Freshers 2016 was brought to you by Queen Mary Students' Union, with 42 events and over 14,000 guests! Can you spot yourself in our highlights video? This Freshers we pulled out all the stops, with brand new events such as our Freshers’ Ball as well as old favourites from Hail Mary to the Welcome Fair.
Nearly 10,000 of you came along to our Welcome Fair to find out about societies, sports clubs, volunteering groups, student media and more. As well as having a host of outside demonstrations, your favourite freebies and even a Chinese dragon, you voted for the official Queen Mary RAG charities of the year (Breast Cancer Now and Mind) and the Barts and The London RAG charities (Cardiac Risk in the Young, The Barts Guild and Medecins Sans Frontieres).
Our brand new Freshers’ Ball was also the biggest on-campus event we’ve ever attempted, with 1,100 guests enjoying our four themed ‘elements’ arenas, freebies and of course the musical stylings of our headline act; Marvin Humes. Watch this space for even more spectacular celebrations this academic year!
There was also more to get involved in than just club-nights, from speed-meeting and daytrips to our ever-popular graffiti workshop which produced some vibrant artistic pieces. We also launched our Social Enterprise programme with great inspirational talks from two alumni and presentations from the QEnterprise team and societies.
For those of you who wanted to give back to the community, QMSU Volunteering had 217 volunteering placement roles during Freshers, and there will continue to be hundreds on offer throughout the year. You can also visit 40 charity stalls at the Volunteer Fair this week on Wednesday 19 October to find out more.
We hope you enjoyed Freshers 2016 and will continue to be involved with your Students’ Union – either through representation, a student group, visiting our places and spaces or even just going along to some of our great events!