A round up of the successes of the Community Corner, from clothing to cuppas.
Since opening in January 2024, the Community Corner at Bower Ashton campus has been a great success, with students saying... ‘love this’, ‘they come everyday’, it is ‘the best thing to happen to Bower’, ‘love this room it has everything’, ‘my favourite spot’ and ‘I can’t believe this room exists’
We have held events in there including Pop Up Gender Free Hair Salon and inclusive nail salon, craft activities, as well as starting up weekly tea ‘n’ toast. This weekly event is run alongside our Advice Team so students can not only get some free breakfast, but chat to the team and find out what different support The Students' Union offers.
The space is unsupervised and swaps that are in there have to run themselves so we do not have exact numbers of items that are taken however since opening back up after the summer holidays on Monday 16 September and counting on Friday 8 November, we have given out at least...
On hot drinks alone that is a saving to students of £2508!
And it’s this key service - Bring your own cup tea and coffee - in Community Corner that students have said is a ‘lifesaver’ and they ‘use it everyday’.
It also helps them save even more money as the water is constantly reheating, students not only use it for drinks but they can also make lunches such as noodles, porridge and soups.
In fact following from SRSF feedback, we have recently had to request and have been granted extra funding from the Cost of Living budget to keep up with the demand. This will allow us to put out an extra carton of oat milk every day for the rest of the year to keep those teas and coffees flowing!