SOAS SU Sports, Societies and Campaigns can book a room at SOAS University to host in-person events and meetings. SOAS allows no room bookings for individual students: all rooms must be booked on behalf of societies or clubs by their President, Secretary or Treasurer.

SU societies can book rooms in the following timeframes:

• Evenings after 6pm
• Weekends (please note the Brunei Gallery closes at 6pm on weekends)
• Outside of term times (apart from SOAS closure dates and Bank Holidays)

Note: Rooms can be requested outside of these time frames but due to lectures, you are less likely to find a room for your event.

Once your booking has been confirmed, you will receive a confirmation email.

Things to do:

• Ensure that you submit the room booking request at least five days in advance of the event to ensure that it will be processed in time.
• Allow three working days for this process to be completed before emailing to ask for confirmation. If you haven’t received confirmation within three working days, email su@soas.ac.uk.
• Ensure that a committee member is submitting the room booking form. If the name on the form is not a committee member of the society, the room will not be booked.
• View our Safer Space Policy and External Speaker Briefing here.

Things not to do:

• Don’t contact the school’s timetabling department, as they won’t be able to help you out and will direct you back to SOAS SU.
• Book a room for the same day. SOAS SU will not process bookings for requests made on the same day as the booking.

General Information:

• If you have a specific room preference, please state this under ‘Description of event’. If the requested room is free at the time of your booking, we will book this room for your event. However, if not, another room will be booked.
• If your booking is for a physical activity and you need space to move, please select 40+ attendees, regardless of the number of attendees you are expecting. This is to ensure we book you a large enough space.
• If there are no available rooms for the date/time of your event, su@soas.ac.uk will send you an email to discuss alternative arrangements.

All rooms are booked under the SOAS Code Of Practice for Room Booking which societies should be familiar with before booking rooms.

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The JCR is a perfect space for musical performances, movie screenings, panel talks, poetry/spoken work nights, and more. We encourage all student societies to run at least one event in the JCR per year!

The Russell Room is ideal for committee meetings, small group discussions, creative events such as craft events or small games nights. The maximum capacity for the Russell Room is 30 people.

The Russell Room and JCR (Junior Common Room) are Students’ Union spaces and cannot be booked using the above system.

To book these two spaces please follow the below procedure:

On your SOAS student Outlook Calendar:

• In the top left-hand corner of the calendar, there is a button labeled either ‘New Appointment’ (on the desktop version) or ‘New Event’ (on the online version). Click this.
• Add in all the details of the event, including:
  • Title of event, which should include the society name
  • Date of event
  • Start and finish time
  • Short description of event, including information on if you are bringing in external speakers
  • If you are bringing in external speakers, please fill in the Risk Assessment for Events Involving Speakers form and attach to the calendar invite.
• Once you have added all the above info in, click invite attendees
  • To book the Russell Room, add RussellRoom@soas.ac.uk
  • To book the JCR, add jcr@soas.ac.uk
  • You can also add other committee members if you would like the event to appear in their calendars also.
• If the space is free at the time, you have requested the booking, you will receive a meeting acceptance email from the relevant email address.
  • If the space is not free at the time you have requested the booking, you will receive an email in return offering an alternative date or time.

If you have any questions, please email either of the two email addresses listed above.

Update 27/03/2023: The Russell Room is currently being used for temporary storage, please request a university room via the room booking form.