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Creating Connections 2

By news editor, on 8 June 2012

John Braime, Volunteering Services Unit

What happens when you put a roomful of academics, postgrad students and other UCL staff together with people from London’s community and charity organisations?

In the spirit of curiosity, this is exactly what we did on 30 May at Creating Connections 2, held in the Roberts Building Foyer at UCL. The idea was to find new and unexpected areas for collaboration between UCL and local communities.

In a way, it was a bit like speed dating – with all of the uncertainty that that format entails. Could we find a happy match between a mathematician and a youth group, an archaeologist and a refugee charity, a librarian and staff at a nature reserve? We were determined to find out.

The event itself was the product of some creative connecting – between UCL’s Public Engagement Unit, the Volunteering Services Unit and local resource swapping network Camden Shares.

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Provost’s Awards for Public Engagement

By news editor, on 1 February 2012

The third annual Provost’s Awards for Public Engagement were held on 25 January. Ben Davies was there to applaud the winners.

Academia, it seems fair to say, can be a little inaccessible to those outside the loop. Accusations of academics operating with an ‘ivory tower’ mentality do seem increasingly unfair, but there is still an element of the mysterious about the whole endeavour; having studied Philosophy, one of the more mysterious subjects offered at university level, I know that a subject that fails to communicate will be seen as esoteric, perhaps even a waste of time.

This is not only a great shame when the truth is that academic research is of great relevance to the public, but is also damaging to universities themselves. More than ever, public engagement is vital to higher education.

The seriousness with which UCL treats its own public engagement, therefore, can only be a good thing. The awards ceremony was organised by the university’s Public Engagement Unit, which supports staff and students in communicating with the public in a constructive way, and whose staff were thanked by UCL President and Provost Malcolm Grant for “leading on public engagement for the institution as a whole”.

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Night of nearly 1,000 stars

By news editor, on 18 November 2011

Dr Martin Zaltz Austwick, (UCL Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis) recounts his experience of taking to the stage at the UCL Bloomsbury Theatre.

Last Friday, I was lucky enough to be small glimmer amongst a constellation of researchers as Bright Club: Stars took to the stage of the Bloomsbury Theatre. For the uninitiated, Bright Club was originated by Steve Cross at UCL, and is a night where researchers and academics perform ten-minute ‘sets’ about their work.

The spots have to be funny, engaging and entertaining – Bright Club is not a conference, and the sets aren’t lectures – so not for nothing has it been called “research stand-up”. Of course, a researcher doing mother-in-law gags would be no funnier than any other new comedian doing mother-in-law gags – what makes it come alive for me is the way the researchers instead create stories, jokes and explorations of their subjects, with all the passion and absurdity that comes with them. (more…)

The Bloomsbury Festival at UCL

By news editor, on 3 November 2011

UCL opened its doors to the local community and wider public on 22–23 October as part of the annual Bloomsbury Festival, which celebrates all things Bloomsbury, writes Dr Debbie Challis (UCL Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology).

The UCL Art Museum and Grant Museum of Zoology were open with family activities on Saturday. The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology was open all weekend and Saturday evening with Gothic Egypt, one of its themed trails, while UCL’s Open City Documentary showed King Tut documentaries on the big screen of the Darwin Lecture Theatre.

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