Read about the new Norwich Arts SU Strategy!
Over the past year we have been working on our new strategy by speaking to many students and doing some thinking on what Norwich Arts SU is and what students want and need us to be. From this we have developed four core organisational values and a strategy with an over-arching aim of...
We know all our students!
Our key goal is for each student to have a positive interaction with the SU during their time at Norwich University of the Arts, and for us to enrich and enhance your studenr experience. We will do this by helping you to:
- Find Your Voice
- Find Your People
- Find Your Fun
So what does this mean for you?
Find Your Voice
We recognise that students are experts in their own experiences and we want to enable students to have an excellent experience at Norwich and beyond.
We will help you find your voice by…
- Creating multiple pathways for students to have a strong voice and influence over their education as well as supporting them becoming cocreators of their education
- Becoming experts in our students through data and insight
- Using this expertise to drive change with and for our students across the institution
- Developing the political literacy of our students, enabling them to have influence over their lives within and beyond Norwich
Our key priorities in this area are to:
- Develop an 'insight pipeline' to ensure that we are driven by your priorities at every level
- Strengthening our partnership with the University, working together to create a culture that celebrates and embraces change
- Creating robust systems for tracking and progressing change at all levels
- Ensuring students can visibly see how their voice has affected change
- Creating and embedding a programme of political education
Find Your People
Connected students are more likely to thrive, so we want to provide opportunitie for students to build lasting friendships and communities.
We will help you find your people by…
- Providing a variety of activities and student communities to engage with throughout the year
- Having structures and systems that make community creation as easy as possible for our students
- Enabling those who face shared experiences and oppression to connect and collaborate
Our key priorities in this area are:
- Working with students to develop communities based on shared education, shared lived experience, shared belief and shared interests
- Investing in additional resource to relieve the administrative burden, making it easier for students to self-organise
- Developing and continuing to use the ‘Trial a Soc’ programme to introduce new societies
- Creating a network of course-based communities across the University to enhance the academic experience at Norwich as well as supporting students to work alongside their peers
- Providing a platform for students with shared experiences to organise
Find Your Fun
Having fun is important, and joy is good, so we want to diversity student opportunities and facilitate joyful experiences
We will help you to have fun by…
- Being bold and creative, providing different opportunities and spaces for students to come together to have fun alongside their studies
- Recognising the key milestones in our students journey and celebrating student achievements during your time with us
- Facilitating student-led fun
Our key priorities in this area are:
- Using student feedback to significantly increase the variety of events we put on during the academic year
- Creating opportunities for student led and co-created events
- Utilising the canteen space at Bank Plain for regular night-time social space for students
- Working with external partners to widen access to more diverse spaces across Norwich
- Measuring success of the events we run based on the impact they have on students over the numbers who attend
Our Values
All of our work is underpinned by four core organisational values:
- Human Focused - We understand that our students start their relationship with us as individuals. Their first interactions will be formative in terms of how they interact with us during their time at Norwich. Every one of our members will have an individual set of needs and wants from their SU and we strive to provide for as many of these needs and wants as we can. We will treat people as individuals and want to form individual relationships with each of our members. We will be emotionally intelligent in all of our interactions.
- Empowering and Liberating - A large majority of our students will face some form of societal oppression, and our students’ interaction with their education or wider student experience will be partly shaped by the oppression they have faced and face. We will be sensitive to this in all the work we do as well as working proactively to disrupt and dismantle these oppressions whenever we can. We will aim for this work to feel liberating. We want our work to empower students to become their authentic selves, and will provide non oppressive spaces that encourage students to express their true selves.
- Creativity Centred - The one thing that links all students at Norwich is that they are creative. Students need us to be creative in our practice, and provide systems and structures that reflect their creativity. We will provide opportunities for students to showcase their creativity, and to be at the heart of the design, delivery and showcasing of the Students’ Union’s work. We will innovate in every area.
- Enabling Community - Our students will always seek out community for connection, support and shared purpose, and these communities will vary in size and scope. We will provide opportunities for students to connect, and spaces for these communities to develop and deepen. We recognise that at times our role is to enable or facilitate so that students have autonomy over the communities they create. We will build a sense of wider community amongst the students at Norwich, and will be proactive in widening the scope of communities that our students are a part of beyond the University.
If you have any questions about our strategy please feel free to reach out to us. We hope you are as excited about this as we are!
