Last month, CHANGE Festival took place on campus at the Warwick Arts Centre. This new, not-for-profit arts festival featuring over 20 events brought together shows, talks, comedy, and workshops, with the aim to inspire visitors to imagine a better, more positive future for all. Better food. Better homes. Better communities. Better lives for ourselves and generations to come.

One of the festival workshops was led by Dr Kirsten Harris, a Senior Teaching Fellow in the Liberal Arts Department. Kirsten's workshop, Utopias: Writing for Better Futures, encouraged visitors to think about how fictional visions of alternate or future societies can offer hope and drive change.

Are you interested in going beyond what you're being taught in your workshops, seminars, and lectures? Carrying out research can lead you to look at and even answer questions that potentially no one else has addressed before you. Not only can research help you to become more engaged with your subject, it can also help you to develop professionally, adding self-education, patience, and organisational and people skills to your capabilities.

Applications for the British Conference of Undergraduate Research and Warwick's Undergraduate Research Support Scheme are now open. These are your opportunities to share your research, engage with other students' work and discuss new ideas.

^{Kayamandi township; Image credit: Lily Rose Pace, Warwick in Africa Student Volunteer 2018}

Are you interested in using education as a tool to make a sustainable difference? As a Warwick student, you have the opportunity to volunteer for The Warwick Laksh Programme and the Warwick in Africa programme, which aim to help learners achieve more by creating a long-lasting impact within the partnership schools involved.

Application for the 2020 Warwick Laksh Programme is now open (exact dates of placements to be confirmed). A Learn About Laksh event is being held on Wednesday 30 October 2019 from 1pm-2pm in the Social Sciences Building, Room S0.18, where you can find out more about the programme, how to apply and be inspired to make a difference. The deadline for applications is Friday 6 December 2019.

Applications for Warwick in Africa's Summer 2020 programme (exact dates of placements to be confirmed) will open on Monday 4 November 2019. The deadline for applications is Sunday 12 January 2020.

Established in 2006, the Warwick in Africa programme is underpinned by the belief that enhancing education in Africa is a direct route to liberation from poverty. One of the ways that Warwick works in partnership with schools in Africa is to support a volunteer teacher programme. Volunteer teachers are selected from Warwick's best students, alumni and corporate partners, and are hosted by a school in Africa for a 4-6 week placement. Volunteer teachers work alongside local teachers in their classrooms, sharing good practice and supporting each other to try out new ideas. This summer, one of our final year students, Virág Bélavári, who is studying a Sustainable Development and Education Policy Pathway on her degree, spent 6 weeks teaching English in a rural secondary school in Mtwara, Tanzania.