Week 3: Starting up a society

At Birmingham, there are over 160 societies so there's usually something for everyone. However, I'm a very picky person. Having spent hours looking at the variety of societies and not deciding on one that I'd like to commit to, I was ready to just concentrate on studying and procrastinating. On Wednesday, though, I was having a conversation about just going through the motions, with my boyfriend, and some words slipped out my mouth: 'let's start a society for Northerners'. Genius. As a representative of 'The North', I'd like to warn anyone else in my group that the University of Birmingham is choc-full of student from the south and abroad. I know there are some Northerners hiding in here somewhere. I found a few of them myself. My boyfriend is one. We need more! That's why we decided to start up a society for us.

We then thought of how exactly we could do that. I insisted that on our way home, because we had the revelation over a mug of hot chocolate in Starbucks on New Street, we visit the Guild reception and ask what they know about setting a society up. It was about 7pm so we didn't expect anywhere to be open but I knew that there would be someone at the reception to help. She told me that the Student Development office deal with the society and volunteering side of the Guild and it would definitely be worth asking them for more details. I'd read or been told somewhere that to start up a society you need to prove that it would be successful so a certain amount of signatures would be needed.

The following day, I went down to Student Development and they were very excited that I wanted to do this. It seems that very few people have the courage or initiative to start up a society of their own so I was praised like a Queen. I was given a form to read and fill in. The very important bit of it was that I needed 20 people to say they liked the idea of the society. I did mention to everyone I asked to sign that this did not mean they would be committing to signing up, they'd just be helping me out. There's also two pages to fill in about justifying the reason for starting the society - you have to reassure the Guild that it would not threaten their financial status or offend in any way. Also, just because the society would be aimed at people from the North of England, it doesn't mean we can cast away anyone who is not from that area. Anyone is welcome as long as they are willing to embrace Northern culture. I am making it very clear, in our advertising, that the society does not promote the North/South divide but celebrates the minority of Northerners in the University.

So far I have six of twenty signatures. That shows how few people of Northern descent there are. Admittedly, I have only approached a handful of joint honours drama students and most of the single honours crew. A group has been set up on Facebook (link below) and advertising material is in the process of production. I plan to stand outside the library at some point either tomorrow or Tuesday and ask randoms for their interest. ...if I can muster the courage. Surely I can, I've performed on stage in front of a full house before. How hard can it be? Gulp.


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