8,000+ students, 400+ stalls, one campus: the UK’s largest Freshers Fair.

In the UK, the Freshers Fair is a fixture of every university’s welcome programme: the day campus clubs and societies set out their stalls to win new members from first-year students. Imperial College Union runs more than 370 clubs, societies and projects, one of the highest numbers of any students’ union in the country. So its Freshers Fair is the biggest of its kind in the UK.

On 2 October 2018, it took over the whole South Kensington campus. More than 400 stalls across 17 zones, from clubs and societies to corporate partners and their activations, and more than 8,000 students coming through in five hours.

As External Partnerships & Communications Manager at the Union, I directed and designed the fair, sold the corporate sites, ran the site logistics and managed the budget. At that scale, it all comes down to detail: where every stall goes, how thousands of students move through the campus, and making sure every partner gets the attention they paid for.

The fair was the biggest day of a Welcome Week that drew 16,000 students.

It sat inside a bigger result for the year: £100,000 of new partner funding in six months, on top of renewing the Union’s existing partnerships.

Results

• 8,000+ students in one day

• 400+ stalls across 17 zones on the South Kensington campus

• The largest Freshers Fair in the UK, and the biggest event of a 16,000-student Welcome Week