New student spaces opened in Durham SU!
Wednesday 05-10-2022 - 09:39
We’re making our café and bar service better and easier to access, by making Kingsgate Bar and Café our offering, a
What’s new in Dunelm House?
- Five new rooms for student group activity
- A student lounge with free tea, coffee, hot water, microwave and games
- Say hi to your Student Officers in their new dedicated space
- Kingsgate Bar and Cafe is open! Find the discount offer in the back of your lanyard booklet from Freshers Fair.
There are new spaces, offers and improvements for students in the Students’ Union building in Dunelm House this year! We’ve been speaking with a range of you about how you want to use the Students’ Union space and made some changes so you’ll find more of what you’re looking for. We’ll be experimenting over the next year to find out what’s working well for you and continue to implement and try new things. Give us your ideas in the pop-up on this page!
Find Us: Dunelm House, on New Elvet, is open 08.00-23.00 Monday-Friday, 9.00-23.00 Saturday and 13.00-23.00 Sunday. Our building is listed, full of character and sometimes a little hard to navigate – so please speak to our friendly student welcome assistants at the front desk if you need help finding anything!
We’ll be opening up five new rooms in Dunelm House for students to use for student activities in the evening and at weekends.
“It feels like there’s not enough space for socialising” - 2022 finalist.
In no uncertain terms, we heard that you want more opportunities to try new things and meet people from across campus through organised activities. And you need more space for this. By using staff hybrid working to reduce office space and working in partnership with the University to improve the quality of these rooms so they could provide teaching space, we’ve freed up one large and four medium-sized rooms for you to book for student activity.
74% of students who gave us feedback wanted more bookable space for student group activity
We’re providing a free, spacious student lounge with hot water, a microwave, and somewhere to fill up your water bottle
There’s space to bring your lunch, spend time with friends and classmates in group seating or just enjoy the comfy space on your own. We’ve got pool and table tennis tables, a dart board, board games and Lego to encourage you to take a screen break and relax.
We wanted to provide somewhere where you can save money by bringing your own food and have a space to spend time for free. We heard from students that the Riverside Bar and Café wasn’t working well as an enjoyable bar and café space and have repurposed it as student lounge to give you more freedom in how you spend your time (and your money). You can find the SU Lounge in Dunelm House, down the stairs from the main entrance, and open daytime and evenings, whenever the building is open.
We’re making more spaces in Dunelm House available for learning and study
By flexibly using our increased student spaces, we'll designate more areas as study spaces during heavy study periods. And by helping the University open up more teaching spaces in Dunelm House, students get better timetables. We know study space is a perennial student problem and heard this is particularly so for students whose classes are often in neighbouring Elvet Riverside.
“The SU is a useful spot to be able to study (if you can get a space) because it’s close to our lectures” - English student
We’re making our café and bar service better and easier to access, by making Kingsgate Bar and Café our offering, a
nd repurposing the Riverside Bar and Café as a student lounge
On the same floor as the main entrance to Dunelm House, recently refurbished and providing hot drinks, cakes and alcoholic drinks, students told us Kingsgate was their preferred food and drink venue in Dunelm House. We heard that cost, convenience and location were the most important things to students, and we are focusing on these. Find us on @eat.drink.durhamsu or in Dunelm House overlooking the Kingsgate Bridge, open 8.00 - 23.00 Monday – Friday and 16.00 - 23.00 Saturday and Sunday.
Students who gave us feedback preferred Kingsgate Bar and Cafe to the previous Riverside Bar and Cafe space
Our Student Officers are making themselves more visible and accessible to students
Officers are now working from a glass-fronted office on the top floor of Dunelm House. We heard that seeing the Officers and knowing where they make them more approachable for you as students and makes it easier for them to do their work. While they’d encourage anyone wanting to chat to email first, as they’re often in meetings or out and about, you can also knock on their door from the start of Michaelmas term! Palinatate will also be moving to a new and bigger space, with dedicated storage for their historical editions - it's old office will be freed up as storage for
student groups.
54% of students who gave us feedback thought Student Officers should have a dedicated and accessible space in the building
There are other things students said we should prioritise in our building and we're working on them.
“Re-open the balcony/outside space in warmer months!” - First-year student
- Outside space – getting both our Dunelm House balconies in good working order again for students to enjoy the sunshine and river views. This was a big draw!
- You'd love us to have beehives - and we have a space we think we can make it work in. Watch this space!
- Events and pop-ups – students told us that vintage clothes - sales, poster sales and plant sales are a use of our space they really enjoy and benefit from. You’d like to see more! We’re on the look-out for other pop-up opportunities to provide students services, products or activities within the most accessible parts of Dunelm House.
- Making room bookings easier – we want this to be a smoother and more intuitive process, and we know it’s something that can be clunky!
From Jack, your Opportunities Officer
As student numbers rise and we’ve all got back into the swing of campus life after the pandemic, I’ve heard again and again as Opportunities Officer how finding space can be a barrier to a lot of great activities for students, by students. Teaching space on campus is stretched making timetabling hard, and with knock-on effects on students and student activities. On top of that, our academic representatives work yearly with the University to try and increase the supply of ever more precious study spaces around campus. And this year, students are facing soaring living costs. Finding somewhere comfortable and free to socialise, spend time or study will be more of a priority than ever, especially as winter arrives.
Dunelm House is listed, so while there are limits on how creative we can be, with hybrid working we were confident more space could be freed up for student use. We took the challenge of rethinking priorities for the space to students, and I cannot say how grateful I am that so many of you took the time to give your thoughts, either online or in a focus group.
