“For the creative, with the energy to grasp them, this year will present opportunities like no other.”

What happens when you lockdown energetic Cambridge students during a global pandemic? The answer is, emphatically, lots!

The challenges of the pandemic have inspired students to innovate and invent. We’ve seen formal dining go online, with staff and students across the globe discussing topics from plant technology and food security, to art and urban planning through the ages.

Accomodation and catering

In Cambridge, members of our international community are understandably anxious about family back home, and yet I’ve been so heartened to see our students becoming like family to each other. Living in households of up to eight people, they have created a home from home by cooking international dishes together and coming up with new ways to remain in touch with family and friends far away.

Looking ahead to the coming term, shared facilities like catering and College bars will be adapted, so that that we can still meet and exchange ideas, while following social distancing and the new ‘rule of six’.

Teaching and learning

The delivery of online learning last term arguably introduced a hundred years of innovation in a matter of weeks. For the students, as digital natives, this was perhaps not such a shock as for the digital dinosaurs, like me.

Much has changed in Cambridge and yet the essence of what we do remains the same – world-leading academics, providing outstanding teaching, to passionate and curious students.

As we prepare to deliver large-group teaching online and socially-distanced-small-group practicals, supervisions and seminars, we are keen to combine the best of the new digital materials available to us, like virtual microscopes, with the best of age-old, yet unbeatable, teaching techniques, such as debate and discussion.

Extracurricular activities

Back at College and around the city, clubs and societies are rolling out sports, theatre and music among other activities. We’re lucky that Cambridge is full of green spaces within and around the Colleges, and of course there’s also plenty of fresh air on the River Cam. This means that ‘sports bubbles’ are already taking part in preseason training. Bat sports in particular are likely to feature in the term ahead.

The ADC Theatre, home of the Footlights, is piloting a season of socially-distanced performances including the opportunity to stream shows from home, while this summer, a couple of our students reprised the perfect play for social distancing – Waiting for Godot – in the College garden.

In 2020 we are living history. For the creative, with the energy to grasp them, this year will present opportunities like no other.

We celebrate the students of Cambridge past who in 1848 invented the rules for Association Football. I wonder what new corona-sports and arts we will look back on and attribute to this year’s students?

...Anyone for bike-ball?

_{Words: Dr Judith Bunbury}