Good Morning, and in case I don’t see you good afternoon, good evening and good night.

This blog is going to be about Activities in Action training which I have just come back from and how far NUS has moved forwards.

2 years ago when I was VP Sports and Societies of my Union I went to Participate and Develop, our then NUS training. And it was awful!!! The course was far more preaching about how it’s bad that sports teams drink than ways to engage your students and look at initiatives for moving our Unions forward.

Things came to a head at the end of the course with a very large argument between disgruntled delegates and NUS. Many delegates left never wanting to be involved with NUS again except a few of us who decided it was time to form a faction/issue group and get activities changed within NUS. The ‘Activities in Action’ faction meant suddenly everyone was on the phone and activities was back on the NUS radar and after many consultations summer training was re-jigged and developed to be more effective and relevant.

This year some of the creases from the previous years were ironed out and my experience of Activities training was so much better, I was just slightly disappointed that I was not a delegate ready to take ideas back to my Union.

The training course is often viewed by some in the Student movement as tokenistic and there because we have to do something for activities officers. But this was anything but tokenistic. Involved workshops, ‘Give it a Go’ sessions, speakers from various organisations, and presentations that highlighted the development of officers and ideas from across the course.

The course highlighted to me a bigger issue that we have in NUS. We moved away from preaching to people about what we do and they should be doing. We ran some sessions where we actually asked the officers what they wanted from NUS with regards to Activities and were able to listen to our officers and I know that it has given me several projects to take forwards throughout the year. I think that we should be far more flexible and keep our ears open to what our membership are talking about and how we can assist them achieve these goals.

With regards to the course and evening entertainment; special mention should go to the South East who beat the‘(not so) Mighty Midlands’ in the Break dancing contest.

So in conclusion, keep your eyes pealed for Activities officers this year, many have great ideas about how they can work across their organisations and I look forward to seeing the results and the strengthening of each officers respective Unions.

Proud to be a Poly Boy,

Cheers,

Richard ‘Bubble’ Budden

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