and entrepreneurship in this years’ Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) assessment.

The KEF, which proposes a third pillar of university activity assessment alongside the Research Excellence Framework (REF) and Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), graded Kent in the top 20% of our cluster group for our skills, enterprise and entrepreneurship development, and in the top 40% for our local growth and regeneration focus.

We were assessed across seven unique perspectives of knowledge exchange activity and compared with 20 other UK higher education institutions under an umbrella cluster ‘X’. This cluster consists of large, research-intensive, broad-discipline universities undertaking a significant amount of world-leading research.

You can find out more about our KEF success on our News Centre pages.

Webinar introducing KEF and KEC

Ahead of the announcement of the KEF results, Research and Innovation Services (RIS) welcomed practitioners from PraxisAuril, Research England and Universities UK to talk to Research and Innovation (R&I) staff from across the University about the Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) and the Knowledge Exchange Concordat (KEC).

The event was an opportunity for staff to increase their understanding of the KEF and KEC, and build their confidence in how they can play a part in the University’s Knowledge Exchange activity and reporting. A full recording of the webinar is available to watch online here, or you can read about it here on the Knowledge Exchange and Innovation blog.

Composer and Music and Audio Technology Lecturer Dr Jackie Walduck has created Medway Sonic Hand-Washing Experience, a public artwork commissioned by Medway Council as part of their post-Covid Safe Return campaign, The Rainbow Effect.  The work is a sound-trail of 15 short Hand-washing compositions by Jackie, her colleague Richard Lightman, Kent Alumnus Logan Ellis and other Medway-based artists.

These are accessed via specially designed Hand Hygiene posters installed in bathrooms around the Borough – in libraries, leisure centres, the Brook Theatre and cafes and bars along Rochester High Street.  The posters contain QR codes which, when  scanned on a  phone, take the listener is taken to 20 seconds of sonic pleasure to ensure a clean wash, and more importantly, sufficient time for soap to break down the Coronavirus cell membrane.  Jackie collaborated with Dr Vladimir Gubala from Medway School of Pharmacy to create a voice-over explaining the action of surfactants on cell membranes on two of the tracks.

The sound trail creates an engaging and varied hand-washing experience, and with poster graphics based on glass sculptures by Roberta Mason, offers an alternative to conventional public health messaging.

The Borough-wide Rainbow Effect campaign was launched on 31 March 2021, and artworks will stay in place around Medway at least until June.  Further details can be found on the Medway council website and this Council press release.

Dear colleagues, 

This week I want to pass on huge thanks to colleagues across the University for their enormous effort in submitting to the Research Excellence Framework 2021 on Monday. It’s amazing to see the incredible impact of our research brought together in one place, and I fully appreciate how much work goes into it – I encourage you all to read our DVC Research & Innovation Shane Weller’s blog with more detail on how far we’ve come since the last submission seven years ago. 

Related to this, it was great to see one of our research projects from the School of Psychology on BBC South East last night that really encapsulates the benefit our work has to the wider community. Those of you who have driven round Canterbury may have seen signs up at level crossing encouraging you to switch your engine off; this was part of some careful testing to see what could best prompt a change in behaviour, and has already led to changes being put in place by Canterbury City Council that will be part of ensuring better air quality for all. 

I also want to thank all of those both centrally and in Divisions who are working on today’s Undergraduate Open Day. This a fantastic opportunity to show people what we’re all about, and are a key moment in the recruitment calendar so I fully appreciate the effort that goes into them. While we look forward to holding these on campus again in future, the adaptability in bringing these online is an example of the kind of creative thinking we might want to keep from last year – if you haven’t already, then please do take a moment to fill out our Future of Work survey, which will help us work out how we all want to balance old and new as Government restrictions ease. 

Lastly, I hope everyone enjoys the long weekend and that those that can get to meet up with someone outdoors now that rules allow. I hope all of you can get a bit of a break over the next few days, and thank you once again for your continued hard work this term. 

With my best wishes to you and your families, 

Karen

Professor Karen Cox | Vice-Chancellor and President

KentVision, a new, simpler way of supporting the student journey, will be available to staff from 19 April.

KentVision brings together a number of different administrative processes to help us work better together. It includes a new Student Record System to replace the Student Data System (SDS) and introduce easier, more consistent ways to input, manage and process our student data

A Staff Webchat on KentVision, led by Richard Reece, William Collier, Paul Sales and Antony Brenton will take place on Wednesday 7 April, from 12.00-13.00.  Ahead of the session, it would be helpful to have as many questions as possible so we can do our best to cover everything in the time. To do this, please sign-up via the form where you can include your question when prompted.

An initial communication will be sent to all students on Tuesday 6 April informing them of the closure of SDS and introduction of the KentVision system.

Training and support

KentVision is due to go live on Monday 19 April. A range of options for seeking guidance and raising issues is available now on the KentVision webpages.

To help staff move to the new student management system, the KentVision webpages also include information on the impact on other IT systems during the transition week (w/b 12 April) and overall changes relating to timetabling, with specific reference to week numbers, module codes and a view of the new KentVision student portal.

Find out more about KentVision

The Centre for the Study of Higher Education congratulates the following colleagues who applied for Senior Fellowship and Fellowship of Advance HE (formerly the Higher Education Academy) through the Route to Recognition for Experienced Staff (RRES), and successfully gained national recognition for their leadership, excellence, expertise and commitment to professionalism in teaching and learning.

Senior Fellowship

• Daniel Clark – E-Learning
• Johnathan Fitchett – Centre for English and World Languages
• Robert Green – Division of Natural Sciences
• Gurprit Lall – Medway School of Pharmacy
• Sheree Palmer – Division for the Study of Law, Society and Social Justice (LSSJ)
• Flora Renz – Division for the Study of Law, Society and Social Justice (LSSJ)
• Matthijs Wibier – Division of Arts and Humanities

Fellowship

• Dave Thomas – Division of Natural Sciences

From Emma Wilcox, Project Director for Creative Estuary

The University is helping to shape the Creative Estuary, a four-year funded project driving forward the creative and economic evolution of the Thames Estuary. The aim is to unlock its potential as an international production hub and as a collaborative, inspiring place to live and work.

The stunning Creative Estuary place brand was launched in November 2020, supported by our inaugural Creative Estuary Champions, including Kent Vice-Chancellor, Professor Karen Cox. The event was a huge success with over 300 virtual attendees and received fulsome praise and positive feedback. You can watch a film linked to the brand launch here: https://vimeo.com/483767452

Under the Creative Estuary banner, the University of Kent is leading a consortium of public sector and cultural organisations to support the Thames Estuary Production Corridor. This is an ambitious 30-year vision to unite East London, the North Kent Coast and South Essex to create a world-class centre for creative and cultural production.

In 2019 the creative industries contributed in excess of £110bn to the UK economy. By comparison, the construction industry contributed £129.3bn, the automobile industry contributed £49.1bn, and agriculture £13.0bn. The success of the Production Corridor will contribute to wider national programmes to generate investment, jobs and creative industry opportunities for the whole Thames Estuary, making it one of the most attractive places to live and work in the UK.

Initially funded for three years, the Department for Digital, Culture Media and Sport, awarded us a 12-month extension at the end of 2020 to mitigate the impact and disruption of Covid. This welcome news presents us with an opportunity to reflect on our progress to date and take advantage of the University’s reorganisation and refreshed strategy, to ensure that Kent can make the most of its role in this project. Creative Estuary is now part of the programme that our Institute for Cultural and Creative Industries (iCCi) is delivering.

Coming up

A key part of the Creative Estuary is Estuary 2021. Opening on 22 May, this large-scale arts festival is curated in response to the spectacular Thames Estuary and the lives, landscapes and histories found there. A mix of large scale and intimate visual art, literature, music and film, the festival celebrates culture, creativity, recovery and renewal. Alongside an online discussion and events programme, the physical programme will explore and respond to powerful themes resonant to the Estuary, from the climate, to rebellion and imperial legacy. Re-framed in light of Covid-19, the festival invites visitors to take an epic walk along the stunning coastline of South Essex and North Kent encountering contemporary artworks and performance within the estuary landscape, historic sites and coastal towns.

Commissions include an opening weekend of live broadcast discussion and specially commissioned online artworks exploring the three key themes of climate, rebellion and imperial legacy. The event will be brought together by four artists and curators all of whom know the estuary as home.

Our project team is hugely excited about the many challenges and opportunities ahead, and we look forward to sharing more updates and involving colleagues right across the University.

Emma Wilcox | Project Director for Creative Estuary