Summary

In February 2021, I was extremely grateful to be awarded £1500 by IATL to run a HEAR-accredited five-day online sprint training course which would lead to professional accreditation as a mediator for a mixed cohort of staff and students, with the wider ambition that this seed money would enable the establishment of a mediation service at Warwick to train and serve staff and students, and eventually the local community.

I am delighted to say that fewer than eight months later, Warwick Mediation was born.

Warwick Mediation offers accredited mediation training to Warwick staff and students to enable them to provide peer mediation to Warwick staff and students. Successful course participants would achieve nationally recognised accreditation from the Civil Mediation Council (CMC) enabling them to practice as mediators if they wish. Feedback on our training and our mediation service has been excellent. Our success has been shared widely at national and international conferences, leading to an international inter-institutional research project with a student mediation service in a university in India, the development of a community of practice with other mediation clinics in the UK and the participation of Warwick students in national and international (albeit virtual) mediation competitions. The training has now been given accreditation by the International Mediation Institute, which is particularly valuable to those who wish to have international recognition of their abilities as mediators.