Things hot up as outreach work goes inside

Campus may be empty, but Joe Baden is going into over-drive.

For a while Goldsmiths, University of London, is like the Mary Celeste : there's an almost eerie feel to the empty corridors, disrupted infrequently by wandering admin staff, the occasional security guard and the odd academic who has yet to make his or her annual sojourn to the south of France.

For many backroom people, this is the lull before the proverbial storm. As many of our colleagues depart for the summer they leave behind the invisible workers who keep the engine room ticking over until the mayhem of enrolment.

But even this facade of inactivity is soon broken as exuberant adolescent English language summer school students arrive like a conquering Roman legion.

At the Open Book widening access project the summer brings no let-up. In fact, the everyday mania goes into overdrive as the culmination of the previous year's outreach work to addiction agencies, prisons and myriad other organisations moves to a crescendo. Those who have taken exams this year and hope to gain university places face tears of sadness or joy and our support network has to be ready to deal with the former. Students coming to terms with the massive anticlimax of final-year exams also need back-up. Development plans are also coming to fruition and the normal workload continues to mount.

Not that I'm complaining - the summer period is as inspiring as it is exhausting. We have a range of programmes in gestation, including working with Goldsmiths and King's College London student unions to provide drop-in sessions at Wandsworth prison to interest inmates in higher education.

Perhaps most exciting is a project with Aspire AimHigher. The partnership - Goldsmiths, King's, Greenwich and London South Bank universities, plus a number of further education institutions - is going into local schools to support non-traditional students. As usual, Open Book is going after those who are way beyond the fringes of our academies - young people in Pupil Referral Units. Now we have the institutional and financial backing of a partnership.

The project is at an early stage: we are looking at a range of options and working on a strict protocol for engagement. Ideas include getting Open Book students, many of whom attended similar units when they were at school, to act as positive educational role models and to debate relevant life topics with excluded pupils.

Open Book workers could draw on how going into higher education has changed their lives. We are also considering worst-case scenarios and contrasting these with other options. For example, older pupils could visit inmates at a local prison. We are not talking about the ludicrous short-sharp-shock approach but a frank and open discussion with prisoners about the realities of incarceration. The same pupils could then visit all the partnership universities to discuss the realities of college life with students. As yet, nothing has been decided other than that whatever we do has to be continuous and sustained.

There is one other certainty: it has been a busy summer and so, happily, it will be a busier autumn, winter and spring.

Joe Baden is project manager, Agency for Non-traditional Students, Goldsmiths, University of London.

Next week: Jens Krause