Congratulations for making it onto my blog! My name is Blake and I have recently started my year of being Community Officer within your Students' Union (SU). I aim to put together a bit of an update for you every week on what I've been up to. This particular blog will cover my first two weeks* – two for one ! 

All of the team have had sessions these weeks about some of our manifesto points. It was really great to have help from wonderful SU staff on how we can start working towards some of our initial goals and beginning these conversations has helped me feel very energised.  

We have also spent a lot of time thinking about what's coming up in the year ahead and we had a great session with Jim Dickinson from Wonkhe who helped us reflect on our own experiences within the university and think about the national picture.  

We've also started to put together our 'Top Ten' which outlines some priorities we think the university should have for the year ahead. You can check out last year's Top Ten on our website. 

A non-exhaustive list of some of the meetings I've had over these two weeks: 

• Student Experience Board (SEB) - this group, amongst other things, advises Prof. Cassie Wilson, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Student Experience). 

• Black History Month Planning Group – the first (of many) meetings to discuss how The SU will celebrate Black History Month in October.  

• Safe and Secure Bath Night-Time Meeting with Bath BID - this was the first meeting in the city for Alexander (SU President) and I, and it was a great opportunity to speak with some local business owners and councillors.  

• Mental Health Charter Meeting – part of my role this year will be to take over from Meg (previous Community Officer) as the Student Lead of the Mental Health Charter (MHC). It’s exciting to be involved with such an important piece of work and I look forward to having more updates to share on this!

We've also had some introductions to senior members of university staff as well, including the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Ian White, and Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Student Experience), Prof. Cassie Wilson. I also met with Niamh Forster, one of the Freshers' Week Event Managers to talk about training for Freshers' Captains which, along with their excellent introductory tiktok, has started to get me very excited!   

We ended week 2 with a photoshoot in our new stash (blue clothing with our names, roles, and The SU logo) - I'm excited to see the end result! Seeing my face every time I walk up the SU stairs will take some getting used to though !!

'til next week! 

Blake  

*Before this, the new officer team had two weeks of handover from the old team. This included learning about emerging issues, what our SU does, our new roles, etc. We also had a team building away day with the outgoing team – we did some laser tag and an escape room in Bristol which was very fun !

Links in plaintext:  

Wonkhe - https://wonkhe.com/ 

Last year's Top Ten - https://www.thesubath.com/campaigns/topten/ 

SEB - https://www.bath.ac.uk/teams/student-experience-board/  

Bath BID - https://www.bathbid.co.uk/ 

MHC - https://universitymentalhealthcharter.org.uk/ 

FWEMs TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@thesubath/video/7116540964155428101?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1