I’d like to welcome everyone to the Department for the New Academic Year – students new and old, under-and-postgraduate, BA, MA and PhD, as well as the hard-working staff who keep the show on the road (including myself). To our freshers: congratulations on achieving your place here at Goldsmiths. To those of you who are returning: it will be good to see you again – and keep up the hard work.

As the new Head of Theatre and Performance, I’m looking forward to working with you all to make the Department (and the World) a better place. If that sounds a little facile, please take it in earnest. I’m lucky to be stepping into the position at a time of positive change for College, with a new Warden, Professor Frances Corner, taking up the reins. One of our new goals is the greening of Goldsmiths, to make our University environment sustainable.

That is only one example, given the uncertain political future and the pressures facing education, of the ways in which it will be important for us to act together: to celebrate what we do well and to find solutions where we face challenges. That means embracing a kind of citizenship – and also maybe friendship, too.  After all, what does the beginning of Term mean, if not the sizing up of a task, and the making of new friends, and the meeting of old?

– Ben