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Gearing up for the Waterside Festival

Gearing up for the Waterside Festival

On Saturday 14 September, BNU opens the doors to its Aylesbury Campus for a host of activities as thousands of visitors are expected for the town’s Waterside Festival.

The University has a range of activities and guided tours planned for the day at the Campus, in Walton Street, which will provide a backdrop to the annual festival, from 11am-5.30pm. It comes as the University welcomes the first cohort on a three-year nursing degree programme at the Campus, with BNU NHS Healthcare Trust, and visitors will be able to see the facilities students will use.

Ian Harper, of Buckinghamshire New University, who is part of the Waterside Festival Organising Committee, said: “We enjoy a fantastic canal side location and are delighted to be part of this year’s Waterside Festival, where we will offer people the chance to step inside our campus and see what we do.

“The Festival comes at an exciting time for us as we have added a range of new facilities, including simulation wards for Nursing students which are similar to those you would find in hospitals, and hubs to support small and medium-sized digital businesses to develop and grow.

“We will also have details of courses people can study through BNU, and visitors will be able to step in to the cockpit in a flight simulator and enjoy an immersive experience in our ‘Simulate Your Future’ mobile unit, showing how a patient is treated following an accident.

“The Festival is a great way to celebrate Aylesbury’s canal heritage and we’re excited to help build on the success of last year’s inaugural event and show how our campus is growing.”

A stand outside the campus will offer course information about qualifications taught at the Aylesbury Campus and at sites in High Wycombe and Uxbridge, with festival-goers able to pick up prospectuses and a range of freebies.

Visitors will be able to speak to lecturers and students about courses or pop in to a newly-opened cafe just inside the rear entrance for food and refreshments, as well as pay a visit to recently-completed business hub spaces which occupy much of the ground floor and support small and medium-sized digital companies to develop and grow.

Tours of the site will take visitors through state-of-the-art simulation suites including life-like manikins; functioning hospital-like wards; real-life apartment for students to simulate community nursing; dedicated learning zone with digital technology, and moulage – the art of simulating mock injuries and ailments. There’s also the chance to expand people’s knowledge of the body through Curiscope Virtuali-Tee t-shirts, which give a fun, informative and interactive way of seeing what’s going on inside all of us.

Elsewhere, the University will have an exhibition detailing the variety of skills taught on Engineering courses at the Aylesbury Campus, and people will be able to get a better idea of pilot training and aviation courses by entering the cockpit and heading for the skies in a mini-flight simulator.

Outside the main entrance, facing Walton Street, families will be able to step in to the Simulate Your Future mobile unit, a government-funded partnership between the University and Study Higher, which provides young people with advice about education opportunities. See an immersive, eventful and interactive display on ‘The Journey of a patient’ while finding out more about careers in healthcare. The Simulate Your Future team of Campbell Glazier and Niamh Byrne will be taking visitors through ‘the journey of a patient’, which showcases the huge variety of careers in healthcare and was developed by the Psychology, Simulation and Performance Team, and filmed with members of the BNU teaching and technical teams.

Waterside Festival is proudly sponsored by, and will be taking place in, Aylesbury Garden Town, and is being coordinated by Aylesbury Town Centre Partnership.

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