What Is 'Give It A Go'?
Give It A Go is all about allow new students to explore LSESU’s wide range of clubs and societies see what they’re really like without having to pay the membership fee to join, no pressure to join afterwards, but hopefully inspired to join lots. This page outlines all the information you need to be able to plan a successful Give It A Go event.
Give It A Go events can run throughout the year, but a lot of sports clubs and societies run events during the Welcome period (first three weeks of Michaelmas Term) and the Refresher period (first two weeks of lent Term).
Please use the steps on this page to plan your Give It A Go Event.
Planning your session
Step 1: Choose your Theme
Firstly, decide what activity you could do that represents your group. For some, such as sports and martial arts groups this is straight forward but for others, you may need to be creative. Activities in the past have ranged from learning sign language, rock climbing, cheese and wine tasting to website development. To help you with this, you should develop your Give It A Go session around one of the themes: Get Active, Learn A Skill, Relax and Socialise, Be Creative, and Share Your Culture.
Get Active
Get Active sessions are free taster sessions that showcase a range of sports and physical activities, such as floorball, martial arts, ballet, badminton, salsa, 3-a-side tennis, etc. These sessions offer a great chance for students who want to take part in physical activities to meet the clubs and societies at LSE that cater for this.
Learn A Skill
Learn A Skill sessions are free taster sessions that showcase a range of vast array of activities, such as baking, photography, journalism, hockey stick skills, debating, financial management, computer coding, statistics etc. These sessions offer a great chance for students who want to take part in activities that add to their skill set to meet the clubs and societies at LSE that cater for this.
Relax and Socialise
Relax and Socialise sessions are free taster sessions that showcase a range of extracurricular activities that help you unwind after a day of lectures, such as wine sampling, cider education, a shisha social, a trip to a tourist attraction or the cinema, afternoon tea, to meet students with similar interests such as anime or gaming, etc. These sessions offer a great chance for students who want to take a break from the books to meet the clubs and societies at LSE that cater for this.
Be Creative
Be Creative sessions are free taster sessions that showcase a range of activities that help you to flex your creative muscles, such as photography, life drawing, impov, singing, dance, music, digital art, etc. These sessions offer a great chance for students who still want to hone their creativity while at LSE to meet the clubs and societies at LSE that cater for this.
Share Your Culture
Share Your Culture sessions celebrate the myriad of cultures that co-exist in LSE and we have a huge number of national and cultural societies (68) and a sizable international student population (65%). Share Your Culture sessions can include Sheffield Street stalls which can encompass all the different Give It A Go themes: Get Active - showcase a national sport or dance, Learn A Skill - give a language demonstration, Relax and Socialise - give out traditional sweets or listen to some music, Be Creative - recreate some famous artwork or put a twist on traditional clothing.
Challenge, Debate, Talk
We know that LSE students love to challenge the status quo and debate about policial issues to ensure social science moves foward. That is why a range of our societies put on Give It A Go sessions which talk about all kinds of topics, issues and agendas. One of these sessions may have speakers or a panel or just allow students to lead the conversation themselves.
Try Something New
Not everything can fit in to a define catagory, and that is why we simply have - try something new. If you are not sure where you society or club activity could be catagories, this simply works for everything. Specially our activty and special interest groups!
Step 2:Complete and Submit Your Documents To The Union
To ensure your event is approved by the Union you must:
Step 3: Promote Your Event
Make sure you create an event on the lsesu website so it can be promoted by the Union. You need admin rights to do this and if you are not sure how to create an event, check out our website training module.
Once you have artwork created and an event live, we advise posting in the freshers facebook community groups.
We have developed some promotional materials & Artwork packs to help you such as logos and empty-belly posters. Feel free to download these materials to help distingush your session when you are advertising it and to personalise your Give it a Go event images, like the examples you can see on this page. You can download them by clicking on the links below:
Helpful Tips for planning your Give it a Go:
- Firstly, decide what activity you could do that represents your group. For some, such as sports and martial arts groups this is straight forward but for others, you may need to be creative. Activities in the past have ranged from learning sign language, rock climbing, cheese and wine tasting to website development. To help you with this, you should develop your Give It A Go session around 1 of the themes: Get Active, Learn A Skill, Relax and Socialise, Be Creative, and Share Your Culture, Challenge Debate Talk or Try Something New.
- Things like bowling are inevitably popular and you could find yourself competing with other groups, so try and do something unique. If it is a daylong activity, it should fall on the weekend to allow most people to attend.
- You should work with your committee to devise a title, a short description and an itinerary of the event. Make sure that you allocate tasks to your members to ensure that the event runs smoothly on the day. When writing your description, make the event sound fun. Don't put lots of exclamation marks - they don't make it sound more exciting.
- Evening slots between 6pm and 9pm are the most popular time to run sessions, so you should think carefully about when you would like to run yours as you can end up competing for space and participants.
- Due to COVID you may be debating whether to hold your event in person or digitally. We have guidance for you to be able to deliver either. Please see more here
Explore this section: