Safe Adventures launch

A few weeks ago, we were kindly hosted by Howden at their global headquarters in East London (it was a very fancy building!). We launched the Safe Adventures report and had an insightful and encouraging afternoon talking about the findings. Over 60 people joined us from students’ unions, universities, sport departments, National Governing Bodies and charities.

The Safe Adventures report is the output of a year-long collaborative consultancy project we’ve led. Supported by Howden and NUS Charity and funded by 16 fantastic students’ unions. We set out to review students’ union practice supporting student groups who do outdoor pursuits. We quickly learnt that ‘outdoor pursuits’ isn’t the right term for the activities we looked at, and actually ‘adventure activities’ is better. Working with Paul Donovan, technical consultant working in the adventure activities sector, we wrote a report that we believe will fundamentally shift how we support student group safety.

The Student Groups Outdoor Pursuits Safety Programme was initiated by Bristol SU at the request of Dawn Lees, following the tragic death of her son, Jack Lees. Jack was a student and member of the Wild Swimming Society. Jack lost his life after entering the water to assist other swimmers in difficulty. Jack and his best friend managed to save three people’s lives.

Dawn joined us at the report launch; telling us about her son, his interests and how Jack died. Dawn’s speech was moving and powerful. It showed us why we need to get this right.

We’re really proud of the work behind the Safe Adventures report and even more proud about what this report means to the sector. We’ve created a set of six Student Group Safety Principles that have wide application - this work isn’t just about adventure activities but is about how we structure and manage support for student groups. We need to think differently about where we put our time, energy, attention and resource.

We encourage anyone working with student groups to download and read the report. We’re running webinars on 23rd & 28th April to take you through the report findings. In a few weeks’ we’re launching implementation work, the next phase of this programme.