My Week - 27 April 2015 - Celebrate Week
Professor Vivien Jones, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Student Education, gives an update on the Laidlaw Library and celebrates the achievements of our students.
This is an auspicious week for student education. On Friday, the new Laidlaw Library was
officially handed over to the University. The library will be an inspiring resource for our students, and it seems
somehow appropriate that the handover has come at the beginning of Celebrate
Week, when we join with LUU in a series of daily events which showcase and
reward a wide range of student activities and achievements.
Workmen are still titivating the areas around the new
library, and the notorious traffic lights on Hillary Place haven’t disappeared quite
yet, but as the hoardings come down the full splendour of the Laidlaw Library is
gradually being revealed and it’s very nearly ready to welcome students. At the
end of last week I had the privilege of joining our librarian, Stella Butler,
and other members of the library team in a tour of this iconic building. It was thrilling to see the plans that have
been pored over for so long turned into actuality. It’s hard to believe that the former site of
the visitors’ car park could have accommodated this spacious, high-spec
library, with its imposing central atrium surrounded by imaginatively-designed
learning areas, many of which have lovely views down to the city, across the
roof garden with its beehive, or at interesting angles to the Emmanuel
Church.
It’s what goes on in buildings that really matters, but
buildings are nevertheless hugely important. And in the case of something like a library
it’s not so easy to separate surroundings from the activities that they
accommodate. Though digital technologies
mean that resources can be accessed and learning can happen pretty much
anywhere, students still want dedicated places in which to learn. The well-designed, technology-enabled spaces
in the Laidlaw Library will help teach our students to learn effectively and
flexibly – whether in the more traditional silent areas, or the collaborative
learning booths with their app-driven touch screens. As we would expect from the Partnership,
students have been consulted throughout the process and, with their input, the
Laidlaw brings our student library provision firmly into the twenty-first
century, not just rivalling but surpassing many of the investments in new
libraries at peer institutions.
But buildings are also important expressions of
institutional pride and confidence. The
Laidlaw Library speaks of the University’s past as well as its future. The Portland stone of which it’s built echoes
that of the Parkinson Building, an aesthetic feature which is also a physical
reminder of the continuity between this new library and the vision of Lord
Brotherton, which was so instrumental at the beginning of the twentieth century
in giving Leeds real distinction as a university. And just as students have
long colonised the Parkinson steps outside the Brotherton, they will surely also
be sitting very soon on the steps outside the Hillary Place entrance to the
Laidlaw – and doing so, we hope, into the next century, in a pleasingly human
echo of past with future.
So there is even more than usual to celebrate this Celebrate
Week, adding to the excitement of the Partnership Awards, the events in honour
of Hall Execs and Intercultural Ambassadors, the Sports Colours, the LeedsforLife
Citizenship Awards, the distribution of RAG funds to local charities and, as
the climax to the week, the spectacular Riley’s stage show by the performing
arts societies. I do encourage
colleagues to come along to at least one of these – a really enjoyable way to
get a flavour of the richness and quality of the co-curricular side of a Leeds
education. Full details can be found on
the LUU website.
Hope to see you there!
Vivien
Posted in: My Week