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Staff at a university have turned to making vital equipment for frontline workers.
Those working at the University of Creative Arts (UCA), which has campuses in Rochester and Canterbury, have been busy making visors and scrubs.
They have loaned their 3D printers to staff who volunteered to print parts for face shields and ventilators.
The face shields and visors are being distributed through a central hub, which has been organised by 3DCrowd UK – a volunteer group for distributing 3D printed face shields across UK.
In one week, they distributed more than 39,000 visors to hospital trusts around the country.
Richard Jones, UCA’s faculty resources manager, who is helping coordinate the university's efforts, said: “UCA has a social responsibility, and our creative talent, flexibility and resilience makes us able to help support in this national emergency.”
Other staff have been focussing on making scrubs, joining in with scrub making efforts in Kent and Surrey, where the university's other campuses are.
Evelyn Bennett, a senior lecturer of fashion textiles at UCA Rochester responded to a callout from an NHS Foundation Trust, with a request for scrubs.
She circulated the pattern and instructions throughout the university's community to get more people to help.
The university has also donated its stock of 500 non-medical face masks to social care and ordered a further 500 FP2 face masks from suppliers to be distributed locally.
It is also planning on deploying many of the university's sewing machines, to allow more members of staff to get involved making scrubs from their homes.
