The Staff Awards are a great opportunity to show appreciation of the hard work that goes on day to day, here at Warwick! Find out more about our award winners and nominees in our series of interviews, highlighting their roles and achievements.

Nicola Hunt, University Events Manager, External Affairs

Tell us a bit about your role:

My team organises and delivers events in support of university priorities, and VIP events for the Executive Office. For example, we recently supported a visit to campus by the Maltese President, and a bespoke honorary degree ceremony for film director Oliver Stone. Last year, we carried on with the “business as usual” events, alongside the ambitious 50th anniversary programme.

Congratulations on winning the Outstanding Contribution Award for your work on the 50th Anniversary. Tell us more about this project.

Thank you! I led on the 50th anniversary events and activities, which included the University’s partnership with the four Cheltenham Festivals, the Warwick Music Festival, the visit to campus by the Princess Royal, and the two-day Festival of the Imagination. I started work on the project in September 2013, which might sound like a long lead time, but it flew by! Christine Fearn (50th Project Officer) and Emily Little (Creative Producer) later joined me, and we worked together to engage the University in the plans. The Festival of the Imagination was the biggest undertaking, and the first event of its kind for Warwick – we had around 500 volunteers, over 100 speakers, more than 20 hands-on activities in the Discovery Zone, schools activities for 900 Year 6 pupils from local schools, and around 8,400 visitors over the 2 days. Looking back now it sounds a daunting prospect, and I almost can’t believe we did it, but at the time there was no time for fear!! Although a lot of very long hours and hard work went into it, I can honestly say it was all great fun and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

The Award highlights how you have gone above and beyond your role, what have been the key challenges of this project/event/activity?

Towards the end, the biggest issue was time! Everything built to a crescendo in October with our presence at Cheltenham Literature Festival, the campus visit by the Princess Royal, and the Festival of the Imagination all taking place within a 2 week period. I’ve never known a workload like it - the Events and 50th teams were all working late nights and weekends in the immediate run up. The emergency chocolate tin took a hammering in September/October 2015, for sure! We have a great team spirit in our team and everyone pitched in without any sense of humour failures. I consider myself very lucky to work with such committed and enthusiastic colleagues.

The Staff Awards are a great chance for the University to improve and learn from staff initiatives over the year. If you could change one thing at the University, what would it be?

I think we were ambitious and imaginative in the nature and scale of activities and events we held to celebrate the 50th anniversary. I hope we can continue to challenge ourselves by thinking big in the future.

A lot of staff and students took the time to nominate, if you had the chance what would you say to the people that nominated you for this award?

I’d just like to say thank you, I’m really humbled that someone thought of me and took the time to nominate me.

We hope you enjoyed the Staff Awards evening. Any highlights from the night?

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend the awards evening. It was great to hear from my team who were at the event when they found out that we had won the Public Engagement award, and a huge surprise to get the call later that I had won the Outstanding Contribution award. It was fitting that the team collected the award on my behalf – it’s for them as much as (if not more than) me.

Enjoyed reading about Nicola? Hear from some more award-winning colleagues…