Principal’s Message

When joining Mansfield in September 2019, I didn’t expect the football cliché ‘a game of two halves’ to describe my first year at the College, but it’s a perfect fit.

In the first six months, we made good progress. Our wonderful catering team again won the title for best college vegetarian and vegan food; we completed important renovation work on the College’s wonderful Library; we finalised arrangements to bring Mansfield’s organ back into use (using previously raised funds for which we are most grateful); we won an adjudication brought by the contractor on a long-standing building dispute; we strengthened College governance arrangements, particularly related to Mansfield’s finances; we focused on our hard-working teams, introducing personal development reviews for all non-academic staff; and up to the end of February our income was on track to cover our expenditure, a significant achievement for Mansfield which has a much lower endowment than other colleges.

Without stretching the football analogy too far, in the second half it has been like playing into the wind and uphill on a muddy pitch. We managed to get through most of Hilary term relatively unaffected by Covid-19, but Government regulations meant that students were unable to return to College for Trinity term, and during the Easter and summer vacations we had to cancel conference and B&B guests – including a six-week trip by 165 US students. Our income inevitably took a substantial hit.

It has been really pleasing to see how my colleagues have stepped up to face these challenges. Our priority has been to provide a Covid-secure environment for students and staff in Michaelmas term. This meant making substantial changes to our domestic arrangements. To minimise risk of transmission, we are not cleaning student rooms (while cleaning common areas more frequently) and we have introduced a comprehensive meal plan for onsite students and moved to a takeaway offer for those living off-site.

Fundamentally changing how we operate has been especially difficult for our small, dedicated team. My profound thanks go to them, and of course to our wonderful colleagues in the College Office, for all their efforts to design, plan and implement these major adjustments. Frequent changes in Government regulations and guidelines have proved particularly demanding. Sincere thanks must also go to our catering and accommodation teams who have agreed to work on reduced rotas, to the porters who have encountered many new challenges on the front line, and to our IT team who have had to cope with the inevitable increase in online activities.

To date, I’m pleased to say that the new measures have generally been effective. This is testament to the efforts of my team, but also to the behaviour of our students who have unfortunately had to endure substantial restrictions to their activities. We had hoped to relax some measures further into Michaelmas, but at time of writing the new national lockdown has made this impossible. I would like to thank the students for their forbearance.

Another key priority for me in the last six months has been to minimise the impact of the virus on the College’s finances. We have successfully employed the Government’s job-retention scheme; we have negotiated to retain client deposits where appropriate; we have restructured roles and amended work rotas to reduce cost and allow key new roles to be created; and we continue to work hard to encourage conference clients to come back when it is possible. We may have taken a major impact despite these measures, but I’m told Mansfield has faced financial challenges many times over the years and come out the other side stronger and more resilient. I am confident we shall do so again. Looking forward, it seems clear that mitigating the effects of the virus and keeping students and staff safe will dominate our activities until at least spring 2021, but rest assured we are keeping one eye on Mansfield’s longer-term development, with business and finance programmes to support the College’s recently agreed strategic plan on our minds. I hope my report next year will be able to focus on these more positive topics and we can treat the virus as a historical footnote.

When the UK went into its first ‘lockdown’ in March 2020, Mansfield fell eerily quiet for a time. The absence of the familiar hum of student life was felt sorely throughout the College, and perhaps no more so than in Mansfield’s Library – which lost some of its magic without our students drawing inspiration from the remarkable surroundings.

We were excited therefore, to welcome the London Mozart Players to College on Tuesday 14 July to give their exceptional live-streamed performance of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons from this magnificent setting.

After carefully manoeuvring a harpsichord up the stairs and creeping on to the Library gallery to set the cameras rolling, the performers took up their instruments to play. It was an unusual concert: the musicians spaced along the Library’s alcoves, the red flare of their masks hiding their faces, and their immediate audience limited to the camera crew and a couple of overseers. Nevertheless, violin soloist Jennifer Pike played with entrancing vigour from the middle of the central aisle.

The London Mozart Players, a chamber orchestra set up in 1949, performed as a seamless whole, this concert the third they had played since the spring lockdown began. Following performances in the Westgate Shopping Centre and St Giles Cripplegate in London, the group were well-practised at weaving around each other, and at maintaining the quality of their music in venues with unusual acoustics (and the occasional interference of nearby building works). The Players seemed delighted to be together again, to exercise their artistic muscles and regain a sense of unity – which can be difficult to achieve when giving an online performance.

Following the concert, Jennifer Pike read aloud the four poems that accompany the movements of Four Seasons, and as she read from Spring, ‘The sky is covered with a black mantle,/ And thunder, and lightning, announce a storm./ When they are silent, the birds/ Return to sing their lovely song,’ these lines seemed a very apt reflection of the day itself.

Mansfield prides itself on fostering communities, and it was a pleasure to give space for the London Mozart Players to flock together in difficult times, even if only for a day.

The concert was streamed on Classic FM’s Facebook page and YouTube on 22 July and is now available to view on the Classic FM YouTube channel.