Creating the Future 2013

On Wednesday 21 August 2013, Partnerships for Change organised a major conference entitled "Creating the Future: Student's Associations & College Partnerships ".

Drawing together nearly one hundred staff and student officers from students' associations, colleges and sector agencies, Creating the Future aimed to generate discussion, ideas and actions about how students' associations can play a constructive role in the regionalised college sector.

Through a series of workshops, plenaries, stalls and case studies, delegates were able to explore topics from Outcome Agreements to campaigning. Resources from the conference can be accessed below.

The conference Twitter hashtag was #ctf13 but we also created hashtags to generate discussion around each of the Griggs principles:

At Creating the Future we began that discussion through a series of dedicated Twitter hashtags, and you can see them below. Beside the three principles outlined by Griggs we have also added partnership.

#ctf13sust –what does a sustainable students' association mean?
#ctf13auto – what does an autonomous students' association mean?
#ctf13fund – what does an appropriately funded students' association mean?
#ctf13partners – what does partnership mean for colleges and students' associations?

Plenaries

The following presentations from plenary sessions are available.

Developing and working with an autonomous students' union - slides from presentation by Abigail Clay (Director of Student Services, Bradford College) and Piers Telemacque (President, Bradford College Students' Union)
Our Vision for our Future - video of the speech by Kelly Parry (President, Edinburgh College Students' Association).

Also, importantly, John Kemp from the Scottish Funding Council delivered a speech in which he announced the creation of a working group to develop best practice guidance on creating strong students' associations. The sector has been consulted widely on this, including a series of four Strategic Dialogue events held in April and May 2014 and three 'framework validation meetings' held in January 2015 to ensure the resource meets the needs of the sector.

The resulting Framework for the Development of Strong and Effective College Students' Associations in Scotland was published in June 2015, housed on a dedicated SA framework website containing all the supporting documents to the framework and outlining the support to college students' associations being provided by sparqs and NUS Scotland.

Workshops

We have presentations available to download as pdfs, from some of the many workshops held at the conference.

The role of SAs in quality improvement (Education Scotland)
Employing and managing SA staff (sparqs)
"The Fourth Element" (sparqs)
Making change happen (NUS Scotland)
Who's the boss? (Glasgow City College SA)
Elections are for life (NUS Scotland)
We're having a Trustee Party (NUS UK)
New answers to the engagement question (NUS UK)

Case studies

A number of case studies were presented at the conference as written reports, outlining practice from throughout the sector relating to student engagement in regionalisation.