By Alex Hall, 3rd year Chemistry
A man covered in a green sheet, pretending to be a plant that was taking over the world. That was my first encounter with the Union’s societies. It was during Musical Theatre Society’s Fresher’s musical production of Little Shop of Horrors.
Before coming to uni, I remember being really nervous about joining clubs and societies; I was worried that I wouldn’t fit in or that people wouldn’t like me. I think it’s something we all struggled with when we started here, but I bit the bullet, got past the initial anxiety and just went for it, and it’s the best decision I’ve ever made. There’s a joke we often make in the UCL Arts societies community, “I do Musical Theatre at uni and a Chemistry degree on the side”. I’ve been involved with UCL Arts for three years now and over that time I’ve made friends for life, developed new skills and found new passions. When I started out with Musical Theatre, I never could have imagined that I would end up being so involved in so many different branches of the UCL Arts community.
I started by performing but that wasn’t for me and that I wanted to do more to help put student theatre onstage, so I ended up assistant producing one of the society’s big shows. I was 18 and I was responsible for a show that was going to performed in a West End theatre. It was a lot of responsibility, but an incredible opportunity. Being a producer got me involved with UCL Stage Crew, an amazing society who are responsible for the stage tech for all UCL student productions. I got hooked on tech and wound up helping do tech for nine shows that year!
There is a club or society for almost anything you could want to do at the Union. They can also be anything you want them to be - they’re there for you to indulge in your hobby, get some much-needed headspace from your degree, network or start building an incredible CV.
The best way to find the group for you is to come to the Welcome Fair at the end of Fresher’s Week. They’ll all be there to tell you what the team is like, when rehearsals are or how easy it is to start as a novice. If you want to get a head start, there’s a list of every club and society at studentsunionucl.org/clubsandsocs
It was my technical experience from Stage Crew and my production experience from Musical Theatre that helped me get a paid junior management position at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival that summer, a job I never would have got without the help of UCL societies. When I came back for my second year, I started getting involved with UCL’s official student magazine, Pi Media. I got experience writing, reporting, filmmaking, video editing and designing. While I was with Pi, we broke stories that made national newspapers. It was an incredible feeling seeing stories that I broke being read across the country. I’ve been referring to the UCL Arts societies as a community, and that’s because it is by far the best way to describe us. We are one big happy family! We share knowledge and expertise, we live together, we go on holiday together, we love each other. Over my time here I’ve been involved in over 20 student productions, helped produce a dozen magazines, written countless stories and served on three society committees including one as President. I may leave UCL with a degree from one of the world’s top universities, but that is nothing compared to the friends and experiences I gained while being a part of UCL societies.