Back by popular demand, the Music Department is delighted to welcome the young award-winning exponents of Scottish folk music, Fara, for a full evening concert to launch its spring events on Friday 9 February at 19.30. Book on the Gulbenkian website.

Comprising four emerging young players at the leading edge of the Scottish folk scene, the group has the title of Winners of the BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award amongst its many accolades, and after its hugely popular lunchtime concert last year, the group brings part of its 2018 tour to Colyer-Fergusson.

In addition, staff and student instrumentalists are warmly invited to take part in a workshop which the group will lead at 17.30 on the same day, exploring the genre; if you’d like to take part, please do email the Director of Music, Susan Wanless on s.j.wanless@kent.ac.uk!

Details and tickets about the evening concert can be found online here: prepare to be transported to the shores of Orkney as Fara’s latest tour comes to the campus.

Here’s a clip of the group in action.

Find out more about Fara.

Image credit: Fara

The University of Kent Players are proud to present Arnold Ridley’s ‘The Ghost Train’ this April.

The University of Kent Players was founded in 2013 by Neil Hornsey and made up of staff at Kent who love the theatre.

The plot revolves around a party of assorted railway travellers who find themselves stranded in the waiting room of an isolated country station in the evening. Despite the stationmaster’s weird stories of a ghost train, they decide to stay the night in the waiting room. Soon they regret this decision as ghostly and not so ghostly apparitions materialise, before a young man reveals the true reason behind the night’s events.

The play will be performed on the 12 -14 April at the Gulbenkian and tickets can be booked online.

All profits made from tickets sales and programme sales will go to Canterbury and Coastal Stroke Association

SMFA’s Adam Chodzko, Senior Lecturer in Fine Art, is adjudicating The ARTiculation Prize South East Regional Finals at Quarterhouse, Folkestone on 31 January.

The ARTiculation Prize is a nationally acclaimed annual event designed to promote the appreciation and discussion of art and encourages students aged between 16 -19 in full-time further education, to express their opinions and thoughts via a ten minute presentation to an interested audience about a work of art, artefact or architecture of their choice. Adjudicators are asked to assess each presentation as a whole, looking at content, structure, delivery and the speaker’s original approach and unique potential. In 2018 nine Regional Finals will be held across the country.

Adjudicators will select a first, second and third prize winner in each Regional Final, who will each receive book prizes sponsored by Laurence King Publishers. The first prize speaker from each Regional Final will go on to give their talk at the ARTiculation Grand Final on Friday 9 March 2018 at Clare College, University of Cambridge. Winning 2018 Finalists will be awarded 1st Prize £300, 2nd Prize £200, 3rd Prize £100. All ARTiculation Finalists will receive one year’s free membership to The Art Fund to include an Art Pass and a year’s membership to the Friends of The Roche Court Educational Trust.

More info here http://rochecourteducationaltrust.co.uk/articulation-prize/?platform=hootsuite

Two-weekend short CPD course for multi-professional healthcare workers on Introduction to Evaluation within Professional Context will take place in February/March.

The course will commence with consideration of a key question “what is the difference between evaluation and research” by way of an introduction to evaluative approaches in health services and how evaluation can take into account the complexity of health services.

Dates:

• Friday 16 – Saturday 17 February 2018, 09.00-17.00 and
• Friday 23 – Saturday 24 March 2018, 09.00-17.00.

The course is delivered by the University of Kent’s Centre for Professional Practice (CPP), based at Medway Building, Chatham Maritime, Medway, ME4 4AG.

The course will take into consideration the contexts and potential areas of conflict when conducting evaluation in health care settings through a session on the politics of evaluation, this will be followed by topics on:

• Different approaches to evaluation within implementation science
• Putting evaluation to practice

On successful completion of the course, you will be able to:

• Demonstrate knowledge of the differences between different evaluative approaches.
• Competently choose between the different evaluation approaches in an informed way.
• Apply an understanding of a variety of approaches to evaluate professionally relevant interventions and to ascertain impact of professionally based interventions.

The course is delivered by Dr Ferhana Hashem and Professor Patricia Wilson.

For more info and how to book, see the CPP short course webpages.

Flexible, part-time postgraduate and undergraduate programmes offered by the Centre build on your professional knowledge and skills, underpinning them with theories and research in the areas of evidence-based practice, learning and development.

The OPERA (Opportunity, Productivity, Engagement, Reducing barriers, Achievement) project, initiated by our Student Services department, seeks to embed a more inclusive approach to the way that we design and deliver information experiences at Kent.

Working in partnership with Jisc we adopted a different approach to removing barriers. Alistair McNaught from Jisc uses the analogy that a typical response to disabled students is to give them a ladder to get over barriers whereas we wanted to work on removing the barriers so that our students don’t need ladders.

The partnership with Jisc has afforded Kent the opportunity to refine, tailor and develop existing methodologies, confident that they reflect good practice derived from Jisc’s many years of leading inclusion initiatives.

Through the OPERA project we have demonstrated that we are an institution that values inclusivity through dedicated resource and the ability to assimilate inclusive practices into administrative and learning and teaching processes. The impact of the project is being seen in inclusive curriculum design, procurement, library resources, harnessing assistive technologies as productivity tools, web design, estates, hospitality, module and programme specification and a more pervasive inclusive mind-set.

The videos are available on the University of Kent OPERA project webpages.

Are you interested in starting your own business?

There is still time to book your place on our free Business Start-Up Workshops in conjunction with Study Plus and the Hub for Innovation and Enterprise at the Medway campus.

The workshops have been structured so that all students who are interested in freelancing or being self-employed can feel confident that they’ll walk away with valuable information. By the end of this course, students should be able to:

• Pitch a business idea
• Understand the finances, legalities and processes for starting up a business
• Identify a suitable structure for a business plan
• Generate a business idea
• Test a business idea
• Develop marketing research
• Understand sales processes
• Pricing
• Plan cash flow
• Know tax, insurance and VAT requirements
• Understand the elements of a business plan

To book your place on the course, click here.

For more information, visit the Study Plus website.

Colleagues are invited to attend the Learning and Teaching Network session titled ‘Working with and understanding international students’ on Wednesday 28 February 13.15-14.30 in Sibson Seminar Room 2, Canterbury.

Presented by Angela Koch, Student Learning Advisor, Student Learning Advisory Service, UELT and Charlene Earl, International Pathways Manager, Centre for English and World Languages.

Students’ differences provide a valuable setting where opportunities for learning, exchanging and reflection multiply. For this to happen activities and resources need to be designed in a way that engages students’ prior knowledge and skills, whether the intent is to build on that knowledge, to unpack it, or to encourage new ways of thinking and communicating.

Colleagues from SLAS and CEWL will share their experience and current practice of working with international students and will introduce some of the programmes and resources currently available to support them. There will be opportunities for reflection and discussion of possible ideas and instructional strategies to support inclusive teaching practices benefiting both international and home students alike.

All staff are welcome to attend, particularly those working with international students.

To book a place, please email cpdbookings@kent.ac.uk