Baylee Mueller

Events Management is one of the many courses at the University of Chester Business School and has a Live Event module in the second year. This hands-on module allows students to receive a detailed and practical understanding of the event planning process from start to finish. It allows groups of students to be creative while planning an event in aid of the group's selected charity. The process of planning the live event taught us how to work together in teams and put what we have learned in lectures in real-life situations.

We began organising our live event in October, ready to be staged in the spring. From start to finish, we had complete control over the event - everything from what charity we were raising money for to marketing materials, venue choice and event concept.

We chose to fundraise for the Woodland Trust because sustainability is close to our hearts and the same for our fellow students. Our belief in sustainability and becoming eco-friendly are aspects of life that we believe are important for university students to learn and continue to implement in their day to day lives to better our futures. Hence our team name ‘Conserve Events’ and our idea to hold a Wild Night Lip-Sync Battle. Visitors were able to watch, dance, and mime to music whilst a presentation of slides behind the stage educated them on ways in which they can help our planet.

Staging this event has allowed us to work with real venue managers, interact with shop owners around town, and create a social media presence to entice students to attend our event.

Shops and restaurants around Chester were so generous in donating fabulous eco-friendly raffle prizes and we secured a fabulous venue for our event, 'Popcorn', a quirky new bar in the city centre. This was the perfect venue as it not only had decorations which kept costs down for us, but they also used all biodegradable materials and pledged to be as eco-friendly as possible when the bar opened. The staff were extremely helpful and created an amazing, fun and buzzing atmosphere.

On the night, we offered 'jungle juice' cocktails, and £1 was donated to our charity from every one that we sold.

We were so proud that our event was exceptionally well supported, and we raised £693 to help support the conservation and sustainability campaigns of the Woodland Trust, such as ‘The Big Climate Fight Back’ and its 'Emergency Tree Plan' for the UK.

'Conserve Events' received many positive notes of feedback as well as a sense of accomplishment, because everything we had been working on for months had finally come together to achieve our goal of creating a fun and educational night for University of Chester students.