Qualla: Nottingham Trent University

Nottingham Trent University: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Viencl09, CC BY 4.0. Walk into the Arkwright Building on Goldsmith Street and you walk into 1881. The Gothic gables and pinnacles were once considered, in print, 'one of the finest public buildings in Nottinghamshire' - the home of University College Nottingham, the city's first library, and a natural history museum. Today it teaches design, architecture and law to a slice of Nottingham Trent University's 38,000 students. NTU is the sixth-largest university in the UK by enrolment and the descendant of an 1843 government school of design, but most of its history happened in the last thirty years, very fast.

Image: Viencl09 | CC BY 4.0

Nottingham Trent University: From School of Design to Polytechnic

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alan Murray-Rust, CC BY-SA 2.0. The lineage begins in 1843, when the Nottingham Government School of Design opened as one of the earliest such institutions in the UK - part of a national push to wed art education to manufacturing. That school still exists, folded inside the modern School of Art & Design. After ...

Image: Alan Murray-Rust | CC BY-SA 2.0

Nottingham Trent University: Five Campuses, Five Worlds

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bryn Holmes, CC BY-SA 2.0. The university now operates across five sites that feel like five different schools. City Campus, just north of the centre, holds the Arkwright Building and the 1958 Newton - one of the tallest buildings in Nottingham, opened by Princess Alexandra of Kent - alongside the £13 mill...

Image: Bryn Holmes | CC BY-SA 2.0

Nottingham Trent University: Research and Recognition

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Retrograde, CC BY 3.0. The awards have come quickly. Times Higher Education named NTU University of the Year in 2017, The Guardian followed in 2019, and The Times and Sunday Times called it Modern University of the Year in 2018 and 2022. In the 2021 Research Excellence Framework, 86 per cent of NTU's s...

Image: Retrograde | CC BY 3.0

Nottingham Trent University: The Greenest Campus

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Viencl09, CC BY 4.0. In 2009, The People & Planet Green League named NTU 'the most environmentally friendly university in the UK', and the university has run on 100 per cent renewable electricity ever since. Between 2009 and 2012, it received four First Class awards from the Green League. Fairtrade p...

Image: Viencl09 | CC BY 4.0