The Edge and the Wessex Scene get stuck into the Magazine Design Session.
I’m currently in the aftermath of one of the busiest and best weeks for SUSU’s Creative Industries I have seen in my time here at University of Southampton and SUSU. This year’s Creative Industries Induction saw around 60 student volunteers trained in areas such as leadership, teambuilding, media law, democracy and inclusivity amongst many more with the week led by myself and the extremely dedicated team of core and support staff here at SUSU.
I had been planning the Creative Industries Induction since before I started my Sabbatical term. Mainly through the medium of creating a long list on my iPhone of things I would love to include in the training, including a crazy creative Magazine Design session with SUSUs student publications. This then came to fruition during the planning stages in my first couple of months as a Sabbatical Officer, I realised that my crazy ideas could actually become a reality. When I started as VP Democracy and Creative Industries, I started to ask the student volunteers in my zone what they would like to see in the induction. This feedback then moulded the timetable so that every session we ran throughout the week had been requested by a student volunteer. I also enlisted the help from members of staff in SUSU to use their expertise to host the sessions. For example we ran sessions on Democracy, Marketing and Communications, and Department Planning and this couldn’t have been as good as it was without the help of SUSU’s staff team.
Myself and the team of people I worked with to curate this Induction thought that with the ever-changing world of the Creative Industries, we need to be as up to date with everything happening in the professional sphere. This element of the training ranged from using the most up to date resources from the professional sphere, to getting everyone to tweet about the week using the hashtag #SUSUGetsCreative (check out all the fabulous tweets from students and staff on Twitter). Here are some of my favourite tweets from the week:
Team ambition! Testing out our leadership skills this morning building spaghetti towers! #SUSUgetscreative pic.twitter.com/4xMNSqwhoT
— Southampton Ballet (@SUSUPABallet) September 11, 2014
Inclusivity piece for @YourSUSU website! #SUSUgetscreative @megandowning pic.twitter.com/9MMPfLBs9s
— Kat Berry (@katberryy) September 10, 2014
We are so excited to be at the CI Induction #SUSUGetsCreative pic.twitter.com/SeoordgHJ7 — SUSUtv (@SUSUtv) September 9, 2014
Students enjoying the Creative Industries Karaoke Night in The Bridge.
Now that we are well and truly in the swing of Freshers Week I hope that the Induction has inspired the Creative Industries student volunteers to get as many of the new students involved in their student group as possible. The week definitely inspired me; the enthusiasm and dedication of the students that attended was motivational and has filled me with ideas for the year ahead. I’m so lucky to be working with such an amazing team with SUSU’s Creative Industries.
I’ve held off a little bit to post this blog as so much great stuff has already been written about the Induction in many formats. For example, SUSUs Training Manager Karen Lloyd, one of the absolute superstars of the week, has written a little blog on LinkedIn about her time as a trainer during the induction. Be sure to check it out. The SUSU Communications team also published a little write up about the success of the Induction, which includes some quotes from the Student Leaders within the Creative Industries zone – you can check it out here. As well as this, some content from the students that attended the week has been published. For example, Robin Johnson, a member of the Performing Arts and Showstoppers committees has written about the Induction in his post for the University of Southampton’s Life at Southampton blog. As well as this the guys at SUSUtv have written up a Production Diary about the week for their website (as well as doing an absolutely sterling job filming the entire Induction!). If you don’t have the time to click on all of these links, check out this article I have published on Storify that collates it all.
As you can probably tell, I had the best time in Creative Industries Induction; it made me even more excited about the year ahead. Keep an eye out during Freshers Week for all the Creative Industries Student Groups, especially all you new students that will be heading to the Bunfight tomorrow. I know they have some awesome plans up their sleeves for the year ahead.
Signing out, one very proud VP Democracy and Creative Industries
Meg x
