Watch the latest Community update from Stuart Croft, Vice-Chancellor, as we approach the start of the academic year 2020/21.

Transcript

"Welcome back! Welcome to community update number one - number one of our new academic year 2020-2021, and I think since the last time I was able to do one of these videos we've got a new kind of regularity in the way that we live. 

I've been to a whole series of shops - I don’t know about you, I've been to cafes, been to restaurants and - as long as you don't tell my mum - I've been in a few pubs as well. And today I'm back in the office for the first time for 163 days. I cannot believe it is 163 days - my mind still goes back to 4:50pm on that Friday afternoon as we were closing down most of the University, and I said to people as I left that I don’t know how long we’ll be away, but I never thought it would be for 163 days. 

I also remember the stress of that weekend in the middle of March because we had closed down - if you remember we’d taken the decision a week before Boris said the country is going to. I remember that weekend before Boris spoke on the Monday, just thinking ‘what if he but if he doesn't move the country to lockdown - what do we what do we do then?’ All that now seems like quite a long time ago, and we’ve all had a summer, and we've all had an opportunity, I think, to get used to this new regular, and I'm going to come back. 

Now I know that a lot of people have been working throughout this whole period on campus and they've done a brilliant job, and what I’ve done is I’ve been out and about today around campus, and just had a look at a few things - the wonderful things that are going on and we thought we might just try and show you a few of those now.  

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So it’s great to be back on campus and it's amazing how much has been going on. I mean I know there's a lot of colleagues who have been coming and you've seen it sort of day in and day out through all the changes. But it's looking beautiful and for those of us who have been working for home, and colleagues on furlough you're going to be really surprised when you see what's going on and it's looking beautiful. 

You could probably see those lovely flowers behind me around the Arts Centre and everything is looking a real picture, but the reason I've stopped here is I just want to spin around here – hope I’m not making you feel too sick when I do this – the Faculty of Arts building isn’t that amazing, such a fantastic sight to see that going up in that sort of way. But the IBRB building on Gibbet Hill is going up fantastically well, and our colleagues in the building trade have been going and going and going through this period of time and we are definitely the beneficiaries of that.

So as I say campus is looking absolutely lovely. I have spotted a few weeds in the path, so I'm going to be making a little note of where we need a little bit of work there, but across the piece absolutely fantastic. Typically I've just walked over from University House, and I've bumped into four or five people on the way and chatted so I'm a little bit late, but as soon as they come over of course the sun goes in doesn't it! But it has been beautifully, beautifully sunny all morning and of course as we all know campus looks even better when the sun is shining.  

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So one of the things you are going to see for those who haven't been back on campus for a while is a lot of new signage. If I can organise this correctly you can see these doors have got entries and exit, and there's loads of information set out inside. We've got sanitisers around, and there’s clearly a space where you put your mask on before you go in if you're not wearing your mask outside, and the whole of campus has been fitted out in this kind of way, so it's very clear signage is what to do, when to do and how to do it, and I just think as we get back it'll become second nature pretty quickly to be honest  

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I’ve wandered up to Gibbet Hill to just have a look at what's going on up here as well, I have just walked past the IBRB which is absolutely amazing and here if you just see behind me - this is the Test and Trace. So this is all opening soon. We've got Test and Trace facilities, with different areas for people to come in to be welcomed, to be tested, and this will be a really important part of everything we're doing to get campus reopened for when our students re-join us at the end of month. 

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So as you can see, if least a little bit, if you are still on furlough, if you're still working from home and you can see a little bit of all the enormous amount of work that's been going on to get campus ready for the start of our new academic year. 

I just want to say thank you to everybody who works so hard and is still working so hard to get campus into that position. What I've not been able to show you of course is all the sanitising or the various signs around the place - face coverings inside buildings unless you're sitting on your own a long way away from people (which is what I'm doing at the moment!) and the enormous numbers of physical layout changes to all of our offices, our meetings rooms, our teaching rooms all of which is going on, as I say, at the moment. 

How has Summer been? It’s been a strange time. I can't remember a time like this summer we've had. I've spent more time with family than I’ve spent for really quite a long time, and staycations are strange and sometimes wonderful things. 

I'm kind of building up to showing off really, because over that period of time I did quite a lot of walking, really quite a lot of walking. None of you will remember this, but at the very, very beginning of the community updates I said that I was going to try to do 10,000 steps a day. I was going to get fit - that's what I was going to do. And then I had the problem of walking on the carpet. As I walked on the carpet to do my steps the carpet started bobbling, and I wasn't very popular for making the carpet bobble. So then I started walking on the tiles on the kitchen. And then that got really quite uncomfortable as I was going around these small circles it made me feel sick. And then I started walking outside. And now I've done 2 and a half million steps since this lockdown period started and - you know the most amazing thing about it? I feel a lot better. It's an amazing thing you know, when people say exercise is a good thing it makes you feel better? It’s true. I can honestly promise you it's true. And I know a number of you have also been exercising more, doing many more things, just re-calibrating lives in different ways and as we go back to a fuller, more intense experience of the University as we get our students back, let’s try to protect those things too - those things that we really enjoyed and got benefit from, and made us feel better over this period of time. 

I did ask a few people what they'd done over the summer and I know quite a lot of you have done staycations. A few people seemed to get away, seemed to get away abroad - although it seems from what people are telling me to be quite a stressful experience you're abroad and you don't know if you have to rush back before the quarantine kicks in and quite a few people seem to get down to the South West. Do be in touch - tell me what you did and how the summer was for you. 

We’re in a really important week of course as well because it's back to school. And back to school is probably the most pivotal thing that's going to happen this year in terms of our country getting back and onto a new place where we're going to be able to work and live with and through this Covid period.  

If you got stories about kids back to school please let me know - get in touch I want to do another one of these community updates but I can only really do it if you would share with me, please, some of your stories, some of your images, some of the things that are going on. And in that context we are still working really hard on our online projects putting together life in lockdown. The team’s working brilliantly – we’ve got some news for you coming out very, very soon and that will give you a sense of how you can contribute as well to creating a record of how we as a community have lived and worked through 2020. 

Thanks for watching, looking forward to another one of these quite soon – probably won’t be every week but it will basically be when I've got enough stuff in so I can share with you what everyone is doing around the Warwick community. Thanks very much."

Stuart Croft

Vice-Chancellor

4 September 2020