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Students and staff plant poppies at the Tower of London

Seventy Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) students and members of staff were among the volunteers who have helped create the Tower of London’s hugely popular installation, Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, which marks the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War.

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The Tower's famous moat has gradually been filled with 888,246 ceramic poppies over the past few months, with each poppy representing a British military fatality during the war.

A QMUL team joined other members of the public in the ‘planting’ of poppies across two weekends in late October and early November. The work was arranged by the Queen Mary Students’ Union Volunteering service in collaboration with Team London and various other London universities as part of London Student Volunteering Fortnight (LSVF), which runs from 25 October - 8 November.

Bronwen Eastaugh, Volunteering Assistant, Queen Mary Students’ Union, said: “There has been an overwhelming level of interest from volunteers from all over the UK to take part and the students were really aware of how privileged they were to have had the opportunity to volunteer. I would like to say a big thank you to everyone who came along to volunteer and hope that they had a worthwhile experience.”

Photographs from the day are available on the QMSU Volunteering Facebook page.

London Student Volunteering Fortnight was established in 2008 and is now an annual fixture in the calendar for student volunteers in the capital. The fortnight was created by a group of London universities who continue to collaborate in coordinating a range of volunteering events across the city.

The aim of the fortnight is to give students the opportunity to find out more about volunteering through information and taster events and in turn build relations with the community, gain new skills and make new friendships.

For more information about Queen Mary Students’ Union Volunteering, visit the website: www.qmsu.org/volunteering.

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For media information, contact:

Rupert Marquand
Media Relations Manager
email: r.marquand@qmul.ac.uk
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