Principal's Medal: Oliver Savage
Tuesday 25 June 2019
I should now like to introduce the Principal’s Medal. This award was inaugurated ten years ago with a gift from three anonymous donors and is supported by Ede and Ravenscroft, believed to be the oldest firm of tailors and robe-makers in the world.
The award of the Principal’s Medal recognises students who display exceptional endeavour and achievement during their time at St Andrews. The awards are open to final-year undergraduates, and to postgraduates in any discipline. The achievements celebrated are academic as well as sporting, musical, or other attainments.
For the academic year 2018-2019, the Principal’s Medal is being presented to three outstanding students. Today we recognise Oliver Savage, who has just received his Master of Arts in English Literature and Modern History.
Oli’s nomination references the intellectual strides he has made in both of his subject areas. Oli was placed on the Dean’s List for academic achievement in his third year and made the list again this year. I’m delighted to note he has been awarded a First.
Oli’s time in St Andrews is notable for his profound engagement with student theatre, which has been so extensive that one of his tutors described him as ‘superhuman’, insisting that there must be a secret clone because ‘one person could [not] have achieved all that Oli has’. In the Spring of his first year here he developed his own theatre company, Black Box, which has not only supported the international tour and Edinburgh Fringe residencies of his own productions, but which now financially supports other groups in St Andrews interested in staging experimental drama. Oli’s other activities speak to this passion for including and supporting his fellow students: he created the Performing Arts library, an educational facility available to all, while also acting as Manager of the Baron Theatre – in which capacity he began a five-year process of refurbishment.
Oli has extended this love of theatre into his Modern History classes, for which he created a piece of historical drama exploring the life of Sir James Irvine, an earlier Principal of the University, that was described by the Manager of the Byre Theatre as a ‘ground-breaking’ piece responsible for ‘leading the way in public engagement with history’.
Oli will continue directing during his return to Edinburgh this summer, where he will stage two plays as part of ‘The Greenhouse’ – a creative collective composed of 35 students and alumni of our University. This vital project will see the construction of the first ever zero-waste performance venue at the Fringe Festival, in an effort to highlight the unsustainability of modern theatre practices in view of the climate crisis and to ensure that performing arts can be enjoyed by generations to come.
Oli, in recognition of all that you have achieved both academically and personally during your time as an undergraduate, and as you prepare for your next steps in the creative arts, it gives me great pleasure to invite you to join me on stage now to receive your medal.
– Principal Sally Mapstone