58 Hours in Coventry, England. November 19, 2014

Hi All –

Well, this is a first… I was almost done writing my little Coventry travelogue and my computer crashed… and the entire document disappeared.. While I still think it is somewhere here, I cannot find it at all.. Not even part of it.. So, though frustrated, I am starting fresh here on the plane from London to Seattle via Houston… and hope that my frustration will not impact the stories.

Here goes (I’m really terrible at redoing anything, so this may not be the best of my travelogues… which I remind you are all on the blog site – about 300 of them, produced over the last 9 years).

Arrived in Coventry Sunday night – by train having started in London – to be greeted by rain. It was a short 1 hour ride from Euston Station. It was hard to get an immediate impression of the city as it was damp, cold, and dark. Settled into the “luxurious” Ramada Inn.. And then Chris and I (Chris is a colleague from UWT and we were both invited to this symposium) decided to venture out for dinner. We had heard that Spoon Street had some nice restaurants so off we went. Spoon Street is one of the few areas (about a two block strip) that is representative of old Coventry, with most of the city being destroyed during WWII. To get to Spoon Street we walked down dirt paths (a shortcut suggested by the hotel receptionist who clearly is not trained in the world of the hospitality industry that usually suggests a carefully configured and often not direct, walk that ensures you see the “best” of the city) eventually reaching the “subway” (underpass) which takes you beneath the complex road system above. The subway is important because the road is totally impassable to pedestrians and gets you from one side of a set of ring roads that are criss-crossing everywhere. After you emerge from the subway you walk between the IKEA and the Casino (another non-place) and wind up on Spoon Street (about 15 minute walk in total). So there are a handful of Medieval structures – all of which are now restaurants and bars. Many of the restaurants (including the one recommended by the hotel) were closed because it was Sunday.

We opted for an Indian restaurant which was fine (except for the canned okra in the okra curry side dish that we ordered). We walked back (same route) to the hotel and then I did some FTA work and polished up my presentation for the symposium the following day. We would be picked up (“collected” as the Brits kept referring to it.. They would “collect” us each morning) at 8 am in the morning.. After a few beers at the Indian restaurant, I’m not certain how much fine-tuning I really did.

OK.. So now why I am here and then more about Coventry and Coventry University which is the reason for my visit.

Coventry University is a fairly large (28,000 +/- students), openly ambitious “modern” British university located in this somewhat depressed (or as they say “disgustingly average”) city of about 330,000 (or 370,000 depending on who’s counting). I believe they use the term “modern” to differentiate newer universities and/or colleges and polytechnics that converted to university status in 1992 by act of the national government. It appears that Coventry has surpassed many of the others in status and based on banners hung everywhere was voted “Best Modern University in 2013 and 2014″…

Coventry University began as a training school for people in the silk industry that was the main economic driver of the city about 150 years ago. It evolved to train workers for the bicycle industry and then the automotive industry, etc. – always reflecting the jobs and companies of the city and region. It became a polytechnic some years ago – to include planning and engineering – and then when it took on university status many things changed. From a 98% local student population it is now just 30% local students, has a global footprint (but also professes to be “local”), has branch campuses in London and elsewhere in Europe and soon Asia, and is a major research university in the UK. It is still heavily tied to local industries and also attempting to “build” a modern industrial base in the area, so there are many partnerships with companies.. And to some extent they seem to be very reactive in their approach to creating programs within the university – heavily driven by external needs (of the business community).

For some reason (not completely revealed), the university administration – realizing that it was no longer very engaged with the local / regional community – decided to launch something they are calling the City University Initiative (which includes a conglomeration of programs such as the Neighborhood University, 40 x 40, the Age Project, etc., a research faculty and project directors). As background for their new initiative two senior faculty traveled to the US to visit universities they had heard had been successful at engaging with community. This included University of Illinois Chicago, Arizona State University, and University of Washington Tacoma (where as you know I am a faculty member). They had also heard (maybe even read ??) a 200-page document FTA had produced in 2007 for ASU documenting the work of many universities across the US and setting out a strategy for ASU to become socially embedded in Greater Phoenix.

After I met these folks, they decided to host a symposium with people from these universities (the ones mentioned above) to learn more and to brainstorm with their staff and leadership. So, that is why I spent 58 very intense hours in Coventry, ending early this morning when I took the train back to Euston, a taxi to Paddington, and the Heathrow Express to get to the airport by about 10:30 am to catch this flight to Houston and on to Seattle (so I can teach tomorrow).

OK. I’m not going to go into detail about the meetings.. Which would be a dissertation on its own… There were 5 Americans including me and Chris and the Coventry group included senior leadership, the president of the University, and the newly minted staff and program managers (all of them having been hired within the past few months). There were about 10 folks from Coventry (with some moving in and out depending on the topics).

The first morning included a lot of presentations from them, from us and some good Q&A (mostly the Americans asking the questions to better understand why we were invited!) We had lunch in their student cafeteria (one of many). We were all pretty shocked by the fact that you need key cards to access all buildings and also all of the rooms, including bathrooms and food places. (Obviously, you can imagine that I had a lot to say about that in relation to the idea of working with community!) Apparently all of the UK is like that with all public buildings including schools and libraries. And at the grade schools, students gain access with fingerprint machines.

The afternoon was filled with discussion and an effort to hone in on similarities and differences between the US universities and Coventry.

In the evening we all went to Coombe Abbey which was founded as a monastery in about the 12th century. It later became royal property. It has a very interesting and complicated history which I didn’t completely get… but it involved the Gunpowder Plot.. Later the same architect who designed Buckingham Palace designed an extension for the Abbey… and then for several centuries it was owned by an Earl… Then around 1960 the city of Coventry bought the property which was in disrepair and vacant.. It includes 150 acres of parkland which is public now… The very very colorful history was told to us before and after dinner by a talented orator dressed as a monk. To get to the place (about 20 minutes from town) you walk from the parking area over a moat… The building has undergone many many changes and part of it (an extension) was built in the late 1800s I think as a French chateau. An interesting California connection is that after a private owner decided to sell the property (he had been living in the place alone – all 140 rooms for himself), he decided he could make more money if he tore down large portions and sold the stone. It turns out that he sold the stone to the Hearst family for the building of St. Simeon! I guess it’s all the years with the monks and then the single owner that created many of the myths, including the belief that the place has ghosts.. Didn’t see any. If you go to Coventry, you can stay at the abbey, now turned into the hotel. It’s a real trip! Don’t check into any of the lower numbered rooms.. They’re the ones with the ghosts. There are 140 rooms in the hotel now (I think).

Dinner was a long formal event hosted by the President (whom I was seated next to) beginning with champagne toasts, moving into several courses with the main course being lamb.. Lots of desserts.. Matching wines and aperitifs…

We were collected and dropped off at the Ramada at about 11:30 pm and we 5 Americans decided to continue on at a student bar close to the hotel. We closed that place down at about 1 am.

Day two (which seemed to start about an hour after we got to the hotel to sleep) included site visits to several programs and a huge amount of walking in the rain. We passed the quite famous Coventry Cathedral – the old demolished one standing next to the new modern one. The city of Coventry has a long history of being a haven for immigrants and also a city of “reconciliation.” Both the university and the new Cathedral have a lot of programs that focus on trust, peace, and reconciliation. Some of our stops included meetings with students (from every part of the world). It’s a huge campus, but very much an urban campus with less green than we see in typical American universities. But then again it’s an urban campus.

Lunch was in a very cute part of the city – walking distance from the University. And lots more talk about how to collaborate and what that would look like. As we walked back to the offices for the Initiative we wondered why the project wasn’t located in the neighborhood we had just walked through rather than in a very official building with key card entry.

At the end of the day, we met with a group of Commonwealth Scholars (all from Africa) who had been selected competitively based on the work they were doing in their own country related to racism and peace. That was actually a fascinating conversation, although divorced from the Initiative.

Dinner was at a wonderful little Mideast restaurant called Habibi.. A lot more wine and talking and eventually heading back to the hotel after midnight.

So that sums it up… 58 hours in Coventry… 48 hours in London (see other post)… and about 40 hours of travel if I combine both directions and include travel to and from airports… There you have it.

I’m tired, am fortunately upgraded and am on that new Boeing Dream Plane. Anxious to get to Seattle to sleep in my own bed but that won’t happen until well after midnight (and my body time will be about 8 am).   See you in California on Saturday. Lots to do before Thanksgiving.

All my best –

Fern