Producing employable graduates in sport: maximising the benefits of volunteering

Concern has been expressed about the low proportion of sports graduates finding careers within the field (Minten, 2010). Recently-commissioned QAA research highlighted the importance of extracurricular activities in enhancing employability skills and recommended that institutions offer more course-specific information and opportunities (Kandiko & Mawer, 2013). However, Thompson et al. (2013) highlighted that extracurricular activities can negatively impact on academic performance and suggested that there is a need for students to be strategic in the activities undertaken. A new student-led initiative within the School of Sport & Exercise Science at the University of Lincoln called IMPress (impress.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/about) has been developed to help students work towards an institutional award and to encourage sport-related volunteering by students. To address the concerns of the current employability research within sport and to facilitate the development of IMPress, an internally funded research project was developed to investigate the experiences of student volunteers and the organisations they work with. The research aims to identify good practice, possible barriers to student involvement and potential risks to other components of employability (such as academic performance). Specifically the research project will generate recommendations and a best-practice guide in the form of a Volunteering Toolkit to be used by current and future cohorts, both inside and outside the curriculum. The research uses a mixed methods approach, with students and staff working together to implement all stages of the project. Perspectives from the School’s undergraduates and recent graduates are being sought, as well as organisations hosting student placements/volunteers. Initially quantitative data are being gathered through an online questionnaire, to which all undergraduate students in the School and graduates from the previous two years will be invited to respond. Further qualitative data are being gathered through focus groups with each of the following: present students and recent graduates who have volunteered; current students who do not volunteer; and hosts/mentors of volunteers and employers from the sports industry. Specifically the paper will outline the research findings in respect of the extent and nature of volunteering within the School and the preparation for graduate-level careers in sport. The findings will be of value to the wider higher education community offering insight into how students can engage in volunteer opportunities within their own studies to enhance subject specific employability prospects

The Political Handkerchief, A Study of Politics and Semiotics in Textiles

Over many thousands of years there have been political, social meanings woven into the very fabric of cloth. Fabric is politically and semiotically charged even before it has any further imagery added to it. With the production of cheaper cotton and mass printing techniques in the eighteenth century the handkerchief, kerchief or bandana become the perfect vehicle for political messages, signifying complicity or resistance to political ideologies. I will trace the rise of the use of propaganda handkerchiefs from political protest such as Berthold\u27s Political Handkerchief, which was a British working class newspaper that was printed onto cotton in 1831 to avoid a tax on paper, to American examples, which exist from the early 19th century. I will be examining examples of handkerchiefs which are expressions of nationalistic ideologies, such as commemorative handkerchiefs from the Boer and First World Wars, these reinforced the propaganda messages of the ruling classes, messages of duty, aimed at both soldiers (men) and women. I will be looking at World War 2 Jacqmar scarves, assessing both agitation and integration propaganda within these contexts; following through to the use of handkerchiefs in American Political campaigns. Using the work of the Structuralists - Barthes, Baudrillard, LÈvi- Strauss as well as Gramsci and Marx, I will examining the historical relationship between cloth, propaganda and semiotics, and using these to explore the notions of the handkerchief as a complex form of political communication; to look at these ideas not as mutually inclusive or exclusive but to explore their shades of complexity

Capturing change between hand and digital textile printing processes, for the individual maker

Capturing change between hand and digital textile printing processes, for the individual maker<br

Ink Magazine (Issue One)

A Limited Edition Risographed magazine promoting work produced by students and staff within the School of Desig