JAM at Queen’s awarded Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation funding to “unlock hidden talent"

Queen’s Junior Music Academy (JAM) has been successful in the latest round of funding by the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation, one of Britain’s leading charities supporting the arts and music.

The Foundation has awarded £14,760 to JAM at Queen’s to fund bursaries over the next three years for a new Strings programme. Additional funding has been provided by the Music for All programme to purchase new string instruments.

A total of £225,405 has been given to arts and heritage projects in Northern Ireland, Scotland and throughout England, aimed at breaking down barriers to participation in the arts. The Foundation has prioritised projects that engage young people and individuals from hard-to-reach and minority backgrounds.

 

The Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation was set up by Lord Lloyd Webber in 1992 to promote the arts, culture and heritage for the public benefit; since inception Andrew has been the principal provider of funding for all its charitable activities.

Since 2011, the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation has given £20.5 million in grants and performing arts scholarships, positively affecting hundreds of thousands of people across the UK and beyond. In 2018 alone, it provided financial backing and sustainability to 111 projects, totalling over £3.1 million.

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Poppy Humphrey: the secrets of off-campus living

Poppy Humphrey was appointed off-campus student affairs officer at Manchester Student Homes, a jointly funded department of the University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University in 2013. She is currently the only internationally-recognised off-campus practitioner in the UK.

At our 2018 biannual Conference held in Belfast, student communications specialists Campuslife proposed an initiative where a member of their team went back to live with a group of students in halls to find out what students really wanted from their accommodation providers. In this instance, it just made perfect sense for our off campus student affairs officer to submerse herself in living with students in an off campus environment!

And thus born was ‘The Secret Life of Students’ a series of short YouTube films designed to educate students about what to expect about life off campus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRAW_KMToLQ&feature=emb_title

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Exeter Boosts BHF Donations

A recent Impact Report from the British Heart Foundation has confirmed that University of Exeter Students have contributed significantly to charitable donations for the 2019 period.

Not only did students contribute to a record surge in charity shop donations, but the total value of bags donated in the 2019 period was £54,600, compared to £4788 the previous year.

BHF have calculated that these donations are equivalent to 31.2 Tons of items being diverted from the waste stream – this equates to 317,522 kgs of CO2 greenhouse gas emissions

This significant increase is very encouraging and demonstrates a growing environmental awareness from students seeking to re-purpose re-usable items.

“A lot of additional work was carried out by the University’s Community Liaison Team to ensure that Students departing the city in the Summer had access to donation bags and drop-off points. Work has already begun on planning for this year’s scheme and we hope to see a further increase in donations”

Rory Cunningham, Community Liaison Manager

 

For more information regarding the British heart Foundations campaigns, visit their website: https://www.bhf.org.uk/ 


Queen's and City Council Launch Belfast Climate Commission

Queen’s University Belfast and Belfast City Council have launched the Belfast Climate Commission, to drive action on the climate crisis.

The Commission will play a key role in place-based climate action necessary to achieve the UK Government’s target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2050.

Co-chaired by Queen’s University and Belfast City Council, the Commission is one of three city-based climate commissions across the UK (Belfast, Edinburgh and Leeds), funded by the Economic and Social Research Council for the Place-Based Climate Action Network (PCAN). Working alongside existing city structures and programmes, the Commission has been established to translate climate policy into action ‘on the ground’ to bring about transformative change.

The Place-based Climate Action Network (PCAN) was introduced at an event recently held at Parliament Buildings, Stormont. The network will establish Commissions in Belfast and Edinburgh, and will extend the Leeds Climate Commission, which was the first to be established in 2017. The Commissions will help the local delivery of the UK’s climate change objectives by supporting action in cities through a partnership made up of the private, public and civic sectors.

For a more in-depth analysis of the Climate Commission, please refer to Belfast City Council website or Queen's University website.

For more information on the PCAN network, please visit: https://www.cccep.ac.uk/place-based-climate-action-network-p-can/

For further information about the Belfast Energy Transition and Climate Resilience Commission, please contact Professor John Barry at j.barry@qub.ac.uk and follow @PCANcities on Twitter.