Campaigns and Communications candidate, Laura Bayliff, who goes by Lulu, wants to integrate wellbeing and mental health into the role as a part of her candidacy.
Citing her own experience as President of the Lancashire Mind society, she is keen to push for easier access to mental health services, and also use her communications role to educate people on wellbeing practices.
One of her first priorities is to run a two-term health and wellbeing campaign, to build upon the existing Grow Our Minds campaign. She praised a campaign from the current VP: “Grow Our Minds is really promoting mental health awareness and promoting conversation.”
She emphasised the importance of prevention of mental health problems arising in the first place, pointing to the high demand for counselling services at Lancaster. Talking of her experience with the service, she told SCAN of the personal benefits of mindfulness, saying she would aim to “teach” such techniques through communications. She further elaborated by saying she would also work with the NHS to provide greater access to Silvercloud, a personalised mental health application, which is normally only available via referral.
She wishes to run a campaign to save students money in first term – citing how groceries, laundry and bus passes have become more expensive over time. Alongside this, she stated: “I want to run a very successful and very dynamic Roses campaign. I want to celebrate the vast number of sports and the diversity of talent!” She further added how she would aim to have a centralised calendar for all societies, to help improve accessibility to clubs.
When asked her how she would manage this, she said she would aim to contact each society before Freshers Week. “I admit that it will be a big job … but I want to break the calendar down by sports, by music … so people can see where their interests lie. They can easily see what’s happening at what time. I really want to make teams less intimidating and celebrate we have so many societies on campus!”
Lulu told SCAN that her expertise was what made her unique, describing how her experience studying a marketing degree – whilst working in the advertising society in her first and second years – working on campaigns with IBM and even working on projects with the Union gives her an insight into running an effective campaign.
“My big dream is to build a campus that is happier and healthier.” She describes herself as “approachable, kind and genuine,” and she said that she wants to make sure every student voice is heard on campus. “I recognise the challenges smaller societies face in the media, and I want this to change. I believe that everybody deserves to be seen and to be heard.”
Lulu wishes to build up relationships with student media and feels “that Take 2 Cinema is overshadowed by the other student media”. She finished by reiterating to SCAN that she wants to make sure that everyone’s “voice is heard”.
