All City Campus courses have mandatory modules which enable us to go into creative practice. These are often specific to courses in terms of equipment, software, risk assessments, etc. There are however many shared aspects.
New students have a huge amount of information upon enrolling on various topics to take in, and much of this is online. A physical Creative Passport will be a reference guide for City Campus students about their initial key course modules, all of which must be completed so new students can continue their studies. It will help guide students' expectations, reassure them about their progress and provide signposting to other resources.
It can also include general information about their course, Lecturer contacts and profiles, Student Project Coordinators and more. The official Course Connect group chats for these cohorts can also be detailed, as many established students remain unaware of these. All the different kinds of Student Support Services available at UWE can also be outlined.
Because it is mainly based at Frenchay, new City Campus students are at a disadvantage in terms of the ready access to the facilities of, information about and the quick ways in which to interact with the SU. Whilst there is a lot of communication materials related to the SU, these are not specifically tailored for City Campus students. The Creative Passport will ensure new students at these sites will have a resource clearly provided by the Student Union, developed for students by students to help their first stage of their journeys at UWE and all tailored for the perspective of those studying at City Campus.
There is not yet a strong sense amongst students at City Campus that these sites actually are all part of one campus. As such the Creative Passport will include details about each of the Bower Ashton, Spike Island and Arnolfini sites. It can provide a literal map to help orientate students to these, the wider city and various transport options. There could also be references to key cultural and historic sites close to the campus, and a checklist of local experiences to seek out.
There can be details about how the SU works, including course representatives, so as to empower City Campus students to feel more connected, engaged and an active part of UWE. Information about extracurricular activities, SU societies, ways to exercise and wellbeing initiatives can all be framed to be as accessible, and as appealing to City Campus students as possible.
The Creative Passport can also be a physical memento of students' first stage at UWE, which they can then keep long term. There could be a section for writing some initial reflections of their first week, somewhere to write contact details down, etc. The pages relating to the mandatory modules could also be physically ‘stamped’ by a tutor as a way to reaffirm a student’s progress, and providing an opportunity to discuss the modules further.
The Creative Passport will be combined with a range of events, activities and opportunities at all the sites within City Campus. These will be promoted to students equally across the sites, including tours and present students being available to discuss their active projects. This is to make new students feel they are all at one campus, that just has a few locations within it. We want all students across City Campus to feel they are part of a shared community that they control. All so as to learn, work and just explore every kind of creativity occurring across their campus community.
We will also be arranging attendance of the exhibitions at the sites, student run film screenings in the theatres and talks across the whole campus. We will be proactively assisting students in ways they can more easily get to all these initiatives across all the locations. This will be combined with a student-led arts engagement program occurring across the year, which will cover a wide range of cultural activities across Bristol.
We envisage a physical passport like document that includes Creative Passport, along with references to City Campus and UWE SU on the cover. The first and last sections within are likely to be general to all the City Campus courses. The middle section can include the details relevant to the specific courses. Much of the information can be a summary that signposts students via a mix of methods such as QR codes and/or links to online resources.
We would like to include as many aspects of UWE in the development, design and printing process. The Creative Passport could be collected and distributed to each student when they collect their ID cards. As there are various ways this initiative might work which are presently unclear, this proposal is only seeking to provide a mandate to have the necessary formal discussions to surface the options.
City Campus students may be on different paths, but our shared destination is creative practice in both our studies and professionally. The Creative Passport will help new students to navigate individually, but more significantly it will enable them to begin these journeys together and all as part of a campus wide creative community. This matters because collaboration is how creativity in the real world works, and it is those who are inspired who will be most motivated to create.