SPEAKER EVENTS PROCESS

Having speakers engage with your club/society is an amazing opportunity for your members, and for the wider community at Imperial. Make sure you read our guidance on inviting and collaborating with speakers.

At the Union, we believe speakers should be invited to share their views and experiences, while also ensuring that differing, challenging, and opposing perspectives are heard and discussed in a safe environment. When inviting speakers, clubs and societies should ensure attendees can experience a safe and inclusive environment. Freedom of Speech is extremely important, and this should be balanced with UK law, which protects individuals and groups from intimidation, discrimination, and incitement to crime.  

The Union as a Charity

As a charity, Imperial College Union has specific duties and responsibilities when hosting speaker events. We must ensure that events organised by student groups do not compromise the charity’s endowments, funds, assets, or reputation. 

Speaker events must not go ahead until the speaker is approved via the activity proposal submission, so please make sure there is no advertisement or publicity until you have received confirmation from the Activities Team. 

Speaker Activity Proposal Approval 

We will make every reasonable effort to facilitate the attendance of speakers at campus events and support students in this process. To ensure sufficient time for risk assessment and event support, all speaker activity proposals must be submitted at least 6 weeks before the event.  

When reviewing a speaker activity, we consider a variety of factors:  

Required Information

When submitting an activity proposal for an event that involves a speaker, you must provide the following information:   

Escalation

Depending on the status/influence of the speaker and/or the nature of the talk, the Activities Team might need to liaise with other departments in University before signing off a speaker event. 

We will need to escalate a speaker if there is risk of:  

This escalation may loop in an Activities Manager, senior manager, and/or relevant College staff, with the purpose of reviewing control measures for your event.  

They may request additional control measures to be implemented to better manage the activity before granting approval, but we will always do what we can to ensure your activity can take place.  

Virtual events  

If you are hosting a speaker online, for example over MS teams or Zoom, the speaker process still applies, and we still require you to submit an activity proposal 6 weeks prior to the event.   

Impartial Chairs 

Having an impartial chair to facilitate conversations and presentations with speakers is a great way to develop your speaker events and make them a safer, more inclusive environment.  

An impartial chair: 

You CAN be an impartial chair whilst still holding strong personal views – this is a great skill to learn if you are willing and able to!