Tell us about yourself

Iona, third year HSPS student at Medwards and co-president of the Murray Edwards Garden Party.

How are you finding the role of co-president?

Really enjoyable! It was a bit of a question of who was going to take up the mantle after the cancelation last year and to be honest, it was pretty much just me that wanted to do it, and I had to kind of persuade the other co-president to do it with me. But it’s definitely been worth it. It’s really fun. I really love our committee. I really love Medwards so important to me to have the Murray Edwards Garden Party, which I guess kind of makes the work slightly more fulfilling, if not a little bit incessant and annoying …

How is the revitalization of the garden party going? 

I would say well. We’ve kind of done everything we can to revitalize it – we’ve identified the problems from last year, which was predominantly low ticket sales and we’ve got a different ticketing strategy in place. This year, we tried to have more competitions with the student body – we’ve had a guess the theme competition where, if you guessed the theme correctly before the theme reveal, you had a chance to win a free ticket which was really fun. For our launch party, we lit up the dome as a planetarium, and everyone could come and stargaze. We projected a video that launched the theme on the dome so that was really exciting, and it’s been really fun doing these creative ideas to try and encourage people to get more involved with the Garden Party, because we don’t want it to be cancelled again. That would be really annoying and embarrassing at this point, probably.

What was your inspiration for the theme?

Since first year I’ve been saying I wanted to do Medwards in space. I just remember applying to Murray Edwards and not knowing what the College looked like at all, so I googled it, and I was like, “that’s a spaceship. I’m going to live in spaceship”. So since then, we’ve said we want to do a theme that’s sort of space but we thought Medwards in space is a bit broad, perhaps a little bit too silly. Previous Medwards themes have been quite story-based, so this year, we thought, let’s do something a little bit more conceptual, maybe a bit cooler. So we went for solar eclipse.

What are you looking forward to most?

Selling tickets! We’re going to do a costume competition, so if you go as a pair to the garden party, and one person comes as the moon and one person comes as the sun, whoever does that best can win a prize – maybe a free ticket to next year’s party, if that’s not also cancelled. I am really excited, but I guess it’s kind of crunch time now, so it’s a bit nerve-wracking as well.

How do you feel about students prioritizing more ‘presitigious’, older May Week events?

I really can’t criticize that, because that’s literally what I’m doing as well with my friends. However, I think the price difference between one of the old may balls and a garden party is so vast that it’s almost not even worth comparing the two? If you’re going to John’s May Ball, general release is £285, whereas if you’re a Medwards student the Garden Party is £50 or £45 if you don’t want to drink alcohol. So I really think while neither of those sums is a negligible amount, it’s possible to do both. I’m doing both, I would say that it’s very possible to do two, if you wanted to. There’s no pressure. There’s a little bit of pressure to come to Medwards, but there’s not that much pressure.

Are you hopeful that the weather will hold up?

I think it’s going to be a bright, sunny day from start to end. However, if it’s not, we do have a wet weather contingency plan, so never fear.

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