Curtains up at Kingston

04/10/2010

We are delighted to announce two new Knowledge Transfer Partnership Awards

Bush Theatre

The Bush Theatre in Shepherds Bush, London, is a world-famous home for new plays. Many young writers who had their first production there are now amongst the biggest names in the business. The Bush has recently launched an exciting and innovative social networking and play-publishing website, www.bushgreen.org, and is currently the only theatre company in the country that is digitally receiving and processing unsolicited plays, of which the theatre receives more than 1,500 every year.

The School of Humanities, part of Kingston University's Faculty of Arts and Social Science will be working with the Bush Theatre on a short (40-week) Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTPs) to improve functionality and usability of www.bushgreen.org.

The aim is to create greater audience engagement; higher membership and ticket sales; increased efficiency due to reduced administration and amount of paper used; and more play downloads and productions of new plays. We are currently recruiting a graduate to take on the project, supported by the Faculty's senior lecturers, Fleeta Chew Siegel and Winsome Pinnock.

The School of Humanities is also funding the commission of a new play for the theatre. We look forward with a great deal of excitement towards developing further links with the Bush, including an internship with the Theatre for students on our successful postgraduate courses in creative writing.

Property Solutions

We are very pleased to be reaching businesses further afield with our knowledge and expertise. Property Solutions in Bristol is the UK's leading commercial service charge consultancy, focusing on clients who own a portfolio of office properties such as banks, financial services and other services companies.

The Faculty of Business and Law will be working on a two-year Knowledge Transfer Partnership with the company. A graduate, who will be supervised by Dr Andrew Holt from the Faculty, has recently been recruited as an Industry Performance Analyst to research the benchmarking of service charges with the aim to improve accounting and administration standards in the commercial service charge industry.
Property Solutions (www.property-solutions.co.uk) is looking to double its database with which it will develop a toolkit that can be used by managing agents, landlords and tenants to compare how well their buildings are being managed. David Barrass, Managing Director of Property Solutions comments:

"This unique initiative within the service charge industry provides a fantastic opportunity to jointly develop with our academic partner, Kingston University, cost effective, practical tools to assist landlords, managing agents and tenants. " 

Knowledge Transfer Partnerships

Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTP) is one of Europe's leading graduate recruitment programmes and aims to encourage innovation and improve the effectiveness of an organisation through collaboration with a university. The scheme is government sponsored and involves a three-way partnership between an organisation with a strategic challenge, a graduate who is recruited to work on the project, and an academic who provides expert support.

Keep an eye on these pages for further developments on these two exciting new KTPs!

Useful links

• Knowledge Transfer at Kingston University
• www.ktponline.org