Highlights and interviews from The University of Birmingham Community Day which took place in June 2010, demonstrating the ways in which The University is part of the wider community.
Title Community Day
Duration: 2.43 mins
Speaker Names (if given):
S1 Kirsty Mack – Head of Stakeholder Relations and Events
S2 Alison Darby – Curator of Winterbourne House and Gardens
S3 Helen Moulden – Research Associate, Visual and Spatial Technology Centre
S4 Young visitor
S5 Dr Somak Raychaudhury – Senior Lecturer in Astrophysics
S1 We’re having the community day to open up the campus to the local people so that they can really get a sense of what happens at the University, both in terms of our research, how that impacts them, as well as the wider public in the UK. And also to let them know that there are facilities here that they can use – the sports centre, the Barber Institute, Winterbourne Gardens – and really to plug the message that this is their university and that they’re welcome to come onto campus, it’s not private and to use it as much as they can. I think the more involved the community are in the University, the better it will be for everybody.
S2 Since we’ve re-opened, we’ve been able to invite the public in for the first time; they were never allowed in the house before; so we’ve got a brand new visitor attraction for people to come and see. It’s been great actually. People are really pleased to see the house and see all the Edwardian rooms and see the house as it would have been when the family lived here.
S3 We’ve been showing off the Eton Myers Collection, which is actually a series of models based on a collection that’s housed at Eton. There’s 3,000 objects there in total, which haven’t been seen since about 1898. The idea is to scan these items, put them up online so that people can download them. People are fascinated. I don’t think people realise that this area of archaeology existed. The numbers that we’ve had have been fantastic and it’s been non-stop; I’ve been talking all day!
S4 Well I like the bit about the hot and cold, the science of hot and cold. The super-conductors which is kind of like a mirror magnet. What was great fun was the liquid nitrogen there.
S5 I think this should be done more often and it brings in the community within the University. There are facilities here, as well as the resources – human and otherwise – which the local community can participate in and they themselves think that is very very important.
END OF RECORDING