NUS UK is holding a new event - Campaigns Exchange - for elected officers to set the direction of our movement. Over 2 days you’ll shape our national campaigning and democracy, we’ll build community and engage in political education – all to build a student movement that wins.

We’re bringing elected leaders from HE and FE at this crucial moment for NUS. At our conferences last year, members voted to reform NUS to ensure you’re more engaged and empowered to shape the work of our national union. Campaigns Exchange will be all about sharing ideas and creating vehicles for change that can work in the interest of all of the students we represent, nationally and locally.

When is it?

Campaigns Exchange is taking place on Tuesday 19th and Wednesday 20th November at Bishop Grosseteste University in Lincoln. We'll kick off at 1pm on Tuesday with lunch served from 12pm  and run through to 3pm on Wednesday .

At Campaigns Exchange you’ll:

Shape our national campaigns and democracy

• Feed into our democratic redesign
• Help us to identify our new campaign priorities
• Build the Liberation Collective together

Build community

• Share best practice on how to win on your campuses - tell us about your successful campaign by clicking here 
• Celebrate our achievements and highlight the impact of NUS and SUs this term
• Create connections in liberation caucuses

Engage in political education

• Learn about from winning campaigns across the globe
• Create a shared understanding of how we win together

Click here for full agenda (please note that this is a draft agenda and is subject to change)

Who is this for?

Registration

SUs can register their officers / NUS reps at this link or by clicking the button below. Registration closes on 5th November.

Our workshops

When you view the agenda you'll notice that we've dedicated time to a number of different types of workshops, all of which are designed to give attendees the best possible experience at Campiagns Exchange. 

We will have focused workshops on:

•  Democracy for our Future 

NUS democracy should be our vehicle for change. It needs to strengthen our campaigns and build a student movement that wins. But as NUS UK continues to implement reform and following an evaluation of our 23/24 conferences, it’s clear it needs a revamp.  

How can we make the process of generating new ideas and priorities more responsive and directly linked to students? How can students’ unions shape it meaningfully and see a clear line of influence between our democratic activity and national campaigning? And how can our democratic spaces best support that?  

In this workshop we’ll share our thinking so far, and get your input into our democratic redesign that builds our power and influence as the national voice for students. 

• Campaign Ideation

This term we’ve been conducting 1:1s with hundreds of sabbs and NUS reps to understand what you’re most passionate about, and we’ve been polling students on what matters most to them. In our ideation workshops we’ll share all the data we’ve got on the issues that most commonly come up, and generate ideas together on what national campaigns could look like. We’ll take all of these into our campaign planning period and launch. 

• Best Practice

These workshops are led by sabbs/ NUS reps to share campaigns on your campus that made a real impact. Maybe it’s on tackling food or period poverty, or securing affordable housing, or you’ve found an innovative way to build strong student communities.  

These spaces are dedicated to SUs showcasing your hard work, inspiring and learning from each other. Let’s celebrate your achievements and empower each other to create even more positive change! Have an example of good practice you’d like to share? Tell us about it here. 

• Liberation Collective

NUS Liberation Collective is our new UK-wide structure for students wanting to organise for liberation campaigning. This term we’ve been running co-design workshops to map regional networks of liberation activists and develop collective practice. In this workshop we’ll build on them to grow a national network of activists, and get your input into new ways of organising that best reflect what liberation activists do and aim to achieve in the student movement.