A university partnership program has started an events scheme for students staying at their accommodations.
“Home at Halls” is for first-year students at Nottingham Trent and Reading University which hosts weekly evening events designed for freshers to socialise and find friends for life.
The events occur on a specific weekday at 7-10 pm and are all year round with each get-together holding a new and exciting theme.
UPP aim to keep the event themes fun and fresh each week.
Examples of previous themes have included UNO and taco nights, Quiz nights, Movie nights and Art and craft evenings.
Students who go to these events can leave suggestions for the Home at Halls staff on what themes they would like to see in their campus common rooms.
Paula Naraval, Events coordinator at UPP, stated that communication from students who use the events is vital as it allows her to cater the events to the students.
“It is important we allow the students interact with the themes; we want it to be their night!”
Paula Naraval, Events co-ordinator
Paula Naraval opened the events to common rooms across most of Nottingham Trent’s accommodations to give students who may not enjoy clubbing another way of socialising with other first years.
As a former student herself, Paula stressed that this time of year can be lonely at university and hopes the events she runs help students who are struggling.
“University can be alienating at times for students who don’t like clubbing, we wanted to give those people an alternative socialising experience.”
Paula Navaral
To run these events, Home at Halls has hired staff who have first-hand experience with one of the themed nights and students who constantly went during their first year.
Olivia Blake, Student Experience Representative, was hired after being a constant attendee of the Home at Halls events, whilst staying at Blenheim student accommodation.
Olivia, 20, stated that having student hosts allows the events to be more relaxed as it puts less pressure on groups of students who may have not met before to interact.
The events are a huge success as Olivia has seen groups of strangers become friends and met a lot of her own university pals through UPP’s Home at Hall events.
“I found it hard to socialise and these events helped me, now I get to work on them and see it birth new friendships.”
Olivia Blake, Student Experience Rep
For more information, you can follow Home at Halls on Instagram- hah_ntu or download the UPP app.