What student communities exist in our memberships? What democratic innovations do we need to empower them?
Our traditional methods for engaging students are rigid and outdated. Rather than understanding how students understand themselves, interact with others, create affinities and shared interests we expect them to fit around our conceptions of who they are and how they should make decisions. Instead we want to understand and empower these communities of students to engage with their union and create the change they want to see.
Therefore, a strategic priority for the Union Development zone this year will see us focusing on, not only the different types of student communities that exist within the education sector, but the different types of democratic innovation that will engage these students in our students’ unions.
How can we encourage students to become involved in the democracy of their students’ unions in a way which empowers and inspires, therefore giving more of a voice and a mandate to our policies and politics?
Here is our discussion paper to build towards Union Development Zone Conference: Empowering Student Communities Zone Conference Paper
Thanks Jo, I know about this piece of work from Loughborough Students’ Union which is very interesting:
https://www.nusconnect.org.uk/news/article/nus/Loughborough-goes-tribal/
Lots of Unions (ours included) still rely on demographics when thinking about different type of students but students don’t fall into neat homogenous categories like that. Some Unions have done some interesting stuff around behaviours and looking at grouping students around this.
This is a key document you should read before the conference. Go through and read, posting your responses below.