Poor timing leaves ‘Your Support at Bristol’ event under attended and undermined

By Laura Reid, University Management Correspondent

A Wellbeing event in the Student Union was badly attended due to an apparent lack of publicity.

On Wednesday 26th September, the ‘Your Support at Bristol’ event taking place at the Students Union, hosted by the Uni, was undermined by lack of publicity. The event intended to inform freshers of the wide options of student support available to them, and was particularly focused on mental health services.

Several organisations were present, including the Black Dog Project, Nightline and Mind, however it seemed that the event was poorly advertised, as only a fraction of the amount of students anticipated showed up. The introductory talk from Mark Ames, head of Student Services, and the presentations from each separate organisation were cancelled due to lack of audience. In contrast to this, a couple of floors below in the balloon bar was a mingle being run for wellbeing week. This was far better attended than the corresponding event upstairs.

Ruby Rosenthal, the school coordinator for Black Dog Project, emphasised that she had seen ‘no posters and no university wide emails’ in the run up to the event. She also went on to say, ‘We only ended up speaking to four people on the Black Dog stall. I think this event would have been better timed in a few weeks, when the initial buzz of university has calmed down and students are facing the other side to university life which is not just making friends, but can sometimes be very difficult.’

Featured Image: Epigram / Cameron Scheijde