wINTER BREAK PRESENTS!

For students staying in Cardiff over the winter break we put together Christmas bags filled with presents. For whatever reason you may we staying in Cardiff for Christmas we wanted to bring you a little joy over the festive season.

We hope you enjoyed the presents from your SU Team and had a great Winter Break!

candy cane delivery service!

Spreading some Christmassy joy during the last two weeks of term, we launched our candy cane delivery service! Open to students and staff, people wrote messages in cards and labels which we attached to candy canes before delivering them to the recipients. In true Christmas spirit we had our very own Santa Claus who joined the SU Team and sang carols around the corridors whilst over 250 candy canes were exchanged!

movember

A huge congratulations to the Movember Team who have raised over £2,500 for men’s mental health, suicide prevention and prostate and testicular cancer. We have seen Cassius Kay and the sports society led by Aleks Gulliver, Tiger Tingley and Nathan Kirby host quizzes and ‘A Cute Night In, Cinema Night’ with the addition of various sports challenges and marvellous moustache growing!

To round of the month and celebrate the fantastic achievement of this team we hosted ‘The Big Shave’ seeing Cassius Kay and our Director of Music, Tim Rhys-Evans have their moustaches shaved in the SU by students.

Cost of living

With the current cost of living crisis, we wanted to help relief a little bit of pressure. We emailed out the recipe to make a pasta bake for £3.20 and gave out the ingredients for free. Alongside this we ran a competition where people could enter a picture of their pasta bake and the best won a free meal from the College canteen!

Whether you made this meal for your housemates or portioned it out for multiple meals, we hope this helped you out a little.

Term 2 will bring more of these recipe and ingredient packs so keep an eye on your emails!

THIS TERM’S MENTAL HEALTH CAMPAIGNS

For World Mental Health Day we asked students at Royal Welsh What will you do for your mental health today? Student’s wrote their response on a big poster in the Student’s Union to share ideas. We also gathered helpful resources about mental health which we emailed out and projected around the college.

On Stress Awareness Day the SU Team created some stress relief care packages which we hid around college. If you found one of these we hope it brought a little bit of joy to your day and offered some relaxation to your day. We also set up a colouring-in station in the SU to help people take a break out of the busy College day.

Headspace is a meditation service which all Royal Welsh Student’s can access for free by signing up with their college email. If you have any questions about how to sign up for this, just ask or email Nat.

PHYSICAL HEALTH CAMPAIGNS

As busy creative individuals it is easy to forget to look after your physical health. This term we dedicated time to helped highlight the importance of physical health by collating posters and information about preparing for your practise. You can find these in the practise rooms in Royal Welsh.

We also offer free yoga sessions every Wednesday evening at 6:30pm for all RW students and staff. Check your weekly email from Nat to find out where the session is taking place that week.

INTERNATIONAL MEET UP!

We had our first international meet up! This is a space where international students can meet people in the Royal Welsh community who also are studying away from home. We understand how it can be difficult when first experiencing different cultures so we hope this is a network that help you throughout your time here.

We have more of these meet up planned so keep your eyes peeled!

free headspace subscription for students

RWCMD Students' Union partnered up with the people behind the Headspace app and paid for 500 RWCMD students to have full membership for a year.

The pandemic has been difficult for all of us and we want to ensure that our Royal Welshers are being kind to themselves now and always.

free period products in bathrooms

If you ever need some period products then feel free to grab some from the SU toilets! They are available in both the stalls and urinals bathrooms.

At the beginning of this campaign, the SU Team pledged to donate ten packs a month, but this is now being paid for by RWCMD (woo!).

To celebrate this campaign being continued by College, the SU Team has also donated menstrual cups, promoting a sustainable way to end period poverty.

drop-in sessions with mind cymru

Staff from Mind Cymru have visited RWCMD several times to chat all things mental health and wellbeing with our students.

Some of these visits have included drop-in appointments for students to speak about their mental health and how they’re doing, with the potential to be referred to further sessions with Mind.

This was in collaboration with our Student Services team.

big bounce back for coppafeel!

The Students’ Union teamed up with the RWCMD Uni Book Team to raise money for the charity CoppaFeel!

We always had someone ‘bouncing’ for a total of eight hours! They were either on a trampoline, a space hopper, or a skipping rope.

sexual health q&a with ymca

SU President 2020/21 Nia Thomas was joined by George from YMCA to ask all those embarrassing questions you don’t want to!

They spoke about STI’s, forms of contraception, and advice for specific members of the LGBTQ+ community.

foodbank donations

As winter approaches and the effects of coronavirus continued to trap people in poverty, food banks in the Trussell Trust network (the UK’s biggest Foodbank organisation), gave out a staggering six emergency food parcels every minute. Over 50% of people using food banks at the start of the pandemic had never needed one before.

This was in collaboration with our Student Services team.

cuppa and a chat with the su team

The SU Team hosted a 'Cuppa and a chat' via Zoom tonight for all current students and alumni. We had a very informal hour of chats over a cup of tea/coffee/whatever you like to drink.

We love getting to know our students, hearing their thoughts on how they think college is going, and just having a good ol’ natter!