Tag: Faculties

e-MasterClass 2001

On the 19th June 2001 Sir Richard Sykes, then Rector of Imperial College, launched the first e-MasterClass with a broadcast to distinguished guests from government and other institutions in Britain, Australia and Thailand. The launch was preceded with the statement “Topical debate between masters at the cutting edge of scientific research and peer group scientists and industrialists around the world will be launched next month in what is believed to be the first e-MasterClass of its kind”. This first 40-minute presentation about healthcare policy was chaired by Chris Toumazou and was held in the video conferencing suite, which at the time was located next to the TV Studio on the level 2 walkway.

The technology used to link the various locations was Video Conferencing using ISDN2. The equipment allowed the ‘multipointing’ of the three sites into a split screen which meant that participants could all see and hear other with very little time delay. Images were viewed on 50 inch Plasma screens, something back then that was both new and expensive.

Press release information following the second e-MasterClass announced “Professor Ara Darzi impressed participants at the University of New South Wales, Australia, with a presentation entitled Look no hands — an exploration in cybersurgery which encapsulated his team’s dynamic new approach to micro-surgery and robotics and set out his vision for the future of surgery”.

Professor David Phillips presentation

 

 

Live Internet streaming came later

The e-MasterClass, as originally intended, carried on for just over a year when they turned in Schools e-MasterClass. These potentially had a wider audience and continued Imperial’s links with schools in general. On the 10 July 2002 David Phillips from Imperial and colleague Steven Bown from UCL gave “A little light relief”. Again a pre-event announcement said “A Little Light Relief”, will provide an interactive overview of the subject that will give Year 9, 10 and 11 students the opportunity to engage with scientific developments” In the recording of the event (below) you will notice that the chairman is Noel Edmonds. He owned the Video Meeting Company which supplied Imperial with the Video Conferencing equipment. As publicity, he was persuaded to take part.

These initial events were successful. But the schools were all connecting using ISDN2 which few other schools had available. It was obvious we needed to revert to using the Internet which all schools did have available. However, what no one had told us at the time was that almost none of the schools could Video Conference connect to IP addresses outside of their own grid (for security reasons). So, we started to stream events in parallel on the Web. Again, schools could not connect as they were limited to a strict list of URL’s. None of the schools were prepared to change this list and slowly over just a few years the whole e-MasterClass just stopped!

In 2001 we made a promotional video to show the potential of the original  e-MasterClass. The video is largely based on Richard Sykes presentation in June of that year. It includes shots showing what the remote end of the links were seeing. These days the technology allows people to link from their computers and this gives the possibility to link at night, but to do so from your home not from a University room. There is the obvious fact that very long distance ‘live’ teaching, such as the original e-MasterClass idea, is totally governed by TIME. A time difference between London and Sydney of 11 hours makes it very difficult to bring together people who (at 10pm at night in Sydney) would rather be at home, than watching academics talking in London. Time-Difference was one of the reasons for the downfall of the original e-MasterClass. But, what we did worked and maybe just proved a point that Imperial can do such things. I had fun with these events and the tension of things going wrong was always there. The e-MasterClass was, perhaps, a little too early in terms of the technology available at its start in 2001 and could be superseded by things like Skype available on your computer at work or home.

Note that the web/email links on the video will no longer work!

Still photographs by Neville Miles.

Colin Grimshaw February 2013

Centenary Ceremony: 9 July 2007

The Centenary of the foundation of the College was celebrated on 9 July 2007 with a ceremony in the presence of Her Majesty The Queen and His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh. The Queen and Duke also opened the College’s new Institute of Biomedical Engineering before taking part in an honorary graduation ceremony that saw the first ever Imperial degrees awarded to five distinguished figures, including His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh.

The ceremony followed the bestowal of a Royal Charter by Her Majesty The Queen that declares the College an independent university in its own right after its withdrawal from the University of London.

The visit cemented a long-standing relationship between the UK’s Royal Family and Imperial. The College stands on land purchased with the profits of Prince Albert’s Great Exhibition of 1851 in fulfilment of his vision for a centre of science and culture in South Kensington.

The event was recorded for posterity and at the same time relayed live via web links to all parts of Imperial College, whether on the South Kensington Campus or not. Three cameras covered the ceremony from different angles and I mixed the event live at the time. What you see here is the full unedited live coverage version and please note that unlike BBC broadcasts of such events, there is no added commentary. The ceremony took place in the College’s main entrance hall with special staging having been built for the occasion. Rector at the time was Sir Richard Sykes. The recording runs for just over 30 minutes.

Colin Grimshaw December 2012

Promotion: 3 – Chemistry 1981-1985

In “Promotion: 1” (March 2010), I mentioned the Civil Engineering and Chemistry Departments. In June 1981 I was asked to take on the task of making a promotional video for the Chemistry Department.

The Chemistry Building in March 2002

This was intended to promote all aspects of what the department did and to assist in the recruitment of new students. I also recall it being shown at Open Days which seemed obvious . Two members of the staff were appointed as ‘producers’ so most of the content and the wording of the voiceovers was decided for me. Looking back at the video over 30 years later it has too much in it. The history section seems unnecessary and there’s too much detail in the various elements featured. It runs for nearly 20 mins which is about two thirds too long in todays modern YouTube video world. Leave them wanting more is the theory, not wanting to leave the room as soon as the video has eventually finished! This was one of two videos made for the department, the second being made four years later in July 1985. It’s worth noting that both of these videos were made using our original colour camera. It needed massive amounts of light (as mentioned in the Library video) and suffered ‘smearing’ on highlights, the colour itself was none too brilliant either!

The second video was also far too long but did, thank goodness, have Professor Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson in it. He appeared because he was then head of department. Being a Nobel Prize winner it was considered important and prestigious to feature him. I said thank goodness because it has given us the only interview recorded with him whilst at Imperial, an archive gem. Like the first video in 1981 I had little control over the content. It seemed that almost everything including the kitchen sink appeared in the video. I truly ‘cringe’ when I watch it, especially the Kensington Gardens sequence! One of the few times I managed to get my way was on the intro sequence. I used so called ‘production music’ rather than music created by a family member as in the first video. The video does use, for the first time, electronic effects. The multi-picture sequence later on and during the opening where the image slides down were all very new at the time. Now, these are common place and all achievable on a computerised edit suite, but we had a dedicated box to do it that cost thousands of pounds.

The original Dalby Court in 1985

On an historical note, the first person you see talking is located in a lovely garden area…that’s where the ‘blue box’ Faculty Building is now standing! You’ll also see Princes Gardens, as it then was, in the summer of 1985. Between 1981 and 1993 I made around 10 teaching videos that were used on various ‘lab days’ to show the students how do undertake the experiments they had to do. It was considered more effective to show one correct version of an experiment, rather than several slightly different versions by several different people based around the labs. I’ll try and get some of these on line soon. Maybe you had to do one of these experiments whilst at Imperial?

Also, if you are featured in any of these videos do let us know. The two still photos were by my former colleague Neville Miles, who like me, helped to capture some of the history of Imperial College in the many photographs he took over the years.

Colin Grimshaw November 2012

Royal Albert Hall and Commemoration Day

Once again we are in October and it’s time for the Graduates to visit the Royal Albert Hall for Imperial College’s Commemoration Day.

Commemoration Day in 2011

This brief entry is to remind you of the post I made two years ago this month. That post contains all that we have in terms of archive audio/visual material relating to the ceremony. Most importantly, of course, we do have the sound recording of King George 6th from 1945. And to just repeat myself: The October Commemoration Day graduation ceremonies recall the visit made to the College by King George 6th and Queen Elizabeth in 1945, on the centenary of the foundation of the Royal College of Chemistry, Imperial College’s oldest forerunner.

You will also read in that previous entry about the difficulties associated with the transfer of these original sounds recordings from 78rpm discs and ‘paper’ magnetic tape. Both are now saved into digital form.

Go direct to my October 2010 blog entry.

Colin Grimshaw October 2012

Events: St Mary’s Merger Ceremony 1988

On the 19th October 1988 the beginning of the mergers with the medical schools started. This was the merger between Imperial College of Science and Technology and St Mary’s Hospital Medical School, located just north of Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park at Paddington. The end result of the mergers was the formation of the Faculty of Medicine.

St Mary's campus
St Mary’s main entrance arch

To my knowledge this is only the second time that the college’s Great Hall has played host to a royal event. The first of these was the opening of the building (then called College Block and subsequently Sherfield Building) and the hall itself by HM the Queen in 1969. The hall was packed as you would imagine and that didn’t leave all that much room for the two cameras and tripods we had proposed for the live recording. We were also limited in terms of man-power so my colleague Chris Roberts operated the main camera whilst I located the second camera next to where I had the vision mixer and recorders. This meant that I could not only cut between the cameras, but also operate the second camera to change the shots slightly. What I could not cope with was the fact than when people stood up, they almost blocked the shots from the camera next to me.

The ceremony starts with the fanfare “St Mary’s”. There are then several musical interludes during which you’ll see a very young Richard Dickins and these 22 years later I must apologise to Richard because we got the spelling of his name wrong on our end credits. But, it’s a wonderful record of music from the college symphony orchestra playing Walton’s ‘Crown Imperial’. Also the late Eric Brown conducts the college choir with music from Carmina Burana.  And finally in terms of music you’ll hear the electronic organ that’s located within the hall. Princess Anne, (The Princess Royal) as Chancellor of the University of London presented the Chairman of the Governing Body (Sir Henry Fisher) with a specially bound copy of the Imperial College Act and its revised Charter. The Imperial College Rector at the time was Professor (later Sir) Eric Ash.

As always, I’ve had to tweak the image on the video to make it look at bit better. Technology has advanced a lot since this was recorded and the lighting levels required to get good images is a lot lower these days. The Great Hall have never been fantastic for shooting video unless extra light is thrown at the stage area and that then leaves the audience rather dark, whilst the wood panels around the hall make a very warm image when light bounces off it. The whole video is around 45 minutes in duration.

Colin Grimshaw September 2010

Tywarnhale Mine, Cornwall, April 1980

RSM sign at the Tywarnhale mine site
RSM sign at the Tywarnhale mine site

It’s funny how things happen by chance. This months entry is a bit like that. I thought it was about time I made use of some of the footage that we have of the college’s Tywarnhale mine in Cornwall, when I looked at the label on the tapes I noticed that it was 30 years ago this month, April 1980 that I went down to Cormwall. The mine and surrounding land (purchased in 1909/11 with extra land purchased in 1912) was sold by Imperial in about 2005. Here’s a BBC Cornwall web page about the sale dated 15th October 2005. As we couldn’t find any real photos of it in the college’s archives, the picture of the RSM sign is from one of the videotapes I shot. Here’s a brief history of the mine from the “Cornwall Calling” website. Please click on MORE to continue..

Camerawork at the old tin mine at Tywarnhale in Cornwall
Colin on camera at the college’s mine at Tywarnhale, Cornwall in April 1980

The videos you’ll see were all shot about 9 months after we received our new colour portable recording equipment. This all sounds amazing, but the early equipment was not a camcorder like the ones used now. It was a camera connected to a stand-alone videorecorder, and that was a heavy piece of kit and so was the camera. The entire unit ran from what are called sealed lead acid batteries and were the main cause of it all being so heavy (a bit like a car battery but smaller). To make matters worse, these batteries were in both the camera and recorder. If you look at the photo you’ll see a small black box at the back of the camera containing one of these batteries.

Colin with a car full of recording equipment. Note the camera connected to the recorder.
Colin with a car full of recording equipment. Note the camera connected to the recorder by a long extension cable.

Shooting video underground was a new experience for me and former colleague Stephen Bell who come back to help me out for the few days we were down in Cornwall. We needed to hire battery lighting and create a way to protect the equipment (which of course was brand new) from the various elements we faced: water dripping down, heat and of main concern, humidity. A way was found to wrap equipment in polythene, but allow a way to operate it without unwrapping it! We found dry areas to park the recorder and run out an extension camera cable to where I was located. In most cases the cable ran in deep water from point a to point b and this photo gives an idea of what we took with us and how it connected together.

Steve Bell takes turn to operate the camera
Steve Bell takes turn to operate camera high up on the misty mine  hillside

When speaking with Steve about this blog he mentioned that this was the first time he’d ever seen the ‘humidity’ light illuminate on a videorecorder. Indeed this happened several times when underground and, because of moisture, we had to remove videotape that was stuck to the video head drum. Needless to say, these tapes were then useless, so we lost a good few recordings. It’s also rather difficult trying to take the lid off of a video recorder when you’re underground and trying to see what you’re doing with a miner’s lamp on your helmet being the only source of light! Jumping forward to this year, 2010, it’s been a struggle with some of the U-matic tapes making them playback correctly. Time has not been too kind to them and all the problems underground didn’t help (moisture). But, they’re all now backed-up onto DVD from where these clips have now come.

This first video sequence is taken from the car being driven by Steve. I’m hanging out of the car window with a very large and heavy camera. You’ll also notice that this, and all other shots, will look a bit ‘soft’ and almost ghostly. This is because our very early colour camera had what is called a Vidicon tube inside it. These camera tubes required large amounts of light to get good pictures. As you’ll see, the weather was not brilliant and was very misty. None of this helped the situation. Thus the shots are rubbish compared to material shot these days. This video shows the original college buildings along the entire site.

This next video shows: students walking along the road along side the mine; Dr Thomas explaining how to use various instruments; a student entering the mine via ladder down the vertical shaft and two sequences showing students working underground. Now, it’s worth remembering that Steve and I had to enter via this same entrance carrying all of our equipment. We did have help, but camera, recorder, tripod, lights and spare batteries & tapes are difficult to carry when going down a vertical ladder! And, of course we were kitted out with the same outfits with: boot; helmet and safety lights etc. We all came out at the end, more than a bit dirty and very wet indeed.

Tywarnhale Mine area map (early 1900's)
Tywarnhale Mine area map (c1920?)

The original 1911 purchase document says that the purchase was to “…enable the Professors and Students of the college , including the Royal School of Mines, to use the levels, above adit level, of the South Towan Mine in the manor of Tywarnhaile…”  There are two interesting things I’ve spotted in searching for this information, one is the spelling of Tywarnhale. I’ve found three versions: Tywarnhale, Tywarnhaile and Tywarnhayle. But I’ve gone with the version as seen in the photo of the sign that was outside the main building. Also, in the original document it’s referred to as South Towan Mine not Tywarnhale. If you know any more on this matter we’d love to know so we can get the history correct.

Tywarnhale Mine c1950's
Tywarnhale Mine c1950’s/60”s

There are very few photos of the mine in the college archive, so, if you have any that you would like to donate or would allow to be copied, then Anne Barrett, of the College Archives, would love to hear from you. And, as always it’s thanks to her for sourcing the material that we do have available. It’s very lucky that the video footage was shot and that we have at least some record of our former students working in it. If YOU are one of those shown in the videos then please do comment, we’d love to hear from you. It’s been interesting to run through all these tapes again after these 30 years and remembering all the major technical issues we had to overcome. But not too pleasant remembering how wet it was underground and how the weather was typically UK that week. These recordings are a perfect example of what archiving is all about, remembering our past and our history. The fact that this ‘outpost’ was part of Imperial College from 1911 until about 2005 is something that most people are simply unaware of.

Oh and one last thought….I thought it was an old Tin mine, but all other references seem to say that it was Copper…..30 years have certainly confused me!

Colin Grimshaw April 2010 (updated 2016)

In 2016 Michael Hulmes added this useful comment to the blog post:

The guy swinging on the rope, in white overalls and blue undershirt in the underground video is Geoff Perry. I suspect his colleague with his back to the camera is Paul Dayton-Lewis. The red haired guy in the video being instructed by Dr Thomas is Philip Sharman. All were in the Mining Engineering class which spent six weeks at Tywarnhale through easter 1980

Promotion: 1 – Imperial College

In one way or another, ever since we’ve had the use of video as a medium we have used it to promote things. You will have already seen in other posts the promotion of specific research projects or research groups and so on. But we’re going to start another series that shows how we’ve tried to promote the college as a whole. I’ll also mention that we’ll see how individual departments have tried this too, examples being: Chemistry, Civil Engineering and the Management School (now Business School), so watch out for those blog entries coming sometime soon.

To coincide with the 1985 centenary of the City and Guilds College an impressive exhibition was put on in the Junior Common Room in the Sherfield Building. Although this was primarily research work, schools were invited and special lectures and tours were held, Therefore, very large numbers of school children were going to visit the college  and there was, of course, huge possibilities for student recruitment. So, two promotional videos were (initially) commissioned to promote the college to school children and to potential postgraduates. This was also the first time that moving aerial footage was taken of both the South Kensington and Silwood campuses. The only unfortunate thing was that the footage was shot in January and we’d just had a downfall of snow, so the campuses don’t look too inviting!

The undergraduate promotion video was called “Studying for the Future” and shows all of the usual things to excite potential undergrads. Once again, the nice thing about this and the other videos, is the wonderful record of college life. Also, the campus as it then was, is recorded with the current students and staff going about their daily lives. I wonder how many alumni might actually spot themselves in some of the shots?

A second video was made at the same time. This was to show the research work and activies going on at Imperial and was entitled “Discovering the Future”. I hope you’ve spotted the trend with these titles of the videos all following a certain style with the “….the Future”? A large proportion of this second video was also seen in the video made for undergraduates. The theme used was of a ‘research file’ concept and when you see the video you’ll understand what I mean. And, can those former Blue Peter TV programme viewers spot Valerie Singleton doing the voiceover in this second video?

Next time I’ll show you a third video for those considering taking a masters degree. Can you guess what the title might be?

Colin Grimshaw March 2010

Silwood Park

In 1982 we made a video that was a co-production between the TV Studio and STOIC (Student Television Of Imperial College). The students had been keen to make a video about the life and workings of Silwood Park, the college’s field station near Ascot in Berkshire. Their resources were limited to allow this and it would have meant that the video would have been made in black and white. So, I offered to work with them to make something better and in colour. I’m glad we went down this route because now we have a unique record of life there in the early 1980’s. We’ll come onto talking about the video later on.

Silwood’s history is quite long and to help me out, here’s a snippet from the college’s page on “Silwood Park – Past and Present”….

“Imperial College acquired Silwood Park and Ashurst in 1947, as a Field Station to provide a site for research and teaching in those aspects of Biology not well suited for the main London campus. The Manor House is the original Silwood Park house, built in 1878, designed by Alfred Waterhouse, who also designed the Natural History Museum in London, South Kensington and Strangeway Prison.  Silwood was requisitioned as a military hospital and convalescent home during WWII, so when the College took it over in 1947 it was surrounded by bleak, but useful, single-storey wards and offices.  Some still survive; the present Refectory, Stores and Field Course laboratories are gems of the period. Presumably no-one in 1940 anticipated a working life of over sixty years for these ‘temporary’ edifices.”

To read the full story on Silwood Park’s 75 years click here.

The estate is some 250 acres in size. To help give you an overview of this, I’ve found some of the aerial shots of the campus taken in 2008. My colleague Martin Sayers went, with a camera crew, on a morning’s shoot around all of the college’s campuses. The pictures were actually shot in high definition using a gyro-stabilised camera, mounted in a twin-engine squirrel helicopter.  The helicopter was flown from Redhill Aerodrome.

I recently discovered a batch of old 8mm cine films shot for various TV programmes made by STOIC. Back in the early days, we, and STOIC alike, had no means to shoot video outside of the TV Studio – other than using very long cables. To be able to show things outside, STOIC resorted to using 8mm movie film. This was cut and run into a programme with a sound commentary added live at the time. As time progressed, a small magnetic sound stripe was added to the film and this allowed a commentary to be synched directly to the film well in advance of the programme being recorded on videotape.

What I found was some film, shot in 1970 (click red icon above). This was from the very first STOIC news programme called “IC Newsreel” recorded on 17 February 1970 (shown the following day in the Junior Common Room).  The item is about a Touchstone weekend that was held at Silwood Park. These came out of an idea by former Rector Roderic Hill and started in around March 1950. The weekends were run with the idea where  “…students could discuss a range of topics (many of current interest) together with experts…”

If you can identify anyone in the film please let me know via the comments option at the bottom of this page. Ken McDowall (1909-1997) was appointed to run General Studies in 1952 and also to take over the Touchstone weekends and you can see him in the film, appearing to be providing some alcoholic relief to some of the students! There is an archive edition of Felix on Ken McDowall, see page 4.

You may have also spotted Silwood Park being used in the video “Translations: Engineering Design 2020AD” which is featured in the blog on Professor Bob Spence (1933-2024). We used the grounds and main house for most of the video. The sequence showing the dinner party was shot in the main entrance hall.

And so now on to that Silwood Park documentary we made in 1982. For those who know Silwood Park and the people who were there at the time this will, I hope, bring back some happy memories. You’ll see Professor Michael Way, then Director of Silwood, talking about the field station and what it does. Also featured are many people involved in research including Professor (then Dr) Graham Matthews who at the time was running the overseas spraying machinery centre. Dr Matthews demonstrates the electrostatic spraying ‘bozzel’ technique developed with ICI and when he operates it you’ll hear a click on the audio from the static charge.

A sequence, shot out in the fields, shows the work being carried out on the ‘black bean aphid’.  At the Reactor Centre (above, right), Dr McMahan discusses the work and role of the University of London centre and we get a unique look inside the reactor whilst it’s operating. Professor (then Dr) Bob Sinden discusses his research work on Malaria. This interview is interesting because it was shot at Ashurst Lodge, sold six years later in 1988. The whole video is a snapshot of life and work at Silwood Park in the early 1980’s. The presenter and interview is Tracy Dudley (nee Poole) who was an active member and presenter with STOIC for many years. You will see more of her in other videos I’ll be featuring from STOIC’s archive that we now house.

Colin Grimshaw February 2010

City and Guilds College

Margaret Thatcher Opening Tech2000

My involvement with the City and Guilds College (C&G) started during its centenary year in 1985. A week of celebrations were held (26 February – 1 March) and as part of that the Junior Common Room was transformed into an impressive exhibition called Tech2000. The exhibition was officially opened by the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Can you spot the famous handbag in the photo?

Besides making some 12 individual videos for various exhibits, an official video record of the week was also commissioned. This would capture the build-up, the opening and tour of the exhibits by the Prime Minister and the banquet held at the Guild Hall with the main speaker being HRH Prince Philip and this itself was not without its own problems. I was told in advance that we could not use too many lights when recording his speech because he didn’t like lights in his face.

Prince Philip at the Guild Hall

The problem was the size of the Guild Hall and the area we were trying to cover. Illumination within the hall was to be mostly from the candles on the tables, but this was far too low for our camera. A compromise was reached and we used a 2kw floodlight that would only be switched on moments before any one of the speeches started. Although this sounded good, we were located high up on a balcony some distance away, so the end result was better, but not great. It was also such a vast increase in light levels (compared to the candles) that actually switching the light on caused most of the people to turn around and look up at us! Although I’d requested a feed from the sound system to plug into our video recorder, I had not actually spoken with the engineers operating it on the night. Everything turned out OK and we received a cable with audio from the hall sound system. We were intending to video record most things, but our tapes would only run for 20 minutes at a time, so tape changes were going to have to be made. I was concerned that from an archives point-of-view we should not lose any of the speeches. I asked the engineer if he had been asked to make a sound recording of the whole evening, only to discover that no one had thought to do so! This was corrected and the tapes now reside in the college archive.

Let me just mention Prof Bruce Sayers (1928-2008) who was Dean of City and Guilds at the time.  In fact he was Dean during the period 1984-1988 and again from 1991-1993. It was during his last period in office that Bruce commissioned the first video to be made showcasing City and Guilds – that was in 1993 with a second following in 1994 and a final in 1998.  The 1993 video was more of an historical look-back at City and Guilds, with the further two looking more at the research work within the departments making up C&G. So, back to the C&G centenary and the video that covers the events making up the week. Hopefully it gives a flavour of what was happening within C&G and is also a wonderful snapshot of Imperial College life in 1985.

“City and Guilds, a celebration” was made in 1993. It was, as the title suggests, a celebration of C&G from its earliest times, right up to the date of making the video. We found some interesting photographs and film to help illustrate a commentary recorded by Bruce Sayers himself. We had previously discovered the film of the old City and Guilds building (1960), so we looked for more visuals that C&G alumni might remember. We achieved this with some film shot in 1928 of both “Sports Day” and “Morphy Day”. At that time, Sports Day was clearly still being held at the Stamford Bridge ground of Chelsea Football Club (this apparently being the case until the 1930’s). The film shows a lot more of sports day than we had time for in the video and this is something that I’ll feature in more detail in a later blog. You will see a couple of shots of the Queen’s Tower from a distance. These were from a hotel long since demolished.  Located near Gloucester Road tube station the Forum Hotel had a number of floors almost equal to the Queen’s Tower in height. A simple phone call gained us access to their roof area and the result was some splendid views of London and the Queen’s Tower. Going back briefly to the 1960 film of the old guilds building it’s worth mentioning that this was an amazing discovery that was made after Sir Owen Saunders died in 1993. The 16mm colour film was found in his office drawer and passed to the college archivist who in turn asked me to see what it was! We’ll show that complete colour film in a later blog.

One person mentioned in that video was Herbert Cecil Booth (City and Guilds 1893) who invented the process of cleaning fabrics by sucking air through them. More can be seen on him in Tim Hunkin’s TV programme “The Secret Life of the Vacuum Cleaner“.

In 1994 we were asked to make a follow up which was to be called “City and Guilds College 1994 – an update”. This was very much a promotion for the research work being carried out within City and Guilds. It also included a section with Bob Schroter talking about the Old Centralian’s Trust fund, the charitable arm of the City & Guilds College Association.   To give a flavour of the departments featured, research work was shown from Civil Engineering; Aeronautics; Electrical Engineering; Chemical Engineering to name but a few. Having just celebrated 10 years of operation, the Centre for Composite Materials showed their work relating to the aircraft industry, whilst Bio Mechanics demonstrated the work being carried out on knee joints. Again, this video’s audience was industry and alumni, particularly those overseas. Unlike the previous video, we commissioned a professional voice-over which was read by former BBC ‘Tomorrow’s World’ presenter Michael Rodd.

The final video made with Bruce Sayers for City and Guilds was in February 1998 and was entitled “City and Guilds: the challenges of tomorrow”. It makes reference that this was now 12 years into C&G’s second century and the fact that many changes were going on within Imperial College. In fact this video is a nice record of the South Kensington campus just a few years before major rebuilding works would change its appearance with: the new main entrance and Business School on Exhibition Road; Dalby Court and the (then) new Faculty Building.

For the very first time the City and Guilds Institute was mentioned and it’s connection with C&G explained. We went to their central London headquarters to get shots both outside and inside. Following on from this we shot at one of their lunches held each year at the college, which is attended by fellows of the C&G Institute and the Rector of Imperial. At the time of making the video the construction of the new Sir Alexander Fleming building was well into the completion stages and shots of both the initial building work and completed building were shown. Dame Julia Higgins, a former Dean of C&G, spoke about the many changes across the campus with the opening of the new SAF building and the intake of many new medical students.

The video ends by asking the question:  “What would City and Guilds look like in 2025 and would those who know it now, recognise it then?”

Colin Grimshaw – January 2010 updated June 2021