A team who have helped transform communities in the US have spent the week at De Montfort University Leicester (DMU) to find out how our students are helping to change lives for the better.
City Collaborative, from Louisville, Kentucky, run ReSurfaced, which turned a disused space in the city into a must-visit destination hosting large-scale events such as theatre, live music, pop-up beer gardens, classes and art installations.
Thanks to this and other projects including an interactive app, they have helped bring communities together, develop new creative schemes and foster a renewed sense of pride in Louisville’s citizens and businesses.
Now they have come to Leicester to see DMU’s community outreach projects first hand, share ideas and develop possible joint projects, as well as take a whistle-stop tour of the city.
It is their first visit to Leicester since DMU announced a partnership between the university and City Collaborative last year.
Sarah Thomson, Director of Strategic Partnerships at DMU, hosted the visit. She said: “I think what is exciting about City Collaborative is the vision, ideas and love they have for their city, which resonates so strongly with what we are trying to do here in Leicester.
“This visit has been a tremendous success in terms of sharing our ideas and we look forward to our students being able to play a part in some exciting new projects in Leicester and Louisville.”
DMU’s outreach projects are part of #DMUlocal, the embodiment of DMU’s commitment to the public good. Students and staff share their skills and talents to improve educational achievement in schools; help rejuvenate the city centre and retain graduate talent in Leicester and promote the health and well being of communities in the city.
As part of their visit this week, the Louisville team have experienced DMU’s graduations, visited New College to see how DMU students are mentoring school pupils, and toured the campus.
They also met with Rik and Kas Basra of the Rik Basra Leukaemia Trust to learn how volunteer students and staff have joined award-winning campaigns to boost the numbers of people on the UK stem cell register, helping those with blood cancer.
And one of the group, artist Jecorey Arthur, also performed at city venue The Cookie with DSU Vice-President Amie Chapman and Head of Leicester School of Architecture, Raymond Quek, both of whom are musicians.
Patrick Piuma and David Durand are co-founders of City Collaborative. David said: “We’ve enjoyed the visit to DMU very much, it has given us some ideas. I think we would love to explore a similar app as Love Louisville to Leicester and bring students to work with our local artists and design community.
“We built ReSurfaced to be creative place making, taking these under-used places - particularly parking lots – and showing they can be utilised in bringing the community together.”
Patrick added: “It’s about getting people to think differently about how they see parts of their city and what’s out there that they may not know about. I’ve been interested particularly in the work at New College with student mentoring.”
Posted on Friday 29 January 2016