Getting Serious about Leisure

Petia Petrova (UWE Bristol), Sam Elkington (Teesside University), and Kat Branch (UWE Bristol)

Both positive student experience (and therefore retention) and staff wellbeing and morale require the maintenance of rich social lives and holistic identities beyond academic work.

The pandemic has increased pressure even further on work/life balance for academic staff, whilst reducing the university experience for students to mainly programme-related teaching and learning activities. This session discusses both why and how we can maintain our own wellbeing as staff, and also for our students.

This session argues that HEIs need to focus on two key areas to support staff and student wellbeing. Firstly, we need to support our staff, and students, to develop approaches to prioritising activities outside formal academic work. Secondly, that spaces for serious leisure pursuits should be made open and accessible to all staff and students.

The session will share how a podcast series about reflecting on experiences and approaches to prioritising leisure activity, through the lens of Stebbins’ Serious Leisure concept, and drawing on the Arts and Health discourse, was found to be an impactful intervention to develop such approaches. The session will explore how similar interventions, can be employed to influence student development and thinking, about the
place of leisure in student and professional lives.

This presentation will draw on the experiences of UWE Bristol’s unusual Centre for Music, which provides free music services and facilities for all staff and students at UWE Bristol. And how this is found to be an important part for the student and staff experiences for those involved, by offering accessible spaces where both come together outside of formal
course and role-bound structures and boundaries.

Brighter Future – Opportunities for Educational Change:
What have we learned from over a year of the ‘new abnormal’? How are we applying what we have learned? How are we reimagining how we engage in educational change to ensure the most positive student experience? The SEDA Spring Conference 2021 (held online because of Covid-19) provided opportunities for participants to reflect, discuss and share lessons learned from the teaching approaches adopted during this past academic year as institutions and individuals responded to the global pandemic. The conference served as a collegiate space to consider the insights and implications for practice and the potential for further development.

More about SEDA and the Spring Conference 2021 can be found on the SEDA website: https://www.seda.ac.uk/events/spr-con...

higher education leisure wellbeing