Page 3 - Luce 2021

Fro m The P rincipal

Farewell from the Principal

Janet Clarke Hall came into being in For so many generations, our College has been a special place
1886 as a radical experiment, giving of liberation and illumination. Notwithstanding the ongoing
women a voice – or at the very least vicissitudes of COVID, we very much hope to welcome you
a physical place to study – within the back into the College in 2022. One only has to walk in the
University of Melbourne. It continues front door to feel the atmosphere, and to know that JCH is
today as a radical experiment – a special place, and something of a haven, and a motor for
perhaps increasingly so, given the body, mind and spirit. The generosity of so many alumni
global challenges to the formation of and friends has only deepened in the face of the pandemic,
intentional community prompted by highlighted by a remarkable gift which will see the rear
an increasing focus on the primacy (Coppel) Courtyard redesigned in early 2022.
of individual identity. Over the last two years, the experiment
has been made more radical by the continuing effects of As I finish my time of service to the College, I feel immense
the global pandemic, in which exhaustion and a degree of gratitude for those who came before me, and particularly
pragmatism might have been expected to creep in, within and those principals and chairs of Council who resolutely
beyond the College. maintained and improved the College through times thick and
thin, while dreaming and willing its continuing evolution and
Yet as our Artist-in-Residence Alice Pung so clearly expressed development.
it in The Age late in 2021, we have all been ‘very lucky to
live and work in a place where lockdown does not mean Thanks to everyone for your good wishes and support over the
dreary isolation, but its opposite’ – with COVID offering one years. Every best wish to my successor, Dr Eleanor Spencer-
silver lining by requiring a less frenetic pace to term time as Regan, and to all those who will carry the College forward in
conversations within the College were allowed to ‘take time, the years to come.
and take on an extra depth’. So we held together, and we
ended the year with belief in the future and hopes to prosper Dr Damian Powell
in 2022. (Principal 2001-2022)

Dr Damian Powell
painted this
depiction of JCH and
presented it as a gift
to the College at the
Council Dinner on
1 December 2021.

J an e t C l ar ke H a l l 3