We held our annual stakeholder event at the end of June.

We look forward to this event enormously as it gives us a chance to bring staff, students and partners together to celebrate student success.

This year we dove-tailed our event to coincide with the Guest Lecture and Launch for the MA Heritage exhibition From Village Green to Victory: Women’s Cricket in Kent which was a great success. The exhibition remains open until the end of August.

We also use the Stakeholder event to say THANK YOU to our partners for the amazing opportunities they provide our students on placement and in work-related learning. We have been working with some of our partners for more than a decade now and welcome them as old friends as well as industry experts. It was also wonderful to welcome new partners and to celebrate new placements and projects. We continue to look forward to new collaborations.

We started the session with a brief overview of the new CCCU Approach to employability and the new Industry Careers and Enterprise Client Project module that will start for Humanities students in Spring 2028.

We had a great series of short presentations by current students and staff. This blog will focus on our student presentations.

Edd has created an exhibition at Dover Museum on Front Line Town Life in World War I for his Final Project.

The exhibition, open until 3^rd of August provides a fascinating insight into life in Dover in the 1940s. It includes Interactive Digital Content as well as 9 A0 wall panels and a carefully curated cabinet of personal objects given to the museum by local people. The exhibition’s digital contents, including the fabulous parachute silk wedding gown, will be available on the Museum website once the physical exhibition is closed. We hope that Edd will guest-blog on here again very soon.

Liz gave us a fascinating talk about intangible heritage.

Liz’s dissertation will explore links between England and France in the Cross-channel Geopark and she has already mapped a number of local rituals and celebrations in Kent and Pas-de-Calais. This project, as well as necessitating compulsory visits to France, is also closely linked to Liz’s interest in pilgrimage and her work on placement with the Cathedral Pilgrimage Office. We look forward to hearing more from Liz in future blogs.

Brandon reflected on his journey from CCCU student to placement provider.

Beating eight other applicants, Brandon successfully interviewed to work with The National Trust on placement and now works full time for the Trust. It’s extra-special when our Alumni come back and work with us in this way. We hope that Brandon and the students will guest- blog in future weeks but the students had a rich week working with volunteers of all ages, experiencing a range of tasks including site-maintenance and building confidence to guide visitors around the site. They also undertook a bespoke National Trust style interview to understand the nuances of applying for work with this company.

A Big Thank You to Brandon for starting these students on a route to thriving in the workplace. I’ve said this elsewhere but this shared endeavour to support our students on their way into the world of work is very special. 

Our students are in full dissertation mode now and we wish them luck! Enjoy the process (and come and guest-blog about it in September!)