The NewSPAper MARCH, 2017
PRODUCED BY BATH SPA UNIVERSITY CREATE LAB
Authors: Gemma Nicholls, Mieke Blaushild and Derron Gayle
STUDENTS’ VOICE THE TYPICAL student at Bath Spa University knows about the Students’ Union, however many are unaware of the impact it has on the university experience. The new President of the SU, Ryan Lucas and Welfare Officer, Joe Simmonds believe that without representatives like themselves, students wouldn’t have a chance to voice their opinions and be heard. Simmonds states that ‘the SU is run for and by the students – all that occurs in the SU is in the best interest of the students.’ Lucas believes that the Students’ Union has a great deal of impact. He describes himself as the ‘middle man’ between the governing body and the students. Lucas hopes to make the SU more approachable by highlighting the Union’s efforts and services. From the buddy system to the the new SU app, both Lucas and Simmonds have high hopes for what they can bring to students in the coming year. ‘It’s just about collating student opinions, and the SU is the way to do that.’ Simmonds says that his main focuses as Welfare Officer are mental health, river safety and housing. He goes to numerous meetings a week to make sure that all student problems and questions are put first. In regards to mental health, there is a new advice centre with a specialist counsellor three times a week in the SU, and he intends to expand the Nightline service. Simmonds also wants to implement a taxi service where students can give taxi drivers their ID and they can pay the fare back at a later date through the SU.
SIMMONDS (LEFT) AND LUCAS (RIGHT) Photo: Derron Gayle
CROCHET WORKSHOP AT SION HILL ∙ Authors: Honey Debney-Succoia, Jessie Parker and Hollie McKellar ∙ Photo: Emma Curtis
AWARD-WINNING TEXTILES TALENT Bath Spa student defies odds with wallpaper prize win in first year LUCINDA Rogers is a first-year Textiles student at Bath Spa University, who recently won the national Lewis and Wood Wide Width Wallpaper competition. Rogers studies at the Sion Hill campus where, as a first year, she is currently experimenting with many different forms of textiles. While we were chatting to Rogers, she was taking part in a crochet workshop, though her studies vary from digital embroidery to fabric dying to print. In early December, students nationwide received a brief from Lewis and Wood, a prestigious textile and wallpaper company, to create a wallpaper design. The competition is aimed at, and dominated by, third-year and MA students, but Rogers, a first year, didn’t let this intimidate her. Out of the 79 entries, only seven achieved the half-drop pattern repeat technique
the company was looking for. The works were judged by Deborah Barker, editor of Homes & Gardens; Adam Calkin, decorative artist; and Andrew Davidson, wood block engraver. Rogers was one of the seven and was shortlisted, before finding out her design had won. The traditional British landscapes that Rogers grew up around are a perfect match for Lewis and Wood’s nature-based style. Lucinda commented on the inspiration for her design: ‘It was inspired by home, in the Cotswolds. You know, like a typical English garden, with lots of roses and lavender. I took elements from lot of different things and then combined it together to make the final design.’ The process of creating the design had to be relatively quick, with the students being informed about the competition just before Christmas and the winning design announced in February. Rogers says that she gathered ideas over the Christmas break ready to begin creating when she returned
to University. She spent her first four weeks of term painting the design. She says: ‘It took forever to paint because it was massive, it’s huge! It had to be drawn out first as well before it could be painted, so it took a long time.’ Thankfully, she seemed to escape hiccups during the design process. She tells us: ‘I did a few sketches – rough drawings – and then I went for it and put it together and then it grew from there… literally!’ Rogers was in Paris on a University trip when she found out that she had won the competition. Her course leader announced the news to everyone, evidently proud of her student. Rogers commented that receiving the news was ‘a good end to the trip’. This left her with around a month to discuss further details with Lewis and Wood, such as the name for her design, Cinda’s Roses. Lucinda Rogers was invited to attend the launch of her wallpaper design on Monday 13 March, held at the Chelsea Harbour Design Centre in Stroud. ‘It was
really amazing. The experience was kind of surreal because I’ve never really done anything like that.’ She was given a bouquet of flowers and praised by the judges for her ‘notable drawing and colouring skills’, as well as for attempting such a complex half-drop repeat design. There are three other colourways for her design, in addition to the original navy pattern. Rogers’ winning designs were hung in the London showroom as part of London Design Week’s ‘Access All Areas’ programme, where a Wide Width Wallpaper demonstration took place, run by master decorator Stewart Lewis. Following her early success, Rogers plans to continue making a name for herself in the textile industry. When asked about her current plans, she told us: ‘I’m a first year, so we’re still doing different modules, we haven’t specified what we want to do. Though I definitely want to go into print.’ Rogers’ determination shows promise for a long and rewarding career.
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Enterprise
BETH WILLIAMS STRETCHES BOTH THE BODY AND THE MIND ∙ Authors and Photo: Emma Oliver, Divina Meigs and Mariah John-Leighton
DEGREES OF DANCE BSU STUDENTS PROMOTE THEIR EVENT ∙ Authors and Photo: Vicky Roe and Lauren True
OFF THE STREET Free food festival to be held at Green Park Station OFF THE Street is a free food and entertainment festival in Bath this May. Organised by six Business and Management students from Bath Spa University, the event aims to raise money for Julian House, a charity helping the homeless and socially excluded. The festival idea was inspired by the group’s diverse nationalities; the food stalls will offer a range of cuisines from Caribbean to Thai. There will be various performances throughout the evening, and an open mic, hosted by Green Park Station. In support of fellow students, the acts will include Bath Spa’s comedy club, cheerleading squad, and Latin and ballroom society. All proceeds go towards Julian House, which the team has seen making a positive difference in the area. Student Adrien Troy, who is overseeing the event’s organisation,
explained that the group asked themselves, ‘What are we witnessing that needs to be helped?’, and decided to target homelessness, which is so prominent in Bath. Entry to the event will be free, with the option to pay for food, and an open bar run by the Green Park Brasserie. Social media manager Gabriella was overwhelmed by the support of Bath’s major food stalls, telling us how ‘people have been very supportive and the event has received much more enthusiasm than we were expecting’. The team will continue to promote the event through their Facebook page and via a unique Snapchat filter in the area on the day. Other groups of students studying the same business module will be hosting fundraising events over the coming months, including a variety show at the university with poets, dancers and singers. Off the Street will run from 6–10pm on Saturday 13 May. Follow the event on Facebook: Off the Street @ Green Park Station.
Overcoming the barrier between hearing and non-hearing THE END of the school year is fast approaching, and with it deadlines for the creative students of Bath Spa University. For Beth Williams, a Creative Writing and Dance joint honours student in her third year, that means putting the final touches on her dissertation piece: a dance performance. Williams started choreographing her dissertation in January 2017, but the inspiration for her work came more than a year ago, when she became interested in the challenges the deaf face to communicate with the hearing world, and vice versa. Her research and exploration of the subject led her to this final step: the construction of a performance that both the deaf and the hearing can watch and enjoy. ‘The difficulty,’ Williams reflects, ‘was deciding what the message should be, and how to make sure both targets got the same message.’ She worked with both a deaf friend and Lilia Blood, a fellow Dance student at Bath Spa and her co-dancer, to work out the best way to communicate with the audience. Blood, who is still in her second year, commented: ‘It changed my understanding of communication, and it’s a great example of what I will need to do next year.’
Williams introduced movements from sign language, and worked on how to make those understandable to those who do not know it. She identified the biggest barriers of communication between the two communities, and tried to illustrate them through the movements of contemporary dance. Then, through a combination of light and sound, and a creative use of T-shirts, Williams choreographed a piece that reaches through the divide between the hearing and the deaf. The difficulties didn’t end there. It’s one thing to have a performance, but then you need an audience. ‘I had to learn to use Photoshop to make posters,’ Williams says. ‘It’s been quite the learning experience.’ Then she had to learn to coordinate with sound and light technicians, all Bath Spa students in their second and third years. She put the final touches during a rehearsal a week before the performance. She’s quite proud of the way it turned out. In the future, she hopes to be able to become a choreographer for films or TV. Blood wants to be a freelance artist, and eventually start her own dance company. Michelle Elliott, the head of Dance at Bath Spa, has first-hand experience in the industry and has been working in education for almost 20 years. She explained that this course is ‘not for the
faint-hearted’. Bath Spa University offers a Contemporary Dance course which is more focused on the performance and creativity aspect of dance, compared to other universities. The course has a unique range of specialised areas such as digital performance practice (where students learn how to use digital imagery and film to enhance their routines) and also semantic practice, which focuses on the relationship between the mind and the body. The course has an emphasis on employability, and each week a professional artist works with the students in order for them to understand the nature of the industry. Elliott explained that ‘students will have an exhausting day physically and then are expected to write an extensive essay.’ The course is ‘very intense both physically and intellectually,’ and students are expected to spend at least 22 hours in lectures and seminars, as well as fitting in time for practice and rehearsals. She also explained that since 2008 ‘the course has evolved over the years; there is now a stronger emphasis on working with professional artists and also on physical training.’ If you are interested, Williams and Blood’s performance, called Communication Breakdown, can be seen for free at Bath Spa University Theatre on Wednesday 29 March at 4.30pm.
Spaces
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GREEN PARK HOUSE IN THE CENTRE OF BATH ∙ Authors: Rebekah Crook, Alysha Dahlgren and Paige Mackie ∙ Photo: Paige Mackie
A WIN FOR BATH SPA University celebrates award-winning accommodation STUDENT accommodation has always been synonymous with dirty kitchens, smelly housemates and buildings that can’t seem to keep it together. However, after recently winning one award and being shortlisted for another, Bath Spa University is shown to be defying this stereotype. Ben Knight, Student Accommodation Administrator at Bath Spa, won a prestigious award for his dedication to the housing team. The ACUHO-I New Professional Award is an international prize, recognising his dedication to making the accommodation at Bath Spa both comfortable and enjoyable. Ben himself is a Bath Spa graduate, studying music between 2012 and 2015. With his strong positive energy and passion for the university and its accommodation, it’s unsurprising that he won this fantastic award. His prize is a fullyfunded trip to Rhode Island where the ACUHO-I annual conference takes place in June. There he can celebrate his win and continue to progress the accommodation opportunities at Bath Spa by creating international connections. Bath Spa’s off-campus accommodation, Green Park, has also been shortlisted for the CUBO
awards 2017 for best student housing. First-year student Paige, who currently lives in Green Park, commented that it ‘offers quite a lot for the money in terms of space, style and location. I think it’s great to offer uni accommodation so central for those who like being in the city, and there is also a higher price range for those who can afford it.’ Paige also mentioned that while it has its positives, she felt Green Park didn’t offer enough on-site events. This was a comment which Bath Spa Student Accommodation Adviser, Dylan Spicer, took on board and agreed needed looking at. One of the best things about Bath Spa’s accommodation is the variety it offers, ranging from shared rooms to studios with pricing from under £100 to over £200. There is also housing designed to be accessible, meaning every student can have the education they want and with approximately 2,100 bed spaces, there isn’t a lack of space either. Dylan Spicer believes that Bath Spa’s accommodation is truly unique. He commented, ‘I don’t know of any other university that has such a mix of on and offcampus sites. It’s really great.’ As over half of the housing staff were Bath Spa students themselves and lived in the accommodation available today, they are full of knowledge, experience and sentiment for the university.
As every student will know, money is the most daunting part of the university experience. As students ourselves we wanted to know what the accommodation team were doing to keep costs as affordable as possible. Dylan admitted that while prices may seem much higher than the private sector, the university justifies this by staffing every building with people to keep it clean, safe and of a high living quality. Bath Spa does try and keep the prices down without sacrificing the wages of the staff who work here or the quality of the accommodation, and regularly check the prices against other universities to make sure students are getting a good deal. It has also introduced shorter or longer contracts to help students get the most out of their accommodation. The university celebrates diversity in all forms which it reflects in the wide range of housing. It’s no surprise Bath Spa’s accommodation is winning awards.
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PHOTOGRAPHY AND PAINT BY ANNA KENNEALLY∙ Authors: Peri Trott, Charlotte Cooper and Katie Goss-Jones
WALL SPACE A brief encounter with Fine Art students at Sion Hill WALL Space is a group of five thirdyear Fine Art students who met in their first year. As a group they often battled against the lack of wall space, which inspired the name. They have worked collaboratively each year since, displaying their work together. They like to bounce ideas off each other as a chance for creation and exploring the nature of art and paint. Their current exhibition is showing at the Sion Hill gallery space for 10 days (21 March–1 April), with a few days set aside for each artist to showcase their work independently. The Wall Space artists are all painters with their own personal style. Anna Kenneally (whose work we saw on display in the Sion Hill Gallery) works with photography and paint to explore the relationship between the two, and create
narratives within her work. Scott Ashmore ‘examines the relationship between human interaction and the passage of time’. Nathan Down looks at ‘the appropriation of found images or “readymades” that depict classical art’, in contrast to Ollie Guyon, who is an abstract painter of everyday life. Lastly there is Ally McGinn, who is exploring the notion of artistic excess and embraces artistic mistakes. Ally spoke more about her time at Sion Hill, her love of the scenery and the opportunity to work outside. We briefly touched on the new Locksbrook Road campus and she seemed particularly glad she would not be studying there, exclaiming: ‘Artists don’t like change!’ She also prefers not being in town, seeing Sion as an escape, away from the temptation of the shops. Wall Space will be showing their final degree exhibition on 9 June; Ally hopes at Sion Hill (exhibition site to be confimed). View their work: wallspace2016. wordpress.com
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Diversity
PRIDE AT THE SU ∙ Authors: Edward Glasscote, Hope Richardson and Lucy Potts Photo: Tilly Blackford
PROUD OF PRIDE Students’ Union to host two wild nights, all in the name of Pride PRIDE is celebrated all over the world, from New York City to Bath Spa University. Aiming to raise money for the Terrence Higgins Trust – a charity at the forefront of the ‘fight against HIV’ that looks to improve the nation’s sexual health – Bath Spa’s Pride is split into two nights over a week. Pride Spoken Word Night is on 27 March, with live equalitypositive performance poetry. Then on 1 April the Pride Main Event will have various entertainments, including live music, burlesque, stand-up comedy, musical theatre, pole and drag. There will also be photo booths, badges, face painting and an array of other activities that aim to get everyone involved. As winner of the Students’ Union of the Year award from the National Centre for Diversity, Bath
Spa’s Students’ Union has a strong understanding of the event’s qualities and will make a more than worthy host. This is not the first year that the Students’ Union has hosted Pride. Speaking to bar, café, and events manager for the Students’ Union, Diane Starling, revealed a fruitful history of Pride at Bath Spa. Pride at Bath Spa University was started in 2015 by students Kate Jeanes, Gareth Williams and Bath Spa Students’ Union. ‘This is the third year it’s been running and it’s getting bigger and bigger each year,’ according to Starling. It is clear this event shows no sign of slowing down. Starling promises that ‘the place will be full’, so make sure you – like first-year students Nicole, Dominic and Tristan, pictured below – don’t miss out on this exciting celebration. To find out more information about the events, search ‘Bath Spa Pride’ on Facebook or follow @BathSpaPRIDE on Twitter.
HOLDING HANDS FOR CHANGE ∙ Authors: Elisabeth Jeffreys, Chloe Higgins, Jessica Monksfield and Oliver Fenwick Photo: Jessica Monksfield
SAME DIFFERENCE Diversity in Bath Spa sets trend for student inclusivity BATH SPA UNIVERSITY’s Students’ Union has won a prestigious award for its diverse student population and the work students and staff do to place ‘equality, diversity and inclusion’ within university life. We visited the Newton Park campus to see how departments support the diverse communities that make BSU their home. Diversity is about acceptance and respect; understanding uniqueness in a safe, positive and nurturing environment. Uniqueness can refer to an individual’s race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, physical and mental capabilities, age and socio-economic status. Proof of the university’s diverse population lies in the existence of the LGBTQ+ society, Student Support systems, the library’s Writing and Learning Centre, and the students who come from different backgrounds. First-year Creative Writing student Marine Brenier believes ‘BSU welcomes people of different ethnicities and religions, which helps people embrace a mix of ideas and
perspectives. It is a place where international students feel included.’ Sarah Dawes, Diversity Officer within the Students’ Union has an inspirational motto; ‘many voices, one union’ and is working to provide equal opportunities to all students. Dawes has been working as Chief Executive at the Union for five years, and states ‘the fact that people can be told that they can’t do something breaks [her] heart’. Her hard work has paid off; over half of the students applying for elected positions within BSU’s Students’ Union last year had disabilities, choosing to embrace their differences. Lucy Sweetman, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at BSU, believes that ‘there is always more we can do’ in terms of supporting vulnerable students. Sweetman places emphasis on inclusivity and the importance of ‘engagement, involvement and participation’ of everyone to help make diversity the norm: ‘As communities we are made up of interesting individuals with differences, and some groups are discriminated against by the societal structures … if we want inclusivity we have to change the way we run things.’ BSU is able to attract a range of
people. Its more creative, practical focus allows those who didn’t believe the academic route was suited for them can find their place here. To accommodate this BSU has support systems in place, such as its Student Support services based in Sophia at the Newton Park campus. It helps with disabilities such as mental health, dyslexia, and physical impairments, working towards making BSU a more friendly and comfortable environment. Additionally, the Peer Mentor Programme allows freshers to meet with a second or third-year student, who is familiar with the struggles of moving to university. These meetings ensure new students are comfortable with university life. Bath Spa has a Writing and Learning Centre in the library, promoting inclusivity. Siobhán Hawke, the Digital Literacy Librarian, says they will ‘help you at whatever stage’ with academic skills and help to improve people’s confidence with writing. This service is invaluable to those with learning difficulties or anxiety/confidence issues when it comes to assignments. Diversity is a key part of society but acceptance is still an issue; BSU’s inclusivity is a massive step forward for students worldwide. Produced in a day by first-year students on the Create Lab module and printed by Newspaper Club.