Our awards nights to celebrate our societies and sports clubs are just around the corner, so it's almost time to pop on your best outfit and join us for a night of glitz and glamour! VP Societies & Sport Hannah Hockin is here to give you the lowdown on what to expect.
Hannah Hockin
VP Societies and Sport
Every year, the amount of hard work and dedication put in by our student groups is truly inspiring and we want to recognise that through our annual awards ceremonies.
We run two separate awards, one to celebrate the achievements of sports clubs called Colours Ball, and another aimed at societies, our Society Awards.
Colours Ball is set to take place on Friday 10 March at the Hilton London Heathrow Airport Hotel. We will see the return of Society Awards at the Union Venue (SU Main Hall) on Saturday 18 March.
Location?
In previous years, Colours Ball has been hosted at the De Vere Beaumont Estate. However, as we're always looking to make Colours bigger and better, so this year it will be hosted at the Hilton! If you've been to Colours Ball before, you can still expect the same great night - including a three-course meal - just in a different location.
Society Awards also used to be at the De Vere but facing less demand over the years, we made the decision to scale back and host it at the Students' Union. Whilst Society Awards may be a smaller-scale event if there's one thing we know how to do it's put on one hell of a party! This year, for one night only we're taking you back in time to the roaring 20s. You can expect all the glitz and glamour you deserve to celebrate the hard work of your society or media group. There'll be plenty of eating, drinking and dancing as well as a space to get some glamorous group photos taken by our photographers.
Save the date(s)! Colours Ball tickets will go on sale in just over a week's time on Friday 3 February while you'll be able to secure your place at Society Awards from Friday 10 February. Keep an eye out for more details!
How do awards work?
The first step is submitting your nomination! All nominations should be submitted online using the official forms; you can put yourself or your group forward for as many awards as you feel necessary! You can submit them as an individual, or as a group, and your nomination could be for yourself, other members or a group depending on the award. We always recommend you meet as a group to decide collectively what awards you want to go for, then go away and write up the nominations in whatever way works best for your group. To give you a hand, we've put together our top tips for writing nominations which will be available when nominations open. We'll also be on hand at drop-ins to answer your questions.
Colours Ball nominations will open on Friday 3 February at midday and close on Sunday 19 February at 23:59.
Society Award nominations will open on Friday 10 February at midday and close on Sunday 26 February at 23:59.
It's really important you take note of these dates, we cannot consider any nominations after the submission date!
Once the submission date has passed, a selected panel goes through all the nominations. The panel will be slightly different for Colours Ball to Society Awards, but it will predominantly consist of myself, SU staff members and a student representative from the SSO Executive. Once the panel has met and decided on the award winners, there's nothing left to do except enjoy the awards ceremonies and celebrate your own and each other's successes for the year!
We are also going to be reviewing the future of awards ceremonies this summer, and we really want student feedback, so please stay tuned if you want to take part!