We’re excited to tell you about the impact we’ve had on students during 2022-2023.
We’re proud to share our journey and our success with you – we couldn’t do it without you, our members!
A huge part of what we do to help students love their time at Exeter is host or support many opportunities to meet and make friends through events, activities and helping you find your community!
We are led by our student members, decisions and action we take comes from our student community.
In the 22/23 academic year, students gave us 4 key priorities which informed our work for the year:
Some wins as part of our priorities work included:
Being student led is at the core of who we are. This is from the campaigns we support and empower students to run to how students make decisions that impact the direction of the Guild.
We launched a new democracy approach to creating change and shaping Guild work called Advisory Boards. We had 3 different Boards in the pilot year:
Some work the Advisory Boards helped shape included the rebrand, refurbishment, re-imagining of Freshers’ Week to Welcome Week, and mitigation approach.
Part of our role is to support and empower students to make the change they want to see such as campaigning on issues that matter to them.
We want to foster an environment where our members can participate fully, feel able to question and challenge, express new ideas, discuss controversial and or unpopular opinions within the law- all without fear of intolerance or discrimination.
We facilitated 159 speaker events throughout the year. As well as supporting the facilitation of speaker events, we supported a small number of student-led protests and activity.
Sometimes things don’t go to plan, and that’s ok! Wherever you are in your journey, the Advice Team are here to guide you through the twists and turns of student life. Our Advisors support students on a range of topics and issues including finances, academic concerns and wellbeing.
We asked students for feedback around what they wanted and needed from us to support them, and initiatives included:
I feel like I belong at University
I feel part of a community
I feel our spaces are flexible and reflect my needs
I feel supported by the Guild
I feel represented by my Elected Officers
I feel the Guild delivers opportunities and services that reflect me
I feel the Guild supports and empowers me to make change
I feel the Guild's brand and communications are relevant and shaped by students
The Guild positively impacts or adds value to my student experience or student life
The Guild's digital platforms are relevant, enaging and accessible
Our vision is to help students love Exeter and to ensure we are doing this; we have a number of strategic measures that we ask students for feedback on to see how we’re performing or where we might need to improve. 22/23 was our first year of recording this data.
Whilst we carried out the first year of our plan, we also had two key exciting strategic projects happen across the year!
Over the summer of 2023, we embarked on a big refurbishment project of Devonshire House with the University.
Old fashioned, corporate, and confusing were some of the words that were used to describe us and our brand. It was definitely time for change!
Across Term 2 and 3 we created a whole new brand position and visual identity, to be more relevant and engaging with our students. Our new brand really focuses on putting students at the heart of everything we do. We launched this in July 2023 with great success and will be working across 23/24 to implement our new brand.
With a new brand, new space and a new way of working, we’re ready for this coming academic year!
Some key targets within our priorities are:
