Warwick and Community - main thrust of interview

• Little communication with immediate community regarding the development of the university.
• Ruth a child in Canley when Warwick was being built, remebers the uni being a representation of their 'playground destruction', built over orchards and fields which were play sites for the local children.
• Warwick seen as a self contained  and separate entity to the outside world, no bus links initially, locals tended to take bus into Coventry and use social facilities at Lanchester Polytechnic (now Coventry University). Ruth commented on the kudos of having a 'student boyfriend', but it was the Lanchester, not the Warwick students that were sought after.
• Some community links with teacher training college (now Westwood teaching centre) that existed prior to the university's construction, use of their swimming pool and teachers taught at nearby schools. Ironic that this is one of the only community links that Warwick maintains today, yet this tradition did not originate within the uni itself!
• Uni physically closed off from community in recent years, i.e the blocking of paths from Canley estate to central campus, seemed symbolic for Ruth, reason why many children in the area see uni as something beyond them or not for them, despite living so close to one.
• Despite this, Ruth saw Warwick as ASPIRATIONAL; iconic white buildings and striking architecture shown to her by her brother in teen years became a symbol for what she could achieve through higher education, even though she did not attend Warwick as a student. Should the uni be trying to encourage this now?
• Mentions Butterworth's visits to working men's clubs when uni was first opened to establish community links and support (this was from Ruth's own research - recommended we get in touch with Coventry telegraph to look into community relations with Warwick).

Warwick and Teaching Space

• Ruth a lecturer here in the past, showed photos of first lecture, Gibbet Hill classrooms and science lecture theatre.
• Criticised small, airless, windowless, power centred (teacher as oracle at the front of the room) classrooms characteristic of most of Warwick's teaching spaces.
• Commented on her own attempts to 'break the mould' in teaching, set up local projects with nearby Westwood school (although with no formal backing of the uni), and insisted on changing around seminar rooms to create a more open, social space for learning focused on the needs of the students, not the dictates of the lecturer.
• Excellent quote to sum this up; 'open them (classrooms) up and set the students free.' Praised the new spaces at Warwick such as the Reinvention Centre and the learning grid.

Notes by Laura Evans