Voting is now closed for your new SU President
Voting closed: Midnight, Sunday 3 July
Keep an eye on social media and emails for the result!
Candidates:
Find out more about them below:
Hello, my name is Emma, and I am currently in my second year. I am applying for SU President because I feel passionate about making the most of the student experience here at NSCD. We are in a unique and creative environment filled with talented students who are taught and facilitated by skilled and experienced staff members. The possibilities for us are plentiful and I want to engage in a role that promotes these opportunities.
What I hope to achieve, should I be elected, is to increase student engagement, and build platforms in which students can showcase their work and talent both internally and externally. I believe there are many ways in which we can promote what we do both as a school and individually as students while studying at NSCD. Coming out of lockdown, after a long time of studying with restricted contact, there is a need for opening up more towards each other throughout the year groups and additionally build communication with other art organisations in Leeds. We are in a city surrounded by other art students and cultural events which leads me to think that many exciting collaborative projects could be made between NSCD students and other art students. Furthermore, I want to assist in any way I can to build new and strengthen current, Student Societies, as I think they are an integral part of the student experience.
I am a patient person with great listening skills, which makes me well suited for a role that communicates between students and staff. I value the student’s voice and will therefore do my best to put it forwards. Responsibility is also something I take seriously, and I pay attention to building trust in relationships with people. Additionally, I take action for change when I see the opportunity to do so. Recently I, alongside Shivani Jatar, started the International Student Society at NSCD because we saw a lack of space for the international students to come together and share their experiences of living in a new country.
Being trusted by you for the role of SU president would mean a lot, and I will make sure to approach the role with commitment and care.
Hello! My name is Mara Osorio, and I am a current second-year student here at NSCD. Since my first year at Northern, I’ve been amazed by the multiculturality present in the school, and I’m interested in how we can mix ourselves with people from other years and courses.
This would not be the first time I’m applying for this type of role, as in previous years, I’ve been actively participating as a volunteer for Tremendas’s Foundation. (Collaborative platform that makes visible and connects young people to support social impact causes).
As SU president, I would like to lighten up NSCD life by creating instances where people from all years and courses can interact together. As NSCD is an institution with a big amount of students, it is hard sometimes to mix with people from other years in order to get inspired and have fun bringing together the big community that already exists at Northern.
Some of the key points of my program would be:
Livening up the societies: I would like to open the opportunity to create different societies and make them something regular in our weekly NSCD life. Societies are an open space to get to know more people and share about the societies’ work, to create communities. So, how do we make them more part of NSCD life? I would like to create spaces where societies can show what they do inside NSCD. For example: Having open days for people to share what the societies do, or if there are some important dates within a specific society topic, how the society can do something to show this event?
Students platform: Reactivate the student platform afternoons. Opening a space at the end of each Term for students to share and present on stage different projects (finished or unfished) as a way of sharing different personal projects, receiving feedback from peers, learning and getting inspired by others.
SU Workshops: NSCD has students from different dance backgrounds, let’s encourage people to share them! I would love to organize workshops led by students in order to share their own material as an open space to learn different practices or simply create Improv. evenings at least every half term to interact with people from other years and have fun by jamming with others to good music.
I’m really looking forward to next year and all the things you have to offer. I want to hear your ideas and help you to develop any projects that might come out in the way. Any initiative (dance or non-dance relative) that you would like to develop I would try my best to make it possible.
I believe in the potential of NSCD and I would be more than happy to be chosen in order to bring up, as said before, the big community of Northern and all the amazing things we can do together.
Hi,
My name is Rebecca and I’m currently in 2nd year.
I am interested in the power of collective student voice and therefore see the SU President as a role for not just listening to student opinions but actually acting on them.
One of the key things I would aim towards is re-forming Student Platform. As creative individuals, I believe experimenting, collaborating and devising without assessment criteria is vital for complete artistic freedom. In making and sharing across year groups, we can get feedback for our work but, most importantly, we can create art without the stress of grades; we can make art simply for the beauty of sharing.
I am also curious in a more varied timetable of optional classes. We are all on our own journeys and know what we enjoy and want to invest time in. Therefore, we need a curriculum that is exciting and inspiring. What I have in mind is something similar to FabFridays wherein optional classes are available but rather than signing up on a half-term basis, you can sign up weekly. Another difference would be more workshops, lectures and classes in a greater range of subject areas. For example, students have interest in lighting, set and costume design, different types of improvisation techniques, Capoeira, Physical Theatre and in dance styles they’ve never tried before. I would hope these would be in addition to (not as a replacement of) our current curriculum and that all sessions would be led by professionals in the arts-sector. Though the previous student-led teaching for Fab Friday was exceptional, I don’t think that that the professionally-led contact hours we pay for should be replaced with student-led classes on a Friday. This would be another way for year groups to mix and having more one-off sessions rather than 5 week long class structures would hopefully keep interest.
Moreover, I want to encourage participation in Societies so that organised events can occur. These could be as simple as setting a time to meet at external venues e.g. a pub or could be arranging activities in Northern. Societies allow people to meet over common interests outside of dance, are a great place for mobilising students for political action and are of course a space to make new friends 🙂
Lastly, I am interested in creating easier ways to share student voice. Though of course student meetings are always possible and helpful, people are busy: we have jobs, school work and we need time to relax! For this reason, I think online suggestion boxes for sharing opinions on different topics would be useful.
