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I'm delighted to be here today to confirm that we've past 100 million pounds,
of the 150 million pound target we set for Impact The Nottingham Campaign.
Big landmark for us and I'm thrilled by the support we've had from staff,
from students, from our Alumni, from our business partners. So a very big thank you to all of you.
I'm even more thrilled to see the
impact that, that support is having already.
So I can look, for example at the
transformation that's beginning to take place in some parts Nottingham through
our Nottingham Potential Scheme in improving access for young people from
disadvantaged backgrounds to get into further education, higher education.
I look at the support that has gone into the New Theatre, still the only student
run youth theatre in University, in the UK.
We had the ground breaking just last week for the new Carbon Neutral Laboratories
up on Jubilee campus.
Wouldn't have been possible without the support of GSK.
I look at the support that's
been given to our students to go and build a school in South Africa.
I look at the phenomenally important work that's been done in the
Children Brain Tumour Research Trust, to help intervene
sooner in what's a truly devastating disease.
None of this would have been possible without your support, so a very big thank you again,
and I hope you'll continue to support us as we work towards securing
the final 50 million pounds of Impact The Nottingham Campaign.
I think probably the worst news
a family can hear is that their child has got a brain tumour, and
that's for many reasons in that if you have a tumour outside the brain, it
often doesn't affect the way the child behaves, their personality,
their ability to do things.
Whereas all of those can be affected by a brain tumour.
Well the Children's Brain Tumour Research Centre was launched in 1997 with the
University's
appeal at that time and I think it,
struck a chord in the public's mind because it affected children,
it was about a serious illness in children, and that the University was
seeking to use their research expertise to help these people who presented
very distressed... in very early in life
with a
life threatening disease. It's a very powerful process
to give money and it has a big impact on everybody involved in the process. The
person giving,
the organisation receiving it, and then the researchers
participating, doing the research and then of course the children who benefit from
the research, as a result of it being translated into practice.
And we couldn't have done the Children's Brain Tumour Research
Centre development without the donors, and the impact
has got our plane to take off and,
so hopefully we'll be able to meet their long term needs of making it travel
in a very positive way,
to a better future with this particular group of diseases.
The Nottingham New Theatre is the only 100% student run theatre in the country.
We put on over 30 shows a year, and we do absolutely everything ourselves,
from actors, directors, producers, lighting, the sound. We're
also an award winning company. We go to the National Student Drama Festival
nearly every year.
We do really well there and last year we won seven national awards.
The Impact Campaign has completely transformed the interior of our building.
We've got a brand new auditorium seating block, flexible staging so we can do
shows in the round and in the thrust.
We've also got two brand new studio spaces now with
with a lighting rig so we can do performances in there and also we've got
new technical equipment, so we've got a new lighting desk, a new sound desk, and
most of our lights have been replaced, which is absolutely fantastic and we're
able to do a lot more for our productions.
There are lots of other areas which we would still love money for, if possible,
not just in the building but also to improve our student experience.
So we go to Edinburgh every year, we take two shows up and we also go to the
National Student Drama Festival. So it'd
be great to have funds to help students travel around the country doing shows
because obviously a lot of students will struggle to find the money to do that.
So in addition to enabling my own appointment as the GlaxoSmithKline Chair,
of Sustainable Chemistry,
Impact the Nottingham Campaign has facilitated a
12 million pound grant from GSK to establish
a New Centre for Sustainable Chemistry, in partnership with the
Higher Education Funding Council for England.
The Centre for Sustainable Chemistry will be housing in
iconic new building called the GSK Carbon Neutral Laboratory for
Sustainable Chemistry. We anticipate this will be built
in 2015 and this building is going to provide state of the art facilities for
Synthetic Chemistry.
And this will enable the University
and GSK to conduct some ground breaking research in drug development.
So our goal is to develop new ways to make molecules
in a cleaner, greener, and more sustainable fashion
which could serve as the basis for new medicines in the future.
So this is a tremendously exciting project.
Nottingham Potential
aims to provide cohesive ongoing support
for children and young people from year two
right through until their final year at
school or college, and through until the transition to university.
I personally got involved with the Nottingham University summer school
when one of my teacher's at school, suggested that I apply.
I love the academics, I love the whole experience. Everything about it is fantastic
and also the Nottingham University bursary that's offered was a massive help for me.
That money's been unbelievably helpful throughout my university experience and
it meant that University was something that was achievable and do-able, as opposed
to being quite intimidating.
There are actually children out there who need this building. This is a real thing
that's actually required. For us to have the privilege to be able to provide that for them.
at this stage in our potential careers is something really special. You spend so much time at a drawing board just
visualising what a building would look like, and so this is the first opportunity
we've had to go out and build something we've designed, or helped to
design.
All the work you put in is so worth doing because
with other projects you're doing work and it's not going to an actual cause,
but this is for such a good cause and you just enjoy everything you do.
The facilities we've built have helped so many kids out there that
they just try to cram as many in as possible and so we're now trying to
expand this to allow the most number of children
in that region as possible to go there and experience what we've built and have
the education that they really do deserve out there.