"Lockdown diaries week eight and thank you all so much for a tremendous amount of stuff that you've all been sending in to me over the course of the last few days with lots of things, lots of things going on and amazing bursts of creativity out there and I think one of the centres of creativity is the Clinical Trials Unit who keep sending in amazing things. So Kerry this week sent in this YouTube of a composition to the tune of Ticket to Ride and it is called Bag of Plain Flour and there's no way I can do it justice at all, we'll have to get it out there on social media because you'll just have to see it because it is just completely amazing and really, I don't know about you, but I've been sent up a few times for a bag of flour and I've been struggling I must say.

Sally in Warwick Conferences doing that fantastic work of making scrubs for the NHS, I know lots of you are doing this at the moment and it's fantastic, wonderful work and powerful. I know you were trying to make some connections, hopefully you have now for the team that you're working with as well in terms of some of that work. We've also got little bits of campus reopening and I emphasise ‘little bits’ please, little bits, so despite all the announcements recently we're not having a change in the way that we're operating as a campus, we're going to slowly plan how we build our way back. No need to rush back, whatever you're doing for the last couple of weeks that's what we need to be doing for the next couple of weeks, whether it's working from home, whether it's coming in if you're a key worker (but a key worker only), or whether you're on furlough, everything just stays the same just for a moment as we work our way through because there are one or two things which are really important. I particularly want to say ‘thank you’ to the team in WMG, of the 3D scanning team who've reopened their work supporting West Midlands Police in homicide investigation, so a particular shout out to Val and to Jason - thank you for the fantastic work that you're doing in that context.

Actually, there's one particular group of people I wanted to just focus on this week, there's an excuse for doing it and the excuse for doing it is the Research England Talent Program which is all about giving support for technicians and we've got one of the biggest programmes going in the country and we've got our technicians doing lots of fantastic things. I think I said last week about a team of technicians - on furlough - who were volunteering, helping companies in the supply chain in the ventilator challenge and I know we've got lots of colleagues, technicians, on furlough doing lots of volunteering work but we've also got technicians at home, making materials to help our students and we've also got technicians coming in, helping some of the research work that is still going on, on campus, to support the work to defeat Covid-19. Of course those researchers, they're so incredibly important, to help those research teams, to be part of those research teams making the samples right protecting them, opening buildings, looking after the equipment - all the things that really need to be done, collecting of course, the PPE as well and making sure the whole system works well. So, for our technicians community, thank you all so much for everything you're doing in lots of different ways at the moment.

Also other people been writing. Thank you to Matt from Estates who wrote me a brilliant message and he's doing fantastic work shielding his mum I know loads of you are doing wonderful work shielding people, helping to support people who are vulnerable for whatever health reason might be going on and sent me a brilliant photograph - thanks very much Matt. Nicola sent me a great email which basically said “Look Stuart, I want a shout out; I want my name on one of these”, so here it is Nicola - this is for you! And then perhaps I would say something about Donna, Donna writes a few times as well, Donna sent a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant yet again at YouTube of a choir and this time the choir is singing Don't Give Up On Me and it is absolutely brilliant and then the way in which everybody synchronizes in separate places is really, really wonderful.

Richard in Estates – you may well have seen some of the Estates videos, it's fantastic work - has sent a really, really fantastic - technically fantastic as well as really interesting - video just looking at the life of Estates and some shots of the campus at the moment. And I wanted to say ‘thank you’ to Tina who wrote to say that she's one of the people who've been selected through the Office for National Statistics to do some work taking samples and a few of you might have got this at the moment because there is this big programme where people are being contacted and asked to give samples so that the researchers can work out where this virus is across the population as a whole, and you may have seen some press about it and this really important work and if you've been asked and you're able to do it, thank you so much, that's really important work as well.

Caroline, I won't say where you're from because I want to say something that you said to me and I don't want to reveal anybody's identity, but Caroline originally started volunteering for a Crisis Action project and then has now moved into a co-leadership position which is a wonderful thing.

And she told me a story - I won't say the detail because as I say, I don't want people to be able to be identified - of somebody just absolutely desperately, desperately in need and had been needful for a long time and that story in the way you told me Caroline really, really brought home just how many people we have in our community who really need help and support at the moment and how fantastic it is that so many people are reaching out to do it. I know not everyone can and I think it's really important that we think of ourselves, our community, as a team. At this point for some people in their working lives and their personal lives they’re able to reach out and do fantastic volunteering work and others you aren't - perhaps you've become a parent teacher at the moment, perhaps other things are going on in your life, that's fine - it's about what we do together to make this place of ours better.

In that context, a couple of things about kids. So firstly, our Vice Chair of Council, Anita, has become a grandmother and her little granddaughter Amma was born just recently and Anita I know you were absolutely made up with this beautiful little treasure. Amma is such a beautiful name; it means in Sanskrit, I must get this the right way round, in Sanskrit it means food, and in many Native American languages it means water – what a fantastic combination that is. And then Sam, Sam wrote me a brilliant email of that special moment when his 11 month old Sebastian started to walk for the first time and many of you will have had that fantastic experience and Sam was at home to see that first wonderful moment and it's really, really a special thing. Sebastian's birthday is very soon, I've forgotten whether it's this week or next week - I'm so sorry! - but have a great birthday party when you do that.

Roberta sent a fantastic series of things from the Student Opportunity team about all the volunteering, all the fantastic work, all the projects that are really going on and when you see something like that in a newsletter form, again it gives you a real feeling of the tremendous variety, volume and commitment of so many of our staff and colleagues and students at the moment. And then Anna, Anna wrote me a lovely note about what it's like to work at home but also little bit about her garden and I have to confess that I have found myself in our garden more in the last few weeks than probably the last few years and yes I've caught a little bit of sun over the course of the last few weeks. These lovely long nights means I'd go out and do various things and actually really appreciate the garden and nature more than probably I have done for quite a long time.

I want to leave you with one thing, one thought that I really want to get your advice on. You see this week a number of people wrote different ideas about how they want to sort of mark this time that we’re in, so Paul who writes to me several times, Paul wrote that he was thinking about writing something like a book about some of the walks he's doing at the moment and how that feels and what's going on and Marsha wrote and said that she's going to write a letter and the letter is going to be put away in a sort of time capsule for people to look at later. I think it's VE Day that has put a lot of this into our minds. This is a very extraordinary moment in our history, and people will be looking back at this moment in the future to wonder ‘what was it like?’ and ‘how did we get through it?’ So, what about we all do something - we all write something or we take some photographs. What about people write, say, 300 words and a photograph or if you don't want to write something send me three or four photographs and just say what they are and when they were or something creative. You know let's definitely have Bag of Plain Flour song in there somewhere or something else that you're doing and let's see if we can collect them all together because at the moment I've asked you to share things with me and you have and it's brilliant. Some we've shared more broadly but there’s such fantastic stuff there I'd love to create a sort of online book for want of a better word where people would just share how they felt. My initial thought was we could try to divide it into say ten different areas. So there's lots of stuff that people saying about fun, fun things you're doing. I remember a couple of weeks ago and the Zoom pizza-making competition, everyone in their kitchen trying to make pizza at the same time. What kind of fun things are we doing and if you already sent me something like this send it again if you want it to go into this collection that we're going to then share, put online and share not just for our community in Warwick, but our community more broadly across the city and across the county. Fun.

Faith, now faith is really important to people obviously but it's had a particular resonance at this time perhaps especially because Easter, Ramadan taking place at times where you can't express your faith collectively in the way that people really want to do and are used to doing, so something on faith.

Work, of course, people are still working so what is that feeling like? What is work like at the moment? Whether you’re a key worker going in or whether you're working at home.

Fourth, creative - just creative stuff you're doing whether it be creative things from your kids creative things you've done, Donna - the stuff you got together with a choir, fantastic - let's get some stuff like that in there.

Fifth, worries. Let's tell the truth, we are all worried in some way, we're all anxious, don't know what's going to happen next, don’t know what's going to happen next for us, for our families, for our region, for our country, for the world. It's a sunny day where I'm recording this today so the worries don't feel quite as sharp as sometimes they do but how are you coping with that? What does that feel like? What do we want to share about worries?

Sixth, so we've got to have stuff about nature and animals because there's so much stuff coming in about nature and animals. Animals of course includes pets - any stuff you want to put in there will be fantastic and great.

Food! All this effort people are going into to make things, to make food, to get that flour and bake! Let's have some stuff about your food - experiences and maybe experiments.

Exercise or maybe the lack thereof. What are we doing? How we are we trying to get exercise? Not just how many steps have you got (by the way, in the Walk the World challenge I got up to eighth).

And I think the last two are obvious ones. Volunteering, all that fantastic stuff that people do about volunteering, and finally last, but of course by no means least, our NHS.

So many of you are either working in the NHS or your partners are working in the NHS or have been so inspired by getting out on a Thursday and applauding and cheering for our NHS that community feel. What are your reflections on our NHS?

So we might change these 10 categories, we need to get them together and think about it but let’s kind of collect things. And one other thing, so I'm very happy to curate this and talk to you about where it might fit and how it might all go together but I'm not, shall we say, the most technologically able person in the world so some of you out there, you're brilliantly skilled at how we might put this material together, how we might put it online, how people might be able to access it more easily. If you'd like to volunteer to be part of the team that helps put this together, just get in touch. Just get in touch and we'll get that team together.

And we’ll start building over several weeks because I think we're going to be involved in this sort of lifestyle for several weeks to come. We'll start building, curating that project of lockdown life for us as a community in 2020.

Finally, finally, finally VE Day. I hope VE day was fantastic for you because I have been just overwhelmed by so much wonderful, wonderful stories, pictures and everything else that's been going on. Val - thank you for the pictures. Denise gets a shout out again - Denise's other half Nick built a tank and drove it down the street! I hope there was no ammunition but he actually drove a tank down the street. Some of you may have seen the coverage of this in the local press absolutely fantastic stuff and then the street parties and all the rest of it. Here, we had a socially-distanced VE Day street party with lots of singing, not so great actually - the social distancing didn't really work out tremendously well - I think we've got to practice that a lot more, but there were a good few drinks so that was really very good indeed and I hope you had a fantastic VE day wherever you were and I hope you were able to reach out and give virtual hugs to any members of that VE Day generation that are still in your family.

So thanks very much, do keep sending me stuff but now, start thinking ‘do I want to put this into the lockdown diaries work that we’re going to publish subsequently?’ and if you do, let me know and also, if you want to volunteer to be part of that team to put that together please let me know. Thanks very much. Have a good week, and I'll speak to you in a week's time."

Vice-Chancellor, Professor Stuart Croft