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Planning Events 📋

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Any event you plan for your society will require input from a number of parties. Whether you're organising a single room booking, a regular society meeting or a larger one-off event, the information on this page has been designed to help you and your coordinator to create a successful activity that runs smoothly.

Any committee member can take ownership of any part of the process, although we'd recommend nominating one person to be the pont of contact who submits all of the relevant forms.

 

Choosing a Location

The University has multiple campuses across the city, plus there are many external spaces around Birmingham which may be suitable for your needs. However, each comes with its limitations.

Some of our campuses are beautiful listed buildings, but by their nature aren't as accessible and often don't have the same resources as some of our larger locations. Our main buildings may have wider-ranging facilities, but are also used more regularly for teaching so it can be harder to get the rooms you're after.

We've pulled together this handy map to show where our campuses, and other points of interest, are based:
 

 

The Process

When you're planning your event you'll need to complete the relevant steps below as a minimum. For small events, such as society meetings, your coordinator will come back to you to confirm the details. Where an event is larger and requires more planning, your coordinator will speak to you to bring all the elements together however we may need to involve other university teams:
 

  • To book a space on campus for a single or regular session, a stall in an atrium or a one-off event, you should begin by filling in the space booking form on the society toolkit. This page also has details about booking our Student Hub (C190) for smaller meet up's and how you can go about booking external venues.
     
  • If you want to invite an external speaker to the event, you need to fill in the external speaker form on the toolkit, making sure you include your room booking reference. This should be done regardless of where the event will be held, including where events are held off-campus or online. You can complete this form at any point, but we will only confirm the speaker once your venue has been confirmed.
     
  • You will also need to submit a risk assessment as part of the process using this form. Some scenarios will be covered by generic risk assessments, others will require additional detail to be added.

 

Additional Information:

The following options give you some extra information about holding events on campus. Make sure you read through the sections, plus other sections of the toolkit including Funding and Sponsorship and Society Finances.

Once your event has been confirmed, you should add it to our What's On page to make other students, or your members aware. If you'll be looking for reimbursement for any expenses, linking your claim to your event will be part of that process.

Any committee member who has access to your societies 'admin tools' area is able to add the event by clicking the 'Events' tile, selecting 'Add New Event' and completing the fields.

Your event will appear on our main listings and also on your society page - under 'Visibility' you can select who your event is visible to in both of those places:
 

  • Everyone means that your event is publicly visible to anybody who looks on our page or your society page. This is useful when you're opening the event to the general public, especially if they need to be able to buy tickets.
     
  • Logged in users only means your event is visible to anybody who is logged into bcusu.com - generally, that's students and some staff members.
     
  • Members only means only people who are members of your society will see the listing. This is useful for specific members-only sessions.
     
  • Admins only means only website administrators (BCUSU staff and society committee members) can see the event. Generally this would be used to prepare an event before its published, or to hide an event.

 

If you need any help, you can contact your coordinator.

This section does not relate to External Speakers - find out more by clicking here.

An external guest is anybody who is attending your event who is neither a student or member of staff at Birmingham City University.

Society events should be inclusive of, and targeted at, engaging your paid members and, whilst you are welcome to include external guests this should be the exception rather than the rule.

  • For general sessions, the number of external guests a society can bring onto campus is capped at 25% of the number of paid members they have, up to a total of 25 guests. That means that for every four paid members, you can bring one external guest onto campus.

    Guests must be pre-registered and will need to bring photo ID with them to gain access to any BCU building. A list needs to be provided to your coordinator no later than 48 hours prior to your event.
     
  • An event where you would like access for over 25 guests (such as a showcase/performance or a collaboration with a society from another Students' Union) should be discussed with your coordinator as early as possible. These events will need to be ticketed (see below) and a mechanism put in place for checking those atendees off when they arrive.

    Events with over 25 external guests in attendance will be communicated to both the University Events team and to the security team who may require extra staff on site, which will incurr extra cost for the society.

Most smaller events which only include society members don't require ticketing, however if there's only space for a certain number of attendees, it may be beneficial, even if the ticket is free.

Larger events where you wish to bring over 25 external guests onto campus will require ticketing:
 

  • If your event is a society collaboration with another Students' Union then speak to your coordinator. They may be able to manage access for your external guests via a guestlist, which will need to be provided to them to pass onto security no later than 3 weeks prior to the event.
     
  • If your event is open to the public and you are selling tickets, these can be added to the event by your coordinator - they can either be free or charged for. By default, tickets will come in the form of an email receipt however you can opt for e-tickets which will give the purchaser a PDF ticket with a unique QR code which can be checked on the door.


Checking e-tickets

If you choose to supply your attendees with e-tickets, you will need to allocate someone to check them at your event. This could just be a visual check or you can use our door entry system to scan the tickets - this is especially useful for events where you have limited capacity or different ticket types.

If you wish to use the door entry system, speak to your coordinator who can loan you a scanner - and then check this document for more information on how to use it.
 

Open the Door Entry module

The documents below are useful for societies looking to host events. Click on the link to download the document.

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