Organising Activities & Events

It is important for the Activities Team to know details about your trip or tour, to make sure you’re insured for all your activities. We also want to make sure that Presidents have thought about anything that could go wrong, as ultimately it is the President who’s responsible for any costs, injuries and safety of the Club or Society’s members.

Please note if your event involves a high risk activity, all participants must fill out a High Risk Activity Personal Details Form.

When running an event for your Club or Society, it is important that you advertise your event. 

You can add Club or Society events to the What’s On Calendar yourself, as long as you are a Club/Society President or Treasurer.

Step 1

Go to the studentsunionucl.org website and go to the What’s On Calendar

Download Excel file

​

• Book at least six weeks in advance. The earlier the better really as the larger venues such as the JBR and the Gustav Tuck Lecture Theatre get booked up months in advance. 
• If you want to use the quad book 10 weeks in advance. 

Tickets for all club/society events should be sold through the online Union Shop. 

Please note - Eventbrite can be used to sell tickets but only for free events (although this website can do free tickets too!).

Step 1

Make final decisions on all the details of your event. You will need to know:

All current UCL students are automatically members of Students’ Union UCL, however there is also a way that non UCL students, UCL graduates and UCL staff can take part in our club and society activities through a Visiting/Associate Membership.

Step 1

The person wishing to join your club should download a Visiting/Associate Membership Form. Please ensure that you, as President of the Club/Society, are able to email a statement of support about this person with their application.

• Contact relevant student groups - Facebook groups is one of the main ways that students find out about events. Reach out to relevant groups even if you have not worked with them before
• Create Facebook event - send co-host requests to relevant groups
• Add to What’s On page - login to the Union website to add an event to the What’s On page and make sure you include the appropriate ‘Tags’ if the event is part of a series or has a theme shared with other events

• Larger venue will need good promotion to fill it
• If the event is free you can add a £0.00 ticket to the event page so you can track number of attendees 
• Once the time and place is agreed, create poster which can be printed in the Union office up to A3. 
• Add to What’s On page
• Free marketing materials software, Canva https://www.canva.com
• Regular reminders by email and social media

Before the event 

Venue

During the Event 

After the Event 

Sample timeline

Students’ Union UCL, and therefore your club or society, is a charity. It is against the law for charities to donate money directly to other charities straight from your Club or Society account. However you can raise money for a charity through an event and this how to guide explains how you go about doing that.

The Activities Network Executive expects that you abide by the following when hosting auditions for theatre productions or for any other auditioned events.

• Collaboration - are there other student groups that may be interesting in being involved in the event? Reach more students this way
• Time of year - less students will be able to come during deadline season or in the holidays
• Time of day
  • Students don’t tend to stick around on campus too late in the evening (unless they are going to one of our venues. But try afternoon times as well as evenings because some people have commitments that may prevent them from attending i.e. parents & carers

E.g. spoken word event at a Union venue 

It is possible to order catering from the refectory (Sodexo), or from an external caterer.

External Catering

Find out how many people you are expecting, and work out your budget from that.

General guidelines for helping you to do this:

Union or University room (book this at least two weeks in advance)

E.g. spoken word event at a Union venue

• Register people as they arrive to keep track of numbers. 
• On the day of the event, brief anyone assisting you and issue them with 
  • List of key contacts - first-aider, security, staff members if appropriate 
  • Map of event so they can give directions to attendees, external speakers or stall vendors. 

Students’ Union UCL’s facilitates thousands of external speakers every year and has policies and procedures in place to help protect freedom of speech within the law. The Union is committed to empower and support our clubs and societies to organise invitations for a variety of speakers that stimulate debate and further non-academic development for the benefit of students. 

Serving and consuming alcohol at events on campus is regulated under UK licensing laws by Camden Council. Having alcohol at events in UCL rooms where the alcohol will be charged for by tickets either on the door or pre sold must be licensed and cannot happen without permission.

• Make people feel welcome, they may not know anyone. 
• If the purpose of the event is to create materials - zine, still-life drawing, article content etc. Let participants know how you plan to use their work so they have the option to remain anonymous. 
• If the event will happen again or it is part of a series, use it to create promotional material that will help build momentum for next time. 
  • Take pictures of the event (with permission) 
  • Share highlights from the event on the Facebook page and other relevant social media

• Make sure people know where the toilets and fire escapes are
• Keep performers to time if necessary
• Ensure accessibility needs are met 
• Take photos of the event (with permission), consider live tweeting the event or Instagram stories 

Bids are now being accepted for The Garage Theatre’s Term 3 Season!

The Garage Theatre will be based in the Bloomsbury Studio, a 70-seat ‘black box’ studio theatre, on campus, for 2 weeks between 28th May and 8th June 2019.

Instructor registration happens annually, regardless of how long an instructor has been teaching. No instructing may take place until Instructor registration is complete.

Instructors can be fellow students, members of UCL or Students’ Union UCL staff or completely external people.

No matter what they do for a job, Students’ Union UCL Finance Department consider them as Self Employed – this is to do with tax status.

This How to guide will give you all the information you need to run your own small scale events and get the most from them. Use it as a check list so you do not forget anything. 

Venue 

Materials

Promotion

During the event 

Extra things to consider

Example timeline