Tag Archives: Campus online

Crowdfunding@Kent – Build the crowd!

One of the stand out events in Freshers Week this year was the much anticipated launch of the University’s new crowdfunding platform , CrowdFunding@Kent

A joint project between Kent Union and The Development Office, Crowdfunding@Kent provides a vehicle for small student projects to be funded throughout the year. The best projects could even receive match-funding up to £1000.

Students, groups and societies are invited to apply online. The most exciting and best supported projects will be first in the queue to try their hand at crowdfunding.

A test project run through the platform earlier this year called The Green Room – From Tree to Building successfully raised more than £6,000 to construct a teaching and social space using timbers cut from campus woodlands.

For further information email crowdfunding@kent.ac.uk or download an application form.

Public consultation on Campus Masterplan

A public consultation on our Campus Masterplan takes place in October. We’ll share our vision for the future evolution of the campus to best meet the needs of the University and of the wider city and region.

The Framework Masterplan proposals detail the framework within which we will make decisions on the future development of our estate in the short-term (2018 to 2021) and medium-term (2021 to 2031), covering the period defined within Canterbury City Council’s District Local Plan.

This latest version of the Masterplan takes into account the feedback that staff, students, local amenity groups and residents provided during the initial stages of consultation in 2016 and 2017.

We learned a lot from that feedback and we now invite you to share your views on the Framework Masterplan by attending our consultation events. They take place as follows:

Saturday 6 October 2018, 10.00-16.00 at Westgate Hall, Canterbury
Thursday 11 October 2018, 14.00-20.00 at Tyler Hill Memorial Hall
Friday 12 October 2018, 14.00-20.00 at Blean Village Hall
Thursday 18 October 2018, 10.00-16.00 Darwin Conference Suite, Canterbury campus

Our response to the views you express during this stage of the consultation will be published in a Consultation Statement later this year. This will feed into the final stages of development of the Framework Masterplan document, which will be presented to Canterbury City Council at the end of the year.

More information about the Masterplan and copies of previous consultation statements are available on our Masterplan web pages.

Studio 3 gallery hosts exhibition on revolution

The School of Arts is hosting a new exhibition, Beyond the Barricade, in the Studio 3 Gallery in the Jarman Building from 28 September 2018.

Based on the spirit of the French Revolution, the exhibition brings artists from various nations together to look at different dimensions of revolutions. By documenting past upheavals and recent events, the exhibition aims to present artistic creation as a form of social and political action.

Beyond the Barricade has been supported by the nationally funded project, the Age of Revolution, in partnership with Waterloo 200. The exhibition will run until 30 November 2018.

The Studio 3 Gallery is the School’s dedicated exhibition space which plays host to major exhibitions and annual shows that are open to the public.

CMAT forms Music Academic Partnership with UK Music

The University of Kent’s Centre for Music and Audio Technology has formed a Music Academic Partnership (MAP) with UK Music.

MAP is a ground-breaking collaboration between a select number of educational institutions and UK Music, a campaigning and lobbying group which represents every part of the recorded and live music industry from artists, musicians, songwriters, composers, record labels, publishers, producers and music licensing groups.

Academic members, who must be invited to become a part of MAP, benefit from this membership with a number of initiatives that include exclusive networking, collaborative research, a parliamentary programme, rehearsal spaces, and a range of student opportunities, including the BBC Introducing Pilot, MAP Music Technology Prize and access to exclusive Production Days and industry showcases.

This partnership is the latest example of CMAT’s excellent links to the music industry and commitment to the employability of its students. CMAT works with leading music bodies across the industry, including the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers, and Authors (BASCA), the Music Managers Forum and the Council for Music Makers.

Mathilde Poizat-Amar delivers Think Kent lecture on travel writing

Dr Mathilde Poizat-Amar, Lecturer in French in the Department of Modern Languages, has given an online lecture entitled ‘Why is Travel Literature so Interesting?’ for the University’s Think Kent series, which is now available on YouTube.

In a globalised and increasingly connected world where we can collect information about unknown places without having to open a book, travel literature could easily pass for an endangered species in the literary landscape. Yet, despite the concurrence of Internet and the ever-growing importance of major literary genres (such as the novel or the autobiography), travel literature stands the test of time – both in terms of popularity and critical importance.

Mathilde’s talk takes the case of modern and contemporary French Travel Literature to present a few reasons why travel literature is so resilient to change, and why studying travel literature matters more than ever. You can watch the full talk on YouTube.

The Think Kent lectures are a series of TED talk-style lectures produced with the intention of raising awareness of the research and teaching expertise of Kent academics and the international impact of their work.

Kent Sport Couch to 5K challenge

Think you can’t run? Surprise yourself!

Kent Sport is bringing you the Couch to 5K ‘I can go the distance’ challenge. It has been especially designed for people who have done little or no running.

In this 12-week plan, you will work on your running and by the final week you will be running for half an hour, or approximately 5K. You won’t be on your own as our enthusiastic staff will be with you every step of the way to help you achieve your target. This challenge builds in time and effort, so you’ll constantly be impressed with what you can do if you push yourself a little.

For this term, we will continue to have two sessions a week to support you in your goal to achieving the challenge. You are welcome to attend one or both of the sessions each week.

SESSION 1:

Starting on Monday 24 September, 17.10-18.00 – meet at Sports Centre reception – weekly for 12 weeks.

SESSION 2:

Starting on Wednesday 26 September, 12.10-13.00 – meet at Sports Centre reception – weekly for 12 weeks.

Please note the 50-minute sessions include warm up, cool down, stretches and you therefore won’t be active for the full 50 minutes. There’s no need to register, just turn up and meet at the Sports Centre Reception and we will welcome you. Comfy clothing and footwear are advisable.

The sessions are free for Gold and Silver members, or you join Kent Sport for £5 with Bronze membership and pay £2 per session.

‘I wanted to say a big thank you for your support and motivation to achieve the 5k on Monday evening. I am not just saying it but I sincerely believe I wouldn’t have done it otherwise!’ – Past participant.

Questions about the challenge can be directed to sportsdevelopment@kent.ac.uk and membership enquiries to memberships@kent.ac.uk.

Staff feedback complete on training and appraisal (RPD) functions in Staff Connect

You will soon be able to book Learning and Organisational Development training and record your appraisal (RPD) through Staff Connect, the same system that is used for HR and payroll.

In August, staff interested in seeing how these new elements of Staff Connect will work, attended user testing and training sessions and provided feedback on the system. The Staff Connect project team have been using this feedback to make improvements to the system and to update user guides before these new elements go live.

The Stakeholder Engagement Group has also met to provide feedback on the project. This group includes members from academic schools, faculties, professional services departments and unions to ensure all University of Kent staff are represented.

For more information please visit the Staff Connect website or contact staffconnect@kent.ac.uk

Wain Medal Lecture- 10 October

The theme of this year’s Wain Medal Lecture is Coming Up for Air: How Plants Sense and Respond to Floods.

The lecture will be given by Dr Emily Flashman, Department of Chemistry, from the University of Oxford, on Wednesday 10 October from 17.00 in Woolf College.

The lecture will focus on how plants regulate flood-survival responses and how her lab has uncovered the key role of the Plant Cysteine Oxidases.

Dr Flashman will talk about the potential for improving flood tolerance by manipulating these responses and will present her group’s recent structural and functional work which aims to find ways to genetically modify the Plant Cysteine Oxidases as a way to achieve this.

The University of Kent established an annual Wain Medal Lecture and Award as a result of a generous endowment from the family of the late Professor Louis Wain CBE, FRS.

Admission to the lecture is free and open to all.

Professor Read co-organises International Conference in Turin

Professor Peter Read is co-organising an International Conference, Métamorphoses d’Apollinaire, this autumn at the University of Turin and the Museum of Modern Art, Turin. The conference, running on 22-23 October 2018, marks the centenary of the death of French war-poet and art critic Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) and will bring together speakers from France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Switzerland, UK and USA.

The conference will also include the opening of an exhibition on Picasso and his circle at Turin’s Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art and a professional performance of Apollinaire’s “surrealist drama” The Breasts of Tiresias, first published in 1918, at Turin’s Teatro Stabile. Peter is co-organising the conference with Professor Franca Bruera (University of Turin) and Professor Laurence Campa (University of Paris X-Nanterre). The conference is co-sponsored by the Centre for Modern European Literature, University of Kent.

Peter Read and Picasso in Paris

Professor Peter Read is giving two public lectures at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris to accompany the exhibition “Picasso Bleu et rose” (Picasso Blue and Pink), which will run from 18 September 2018 to 6 January 2019 and include 240 works of art. Peter’s first talk, on Picasso and the Circus, will be at 3pm on Saturday 13 October in the restored “fumoir”, or Smoking Room, of the museum, which is a former railway station and hotel, opened in 1900. Peter’s talk is part of the “Picasso Circus Weekend” taking place in the museum that Saturday and Sunday, with a big top in the nave of the building and performances by trapeze artists and an “extreme dance” company from New York. Peter’s second talk, at 12 noon on Friday 2nd December, in the Musée d’Orsay’s lecture theatre, will be on representations of Paris in Picasso’s work during his early years in the city, from 1900 to 1906.

Peter Read has also contributed several texts to the catalogue of the Cubism exhibition opening at the Centre Pompidou in Paris on 17 October, and has contributed to a Dictionnaire du cubisme being published to accompany that exhibition.