Lucy Capewell (1963 – 2011)

Her funeral and a service to celebrate her life took place at Cambridge City Crematorium, Huntingdon Road, on Monday, 16 May 2011. 

Lucy joined the University in 2006, after a 20-year career in broadcasting, most of which she spent working on television documentaries. Her brief at Cambridge was to lead the development of “new” or web-based media, and in particular to explore new avenues through which information about the University’s research could be delivered to a worldwide audience online.

Despite the complex and sometimes daunting nature of that task, Lucy had a clear vision about the direction in which the University’s new media operation needed to travel. Early in 2007, she told its research magazine, ‘Research Horizons’: “Universities are a good example of where world-class research and education can be married with award-winning TV documentary skills to deliver a range of content. In the future, we will see major institutions becoming their own broadcaster.”

Lucy spent the next four years realising that vision. Initially, she headed an operation called “Cambridge Media”, a joint venture between the Office of Communications and the Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technologies with collaboration from Apple. Cambridge Media produced a range of videos about the University’s work, including six short films about the Cambridge Science Festival. These were an instant hit, achieving 10,000 views and streams within just 10 days of their release.

This success laid the ground for a series of projects in the Office of External Affairs and Communications which dramatically changed the way in which Cambridge communicated its research to the wider world. In particular, Lucy was responsible for the creation of ‘Cambridge Ideas’, a flagship series of short films and audio-podcasts made by a team of broadcast professionals, showcasing a wide variety of cutting edge research projects.

Initially launched as part of the 800th anniversary celebrations in 2009, the films were a major success. Lucy drove this project with characteristic energy and imagination. She was involved variously in scripting and editing the films as well as acting as overall commissioning editor for the project.

Perhaps less well-recognised was the enormous effort she put into creating an infrastructure around new media. Lucy spent many long hours ensuring that there was a legal framework in place to support the production of filmed and audio content. She acquired the hardware the University needed to make its own films and led the creation of a new edit suite. Almost as an afterthought, she also introduced the equipment dozens of Cambridge researchers now use to carry out live interviews with media organisations around the world.

These developments were instrumental in turning Cambridge’s communications arm into a genuinely multimedia operation. Lucy arranged for staff to be trained in broadcast and digital media, with the result that, aside from ‘Cambridge Ideas’, numerous other films and recordings about Cambridge research have been created and made available to a global audience. She also acquired the platforms needed to take this content to the world – the University owes its presence on channels such as YouTube and iTunesU to her hard work.

Behind the scenes, however, Lucy’s tireless work was the single most important force in ensuring that Cambridge’s efforts to promote its research in new media are now fit for the future. Most importantly, she will be fondly remembered by the many friends she made along the way, both in the Office of External Affairs and Communications, and at the University as a whole.

Donations for Cancer Research UK were collected in Lucy’s memory.