Welcome to the process of booking a room or other space for your student society or sports team event!
See our full guidelines on room bookings to answer any questions and be aware of timelines and how the SU processes requests.
If food is involved in your event you will need to stick to the Food Safety Guidance.
To ensure a smooth booking experience, please follow all the steps below:
- Prepare your risk assessment
- Make the room / space request (deal with the extra step for externals)
- Promotion
Please allow 10 working days to process your society's room booking requests.
Step 1: Prepare a Risk Assessment
Before proceeding with your room booking, make sure you have a risk assessment for your event or meeting. This assessment ensures the safety and well-being of all participants. Room bookings will not be made without one of the two types of risk assessments.
- Society Risk Assessment: If your event aligns with your group's regular activities, it may already be covered in your society risk assessment. This typically includes routine meetings or standard events.
- SOAS Event Risk Form: this is aimed at all events that deviate from your usual activities. For example, organizing a themed party, conference, and any large speaker event.
If you require assistance with creating a risk assessment or need a template which you can find here; https://soasunion.org/get-involved/committeehub/assessingrisks/
***UPDATE (4th April): for all big events and those with externals you will have to use the school's form linked here. This version now has template risks which you can amend according to your event. SOAS Event Form.
To submit an Event Risk Assessment and details of any external attendees at the same time, use the form 'Your Event Information (external attendees and one-off events)' (https://forms.office.com/e/ErDbCSsXYi)
Step 2: Request a Room or Space Through the SU Booking Site
To book a room for your event, you must fill out our room booking form on the room booking site. This form helps us gather essential information about your event, ensuring that we can accommodate your needs appropriately.
Please note: We review pending room bookings every Monday, we will not be processing room booking requests on any other day. Ensure you submit your request accordingly.
The room booking site can be found here; https://soas.roombookingsystem.co.uk/
Logins have been sent to either your society email or your president's email. If you have any issues with getting access to the room booking site, please contact su@soas.ac.uk. You will need to activate your account. Sometimes these emails are quarantined so if you have not received anything you will need to access your quarantine folder. You can do this by following the steps outlined here: Find and release quarantined messages as a user - Microsoft Defender for Office 365 | Microsoft Learn
EXTERNAL GUESTS - Are any external people attending - speakers; trainer; general public etc?
If you have any external attendees - whether they are just attending the audiience OR speaking - you will need to tell us. The information we need is set in the form Your Event Information (external attendees and one-off events) (https://forms.office.com/e/ErDbCSsXYi)
Campus security will require a list of people attending the event if there are externals, so they know who they are and are able to let them into the building. Please send this to the SU and campussafety@soas.ac.uk no less than a day before your event or the Friday morning before if your event is on a weekend.
SOUND - Need microphones or any audio visual support?
The SU has mics for the JCR, but these do not work with any other school speakers. For roaming mics, to use the BGLT sound system, clip-on mics, these only come from the schools AV department.
They require a full two-week lead-in time** and 1-month notice for weekend / out of hours and external events. Complete this form Audio & Video Event Support Request Form | SOAS
**AV need to know what room the event will be in, so allow a longer lead-in time, check with SU staff which room has been provisionally booked with the school.
Step 3: Confirmation and Promotion
Once your room booking is approved, you will either receive a notification from the room booking site with a confirmation if it is an SU room or a confirmation email from the University Room Booking team if it is a university room. At this point, you are ready to start promoting your event! Here's one effective way to do it:
Use Native - our events platform.
Take advantage of our events platform, Native, to streamline your event promotion. You can use Native to create and manage event tickets and promotions. Plus, your event will be featured on our website for maximum visibility.
Find guidance on how to set up your event, create tickets, and view reports on Native's knowledge pages (https://native.stonly.com/kb/en).
You can put through a comms request for SU insta posts and all-student emails etc: SOAS SU Comms Request Form (office.com).
By following these steps, you'll be well on your way to hosting a fantastic event for your student society or sports team. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please don't hesitate to contact us. Find our contact details here; https://soasunion.org/get-involved/committeehub/keycontacts/
We look forward to helping you make your event a success!