Welcome back to our website! We’ve been away experimenting with different ways of delivering news and announcements to our students and are excited to announce that we’ve redesigned and reformatted an emailed newsletter for them. Now that our new system is underway, we’re back here to communicate to the wider world what exactly has been going on this week in LANS.

This Wednesday, a large number of students from across the year groups attended our community lunch – an event where staff and students can communicate departmental goings-on over tasty treats. This lunch focused on upcoming opportunities for students to boost their employability. The careers network advertised arts internships exclusive to LANS and College of Arts students; then the Birmingham Project (a two-week experience where multidisciplinary student teams design digital outputs); and lastly, our LANS/Institute for Global Innovation Studentships, where students can contribute their ideas and assist with interdisciplinary research happening at the university. The food went down well as always, within five minutes the entire catering table had been picked clean!

LANS community lunch

This workshop focused on fundamental elements of comedy, from wordplay to introducing subtext to meta-humour. It was hosted by comedian Andy White who was a wonderfully engaging presence. He made sure to learn everyone’s name and lead us through exercises designed to inspire funny ideas, and to recontextualise concepts in different ways. The event ended with pizzas and of course, the vegan and vegetarian options went down a treat!

Exploring Ideas Through Comedy workshop

We are running a new initiative called the LANS Assembly in late February, which provides an opportunity for students and staff to deliberate extensively on an issue in LANS. The student body were asked to submit questions to debate before last Friday and a shortlist has been decided upon. The questions are:

  • What should LANS do to combat the climate crisis?
  • Should workplace skills be embedded more deeply in the LANS curriculum?
  • What is a personal tutor for?

Students can vote on their preferred question and we’ll find out the result the day before the first event on Wednesday 26 February. We’re excited to see what happens when students have the chance to argue positions relevant to their own student experience – as a pedagogy nerd myself, I’m excited to see the impacts of this new kind of student engagement.

To our alumni, it’s not too late to sign up to our Cultural Programme events! Here’s what we still have planned for this term:

  • A lecture with Tom McLeish on creativity across the disciplines (including the sciences!) as part of the University’s Distinguished Lecture Series. On campus in Arts Building, main lecture theatre on Wednesday 19 February. Drinks reception at 17:30 followed by the lecture at 18:00.
  • Warwick Congress 2020. Saturday 22 February and Sunday 23 February at Warwick University’s Business School.
  • Exploring grime with Ian Clarke from Sound Community LTD. Date tbc but please still express your interest to be notified when more information becomes available.
  • Thursday 5 March, 10:00 - 18:00 – Exploring Midlands Industrial Heritage in Smethwick (transport to be provided).
  • Exploring creativity with puppets with guest, Sophie Huckfield. Wednesday 11 March, 15:00 in the LANS hub.
  • Six: The Musical, Friday 13 March @ 18:00. This will be at The Grand Theatre in Wolverhampton (transport to be provided).

If you would like to attend any of the above, please do not hesitate to contact our Cultural Programme lead, Julian, at J.P.Paenke@bham.ac.uk.

Can’t be bothered to make dinner tonight? Instead of buying a plastic ready meal, try the TooGoodToGo app. You can collect leftover food from local restaurants and cafes cheaply (and sometimes even for free!). The food you collect would otherwise have been thrown away, so win, win.

That’s everything for this week – next week, we’ll be reporting on our Distinguished Lecture from Professor Tom McLeish, who will be talking about creativity across the disciplines. In the meantime, if you have any suggestions of what you’d like to see in the newsletters or general feedback regarding any aspect of LANS, please email us at axd819@student.bham.ac.uk or kop709@student.bham.ac.uk. We hope you have lovely week and hope to see you back here soon!

Thanks for reading,

Adam & Katharine