Similarly the winning entry in the Usworth poetry competition captures the Equality and Diversity sentiment well: Competition Winner’s Poem - Jasmine Smith, Adam Speight, Taylor Ellis (First Year As Level Students) There’s a girl called Jane, Who’s not quite the same, She’s a little too tall, When her friends are rather small, She’s fat and hairy, And generally quite scary. When she walks down the street, she’s branded a freak, People stop and stare, But don’t seem to care, That poor Jane can hear, Which often leads to a tear. What would you do, If Jane was you, Would you go home and cry too, Or would you make a stand, And tell everyone to hold hands, And shout Everybody’s the same to you!” Student participation One very encouraging feature of the week was the level of student participation in E&D events as compared to last year. As well as the centre based competitions, individuals and groups of students were involved in a range of activities including: Graffiti Knitting which aimed to create a collective knitted end product (e.g. long scarf) produced by a wide range of students both female and male from various cultural and ethnic backgrounds. On two of the days Helen Willey managed to engage Ingrid Wagner, the World Champion knitter who led two “knit ins” for students, ably assisted at the Shiney Row event by Angela O’Donoghue the College Principal. As visiting textile artist, Ingrid became involved in the E&D week after the idea of Graffiti Knitting was proposed. Ingrid has been a guest artist in the past and engages well with students. She also holds the world record for knitting with the largest knitting needles (4 metres long). The objective of Graffiti Knitting allowed students from all centres to take part in a skill, bringing people together who perhaps wouldn’t normally mix with each other socially, engaging them in a common activity. Engaging the students in the knitting activity and placing it in a prominent position (Shiney Row reception) meant that it attracted attention. This increased the interest of passers by and therefore increased the interest around the Road Show. This in turn also created a good atmosphere where students from all disciplines also mixed with staff members. On some of the roadshow days students were also keen to be involved in staffing stands/desks including selling Fair Trade goods and promoting Amnesty International. In general it is widely regarded that the degree of student interest and involvement in the event was much higher than last year and at least two centres’ tutorial teams are assessing the overall impact of the E&D event in terms of student interest and involvement. Some students at St Peter’s also gave up their time to organise a henna tattoo stand which generated much interest during the day.
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