We have seen kindness  and service excellence everywhere at BU this week. Our Random Acts of Kindness week has included free donuts to students in our halls of residences, and a visit by the Anthony Nolan Trust to sign up Life saving Heroes to help save lives.  Another highlight of the week – the CEL student co-creation awards and seeing Max Schultz, Faculty of Management BABS student collect his certificate and cheque.  Max is working with Lois Farquharson and Susanne Clarke,  to develop a kindness project looking at embedding a kindness culture with higher education.

The kindness group – an informal group of staff from across BU with an interest in promoting kindness have been busy preparing for our BU Kindness Summit on the 14th February in the EBC. This all day event inspired by the Service Excellence Conference in April 17, will bring together academic staff, professional support staff and students who share an interest in making an impact through kindness.

So far we are delighted to be able to include research and professional practice topics from academics across BU aligned with promoting kindness. Topics include developing toolkits in the social care sector, kindness as a brand value, kindness and happiness in increasingly digital environments, and we will also be showcasing our  student co-creation work.   Helen Palmer,  Culture and Sport Lead in Student Services will talk about the impact of our Random Acts of Kindness week.  We are also hoping to invite some well know thought leaders to our event too.

Dr Carole Pound and Dr Caroline Ellis-Hill will be leading workshops to explore how humanising frameworks can be adapted for higher education across disciplines and consider how  approaches taken by programmes  within HSS can be applied to other programmes across BU to improve student and staff experiences.  This workshop will be inspiring and guaranteed to lift your spirits.

Other surprises for the day will include themes such as an introduction to Ubuntu philosophy – human kindness.  As well a chance to learn something new and appropriate to valentines day.

If you would like to share your area of interest, research, learning and teaching, practice or  life experiences within the context of kindness, please do get in touch with Susanne Clarke, Lois Farquharson, or Lee-Ann Fenge, we would love you to join us.

Booking pages to come along to this event will be live soon

Best wishes