Hi guys,

Thanks very much for all taking the time to send us your feedback about Celebration Week (Colours Ball & Union Awards). We thought it would be right to respond to some of your comments and points gathered from the SurveyMonkey. The feedback for both Colours Ball and Union Awards was overwhelmingly positive and we thank you for your support in this respect. They are both major events for us to organise as a relatively small team and we were also really grateful to the support from the University in staging them. We’d like to clarify a few things however, because the format was different for each event from last year and we want you to understand that we always work to put students first (and some of the feedback was quite visceral!)

The events were in no way organised to make any profit for the Union, quite the opposite - the Union made a small deficit from the combined events. The decision was made to hold both events in the Arena as we felt students would feel an affinity to the venue, it was closer and marginally cheaper than Stanbrook Abbey. This was due to the fact that the University Arena kindly waived the venue hire fee for us. We did, however, pay for the dressing of the venue including draping, dance floor, equipment, and staffing etc. which is not an insubstantial amount.

We wholly take on board the feedback regarding the food at Colours Ball in particular and have passed this onto the venue caterers. Regarding the fact that there were no free drinks at the Pear Tree, the Union has to use its charitable funds in a responsible way and in this respect, was not prepared to offer free drinks like it did last year. We will however, look into other means of securing free drink options for you next year through sponsorship. The ticket pricing was set at a level we felt was genuinely affordable for students and the Union and it covered more than just the food on the night, for example the decorations, the staffing, the equipment etc. We do accept that for some the food was not good enough this year.

Overall, we hope you enjoyed the events. We’ve learnt a lot from holding them and from the feedback you have given us and are in discussions with the Arena and their partners to see how we can continue to improve on future events. We took a risk, but ultimately we felt that it paid off and hope you would agree. We felt the atmosphere on both nights was amazing and it made us feel so proud of our lovely student body.

See you soon,

Jade.