Dr Sue Jacklin is a boat!

Last friday myself, Geoff and Anne-Marie went up to the clubs boat house in York for the naming ceremony of their newest boat. The boat was a very kind gift from Mr Courtney-Hatcher who's son rowed with the club for 3 years while at University. It was named after Dr Sue Jacklin (Assistant Director of Sport) who's hard work and fighting on behalf of the club over a number of years has been invaluable!
The Vice-Chancellor Prof. Michael Arthur was delighted to attend, find out more about the club and even got the boat with Sue on the river!

Wednesday Fun!!

Its Wednesday again hurrah! Myself and Carl have started preparations to the day well by watching Ireland beat Samoa to make it through to the semi finals and Scotland beat Fiji, in the Rugby League World Cup! After Men's Rugby Union 1st fantastic defeat over Leeds Met at Becketts Park last week we're looking forward to another big clash today with Men's Hockey 1st taking on Loughborough!

More excitingly the new Gryphon Sports Centre on Woodsley Road (behind the business school) will have its first fixtures played there today!
Netball 3rds Vs Durham at 2.30pm
Netball 3rds Vs Leeds Met at 4pm
Men's Volleyball Vs Northumbria at 6pmFor more details about the facility changes visit the sport and physical activity website www.leeds.ac.uk/sport

Outside of our Wednesday BUCS action a new sports group has just formed- Baseball! There has never been a baseball club at Leeds and after getting a mention on Channel 5's Baseball show last week, they're off to a great start! Anyone in interested in joining can get in touch with myself or the captain Ryan pt08rlo@leeds.ac.uk

Tealights Are For Lovers

We've not written anything on the blog for a couple of weeks what with the madness of Intro. So I just wanted to put a quick post up here to show that we are still alive!

Went to see the Leeds Tealights show last night and it was very funny. If you've not been get yourself down to the Riley Smith tonight as its a limited run!

International Intro - Activities Fair - Friday 19th

Hello! Over the next couple of weeks we're going to be really busy running around sorting out the fairs and stuff. But we wanted to give you a flavour of how the week is going so we're going to be adding lots of photos to the blog. Starting with these ones from the International Activities Fair which took place yesterday in the Riley Smith (Apologies that some are a bit blurry - we were having some problems with our camera!):






And so that you can get a better idea of the noise and the bussle, here's a bit of video:

Welcome Tent!

So, this year we're re-vamping the Welcome Tent and we've made a video to advertise it a little bit.



We're going to be having showcases from our groups, feature films, give it a go-style sessions and a whole load of other activities style goodness! The line-up is not going to be advertised online but will be announced each day outside the tent on a giant blackboard. They'll be comfortable seating and a small bar serving light refreshments so come down, have a chill out from some of the other madness and see what we've got going on!

New media suite for LSTV

Woop, over the summer work has begun on the new LSTV media suite. Originally one half of the ARC Resource Lounge this space is a much needed upgrade for LSTV from their current studio near the old bar. The new suite will no doubt help the group to expand on their quality shows and skills over the coming year. Check out photos our to see how the suite is taking shape!

New display boards for students

Hooray for the International Office! Thanks to some ongoing negotiating we've managed to secure 20 brand new display boards for students to use for exhibitions. The boards will be available for groups to hire from the start of term for a really small amount of money - once we've sorted out the hire system and where we are going to store all of them!

In the meantime, enjoy this picture of our own "6 Display Boards" Geoff Banks from the day that we moved them to the Union from the International Office.

Meet Carl & Rose

Hi, I'm Rose Hampton and I'm the new Development Coordinator for Halls & Community! I'm going to be working with JCRs in Halls to develop a programme of activities that everyone living in university accommodation can enjoy. I'm also going to be helping the Union Community Reps to improve communication and relations with community groups in our local area.

Before starting this job, I studied English here at Leeds and was really involved in Union activities through my role as President of Action. As well as volunteering on as many different projects as possible and helping different project coordinators run their groups, I generally had lots of fun getting to know as many people as possible and supporting them in volunteering!


Hello there, I'm Carl Brown and I am the new Sports Development assistant working along side Sports Development Co-ordinator Wendy Voo. My role will be to assist the sports teams and clubs in running effectively. I will also be involved with organising events such as The Leeds Varsity, Christie Cup and various other projects.

I studied at Leeds Trinity & All Saints and was involved in a number of sporting clubs and projects. This has given me experience in how sports clubs and events are run and organised.

I am based at the ARC which is on Level 2 in the Union so if you have any issues or queries feel free to drop by.

Inter University Gliding task week

19th - 26th July was the Inter-University Gliding task week, this year hosted by Southampton University Gliding club in Lasham. Four members of LUUGS attended for a week of fantastic gliding. Not only did we meet up with several other University gliding clubs which gave us a good insight into how they operate, we also won the trophy shield! That's right Leeds University Union Gliding Society are winners of the 2008 Inter-University Gliding competition. Points were awarded for progression - we achieved 1800 points with our nearest competitors being Surrey University Gliding Club with 1600 points. In addition to this win we have the privilige of being given the option to host the competition next year.

I'd like to add my congratulations to the team.
Well Done!

Student Activities Advert

Hola,

One of the new things we've introduced this summer is an expression of interest form so that future students can give us a shout before they arrive in Leeds and tell us what they interested in. You can have a look at it here:

Get Involved- It's Easy Form

We've also just put an advert on there. It's a cut down version of something we put on for Open Day and you can see it here:

Summertime... And the living is easy. Or not as the case may be.

Yes, because whilst you might think that the summer in Student Activities is a period where we get to put our feet up for a bit, you'd be wrong. Ok, so there aren't as many people walking through our doors or up to reception asking us for our help. But that doesn't mean we aren't busy. In fact this is shaping up to be one of our busiest summers in a while.

We've almost got last year completely wrapped up and without stopping we're putting the finishing touches to Introweek. We've got some cool ideas this year to make campus have more of a festival feel than ever before. We've looked at the tent outside and come up with some ways to make that more exciting - I'm really looking forward to seeing groups using it throughout the week.

Not only is that planning going on, but we've got our regular changes in staffing going on. Geoff and Wendy are currently recruiting new people to add to our crack team of activities operatives. And Helen Mackay has this week joined us full time to look after the Performing and Media groups and run the Give it a Go programme.

On top of that, there is some building work going to be happening up in the ARC which is very exciting for us as we're finally managing to give our groups a bit more space and help them grow. We'll be putting pictures up on here as the work develops so keep checking back for more details!

We are going to be getting in touch with groups over the next few weeks to talk about our plans and then hopefully we can let everyone know here exactly what we are going to be doing over the Intro period and make sure that you are as excited as I am.

Green streets 2008!

If you missed the Green Streets free shop in Stylus earlier this month then you missed out on a bargain!

Green Streets was a great success this year with lots of students from halls and private rented houses all across Leeds donating their left over bits and bobs. These were collected by the student volunteer team sorted out and offered for free to anyone who came along to collect stuff! We also gave loads of stuff to loads of charities who look after homeless people, refugees and asylum seekers and loads of other good causes.

We'll be making a few more trips to hostels to take stuff over the summer and have one final free shop for newly arrived international students on 18th September, if you want to get involved just drop me a line on i.swift@leeds.ac.uk

We've had some good press coverage on the story as well. Check out Community Newswire

Testing, Testing

Hi everyone,

Just in case you randomly stumble onto this and wonder why it doesn't do what it says on the tin, we are currently in the testing stages of this new blog - just making sure that all of the contributors can actually get on here and put stuff up. We intend to launch properly towards the end of August ready for the start of the new academic (or more importantly activities) year.

Until then, cake blogs rule. Woop.