Here’s the second of my series of blogs about what societies have been getting up to on the lead up to Welcome!
With summer coming to an end and Welcome 2020 just around the corner, I asked societies to tell me about what they’ve gotten up to virtually over summer. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed hearing about how these societies have adapted and come up with new and innovative ways to engage their members. Have a read of what these societies have been doing…
BALADS:
“As you can imagine, we have been quite badly affected by the restrictions. However, we've tried our best to keep everyone interested in dancing, including putting together a society website. Alongside this, the committee have been working hard on videos for the society on technique/routines etc, we’ve hosted a number of classes over Zoom and also partnered with the Selly Oak food bank to raise funds for them. Finally, we've updated our YouTube channel and made an end of year video celebrating the past 10 or so months of the society.”
Quickstep over to BALADS’ page and see what they’re all about.
A Capella:
“During our time away from university in lockdown, we hosted a few quiz nights across the society which have been really well received, including personalised rounds relating to both members of A Cappella and music rounds etc.
Further, we recently hosted a Games Night in which we played some online games such as Pictionary, Spyfall, other board games - all that sort of stuff!
Lastly we hosted a virtual showcase in which each of our A Cappella groups arranged a piece of music (virutally!!) and recorded it in a video which will be shared with all the attendees. During this we also presented the end of year A Cappella Awards, in which members of A Cappella were nominated for roles e.g. "Most likely to still be performing at age 30" and other categories!”
Check out some of these videos:
Uptone Girls
Pitch Please
Score
AbraCappella:
Blair Pitch Project (some of them!):
“The Trebles were unable to produce a video as their schedules did not align due to work and study commitments, however during university time this will be different and we can do more virtual arrangements such as the above.”
Get your microphones at the ready and join A Capella.
Christian Union:
“We at the Christian Union have been gearing up to welcome, serve, and love Freshers in a tough time to be starting uni. We have a Facebook Freshers group which is steadily growing and a buddy scheme linking Freshers up with existing members. On Monday we held a welcome Zoom call for anyone coming to UOB, to help answer questions, calm nerves, and create some community. Freshers seemed to really appreciate it!”
Check out Christian Union on Facebook, Insta and the Guild website.
Metal Society:
“We made a Discord server for the society and have hosted weekly events on there since 20th March, including doing versions of Room 101 and Would I Lie to You?, a few metal-related quizzes, as well as just playing a wide range of games available online. We've got a really nice group of people who attend regularly and the events often last for quite a few hours as people just want to have a chat and play some more casual games.”
Sound like something you want to get involved in? Join the Metal Society.
Gin Society:
“We've been hosting scribblio, catch ups, psych, and our latest is a Kahoot every other week for our members and those interested to get involved in during lockdown.
We meet every other week and aim for something different to keep our core members happy. We run a Zoom alongside so that we can all chat and have a laugh while doing the different activities.” Get to know the Gin Society.
Artsoc:
“ArtSoc has been working really hard behind the scenes to think of fun and accessible ways to interact with our members virtually. Whilst most of these ideas are going to happen during term time, one of the things we ran during lockdown was a competition to design our new ArtSoc logo.
ArtSoc's logo has changed a couple times in the past so we wanted a fresh new logo that was designed and voted on by our members so that our brand feels more like a community effort. It was great for engaging with members, and we posted mood boards and logo inspo just to get the inspiration going. We definitely feel like the change of logo has created a better vibe to our society already, so shout to Ana Richardson for winning! The logo subtly looks like Old Joe. This is definitely the beginning of what we hope will be an exciting and fresh new year for ArtSoc!” Feeling artsy? Learn all about ArtSoc.
KCover:
“As many other societies have probably done too, we have been using Zoom to host various virtual events such as:
- K-Pop Kahoot quizzes
- Skribbl: an online version of Pictionary that we hosted a few times - a very fun and sociable game where some truly great pieces of "art" have been produced!
- And most importantly we trialed a Virtual Chorus Session: during term time we normally hosted a dance class every Wednesday afternoon in which we taught the choruses of two K-Pop dances, and in preparation for the coming year we decided to trial a virtual session which turned out quite successful! (Eva Zheng) taught the chorus to around 15 members (they had the option to have their video on or off) and recorded the session to allow members who could not attend the class to learn in their own time. At the end we uploaded a 'final cut' of the dance showing what we had learnt together!”
If you love K-Pop, KCover is the perfect group to check out.
Stay tuned for the next instalment of Student Group Shout-Outs!