Emma's Blog

In case you haven't heard, the rumours are true, last year was in fact the last Summer Ball.

I honestly never wanted to be the Commercial Services Officer to put a stop to the event but unfortunately being an officer is not just about fun stuff. It’s about making difficult decisions and recognising when things aren’t working.

For anyone who couldn’t make our first ever (and highly successful) Annual Student Forum, you missed me giving our reasoning behind drawing this event to its close. Here is my introduction which will hopefully explain why we simply cannot afford to continue with this event.

“Year on year at the Students’ Union we provide the ultimate “farewell” event in the form of the annual Summer Ball. It is the crown of our yearly events calendar and every year we strive to make it bigger and better than the last. Yet year on year attendance has fallen and is now so low that the event is simply unsustainable. As a trustee of this organisation I cannot recommend that we continue this event any longer as we cannot take the hit on losing so much money again.

 Attendance has dropped every year, usually by about 150 attendees. In 9 years we have seen an event which boasted attendance by nearly 3,500 students drop to only 766. Last year the event lost £29,000. As a student union that endeavours to represent over 16,000 students at Staffordshire University, we cannot justify spending this much on an event which was enjoyed by less than 800 of them.

The cost of putting on an event like the Summer Ball is enormous.
Before we even start to book artists there are huge production costs; we have to hire out a sound system, fencing, lighting and staging that can cost a staggering £30k.
Artist fees are especially high for one off Balls, as they aren't promoting their music to the established fans. And the bigger the name, the bigger the bill, yet students expect chart musicians that we simply cannot afford.
Every year we are compared with other institutions and are bombarded with comments like “My friend goes to Warwick and they’ve got Florence”. Unfortunately we do not have the finances or attendance to host such big names.

 This downward trend in Summer Ball attendance is not being suffered by Staffordshire University alone. In 2011 Cardiff pulled their Summer Ball, Coventry pulled their event the day before it was due to happen and Leeds lost 1000+ on their previous year’s attendance figure and that’s just a snapshot of this adverse national trend.

 We absolutely appreciate that students expect an end of year event, especially those in their final year. And we promise there will be one, it just won’t be a “Summer Ball”.”

You might be questioning, if attendance has dropped so much then why did you not do something about it earlier? I’ve been asking myself the same question, and I think it boils down to the fact that here at the students’ union, we’re all optimists. When the event did do badly we blamed it on factors that we could fix in next year like “the acts weren’t good enough” or “it wasn’t advertised well enough”.  

And yes, to address the elephant in the room, last year we did lose attendance due to the date change, we had students on field trips and away on tour but this can only account for a few hundred tickets and in order to break even on the event, we needed well over a thousand.

We know fewer students are willing to shell out for this type of an event. In years gone by we used to hold annual Summer, May and Winter balls that all celebrated high attendance figures. Over time these events have all had to be phased out due to declining ticket sales. Students go out less and, please don’t take this as a challenge, but students are drinking less nowadays too. (There are lots of stats to prove this if you don’t believe me!!!) The face of education has changed, and with it the student body. Students who the Summer Ball generally appeals to (typical 18-25, full time UK students) are actually in the minority at Staffs. Whilst we will never stop delivering events and services aimed at these students, we have to try and cater to as many of the student body as possible and we simply will not have the resources to do that if we keep throwing £30k away on a Summer Ball.

So moving forward we want to know what you want from an end of year event. We want to make it more affordable, more accessible and more student lead. Most of all we want to make it an event worthy of sending off our leavers.

We send out our apologies to any student who had been looking forward to their Summer Ball but please do not despair. We will give you an event to remember, you just need to let us know what you want out of the event.

Lots of love,

Emma xxx