Podcasting, Organising & More

***Organisations Representing Students (ORS): A collective term we use for Students’ Unions, Associations and Guilds***

A very happy new year to all our newsletter readers, friends and partners. I hope that you’ve been able to start at your own pace and ease yourselves back into the throws of work.

In April, Alkhemy will be celebrating our 3rd birthday, and whilst the how of what we do has dramatically changed since those days, our sense of “why” and our mission has stayed constant.

We’ve been attempting to politely disrupt the student movement and HE with our content and programmes that aim to add capacity, develop people and deliver projects for our partners. This has involved sharing some popular and not so popular ideas about how ORS could consider radical change to solve some of the movement’s biggest challenges. We will keep on plodding away at this - as it’s something we believe in and hopefully Alkhemy will continue to grow.?

We’re not a business or strictly a consultancy - we’re a social impact company and for our team we want to create a radically person-centred culture that delivers high impact, for our partners we want to add capacity, ease overwork and burnout and for students, well, we want them to have the best experience possible.?

Introducing our new Podcast: Disrupting Echoes

'Disrupting Echoes' isn't just another podcast. It's born from our commitment to challenge the established norms in higher education and ORS. We hope to recognise the power of dialogue in fostering social impact, and with this podcast, we aim to spotlight the untold stories, challenges, and triumphs that often remain unheard in the conventional narratives. With this, we want to create a space where challenging the status quo isn't just accepted – it's expected. We aim to empower our listeners, contribute to meaningful change, and make a lasting impact in the world of higher education and beyond.

Our first episode is available to listen to now and will soon be available wherever you listen to your podcasts.

In the debut episode, “Burnout to the Ground” Alkhemy’s Barbara Pereira and Molly Knight tackle the critical issues of burnout in HE and the evolving relevance of ORS. Joined by experts Claire Slater, Gemma Perella and Tom Ritchie, the discussion navigates the challenges of the cost of living crisis for students, identifies the causes of burnout, and explores effective strategies for prevention and self-care. This episode also delves into how ORS can adapt and remain vital in representing student voices in 2024. Click on the Disrupting Echoes logo below to listen before it’s released on other platforms.

Introducing Elixir: An Experiment for Student Activism in 2024

As the new year unfolds, Alkhemy is proud to launch an innovative social change experiment, "Elixir."?

This initiative is a testament to our belief in the power of grassroots community organising and its potential to significantly impact student life in 2024 and beyond.

The Why of Elixir

Elixir has emerged from our conviction that grassroots community organising tactics can and will revolutionise student engagement. We've often advocated for more student organisations to adopt these methods, and now, we're practising what we preach.?

By funding a community organising initiative with Liverpool students, we're diving headfirst into creating tangible, positive change, through deeper political engagement.

The How: LUCIE Approach

Our approach is encapsulated in our already well-established LUCIE model:

• Listen and Understand: Delving deep into the grassroots issues affecting students.
• Change: Identifying areas where change is most needed and can be most effective.
• Implementation: Putting plans into action to address these challenges.
• Evaluation: Continuously assessing our impact and refining our strategies.

—> We’ll be doing this all through a lens of community organising, tried and tested principles but we’ll be experimenting how to make them work in 2024. A key question is, how do we organise students and young people in 2024 and beyond? This is what we hope to learn.

The What

We want to empower students to voice their concerns, collaborate on solutions, and drive meaningful change through building their collective power. Our early listening efforts have identified loneliness, cost of living crisis as well as addressing academic integration challenges, we hope Elixir is poised to make a significant impact.

After running a nation-wide recruitment campaign, the city and University that we’ve chosen to start in is Liverpool (and University of).?

The Who

Leading this charge is our community organiser, a student at the University of Liverpool, who emerged as the top candidate in our national recruitment campaign.?We'll be inviting our new organiser to speak on our podcast in the coming weeks to share insights and learnings from this experiment.

In Collaboration, Not Competition

It's crucial to note that Elixir is not intended to compete with any other student organisation, we want to focus on grassroots engagement and drive positive change - we’re not attempting to duplicate and we would welcome collaboration.

If you’re interested in getting involved or finding out more please email [email protected]

Do you need more capacity?

We can support Students’ Unions as well as University teams with embedded capacity in:

• Student Voice
• Student Engagement
• Student Wellbeing and Advice
• Quality Assurance
• Research
• Project Management
• and much more (it just seems like we're showing off to list any more!)

Email [email protected] to set up a conversation to discuss your specific needs