Last year, many people said it was the events held over the summer that helped them decide to sign up for U.Lab so this year’s events are a really important part of our journey.  We now have many, many more people who have experienced U.Lab for themselves in Scotland and so we would like to extend an invitation to you to host your own event, open to other people in Scotland to help them decide whether to sign up this Sept. We hope that the points below will help you decide whether to take up this invitation 🙂

1. Spend a minute to clarify your own intent in hosting an event. Write it down. Maybe revisit ulabscot.wordpress.com as a memory boost about what happened in 2015
2. Share it with one other person you might like to host the event with locally. See if they’d be up for supporting you.
3. Find a venue that feels right. Is there somewhere that echoes values of learning, creativity, conviviality? Might the venue themselves be interested in supporting U.Lab with a free room for a morning, afternoon or evening?
4. Just go for it. Maybe get a flyer together. Share your event on Facebook, noticeboards, anywhere that you feel comfortable posting it. And maybe some places you don’t!
5. Send details to Keira (Keira.Oliver@gov.scot) so we can host links to all the events in one easy place for people to find
6. Look out for details about joining our taster session host community, where we can share hints, tips, session outlines and celebrate the events as they happen
7. If you can, tweet about the session before, during and after using the hashtag #ulabscot
8. Never, ever stress. Be ok with whoever shows up – even if it’s only you :)

If you haven’t seen the original invite, it is copied below:

Hello!

We hope you are well and that you find this invitation an exciting one!

Over 900 people signed up for U.Lab last Sept and we have heard so many amazing stories of the impact it has had for so many people – at individual, organisation and community levels.  The date for the next U.Lab has been announced and will start on 8 Sept 2016.  It may seem like a long time away but we know that people appreciated some time in advance last time, to explore what U.Lab is before deciding whether to sign up for it.

Last summer, there were only a few people who had experienced U.Lab and so we put on a series of three national events to bring people together to start a conversation about its potential.  Now that the ulabscot community is much larger, a group of us had a few conversations about what we might do to help interested people prepare for U.Lab, and think that a different approach is needed this time.

So we would like to extend an invitation to you.  If you have felt that U.Lab has been beneficial to you, would you be prepared to host a conversation in your local area, community or organisation open to people who would like to hear more?  The intention of these events is simply to create some curiosity around U.Lab so that people can decide whether to sign up for it before Sept.  Nothing more.  It doesn’t have to be a big production either.  We can provide a framework for you to use and it can be for as little as a handful of people up to however many you like!

If you would like to host one of these conversations and it will be open for people to sign up (i.e. it’s not to an invited audience only), we would like to suggest the following:

• Please express your interest by replying to this email in the first instance by Wed 30 Mar. If you could provide any of the following info, that would be great, but we can follow this up with you afterwards:
  • Location (town/village is fine, we don’t need a specific location at this time)
  • Date and whether it will be a morning, afternoon or evening event (again, we don’t need specific times but we feel that 3 hours max. should do). In order to give people enough time to sign up and get dates in their diaries for Sept, we suggest holding your event in May and/or June.
  • Number of spaces available
• We are currently looking at ways we can advertise the events together to show the choice across the country, and will work with you on this.
• We can provide a framework for how you might like to host your event. We are currently prototyping some tasters for this purpose (this will also be available to you if you’re hosting events to invited audiences only, just drop us an email)
• If you would like to have an event for your community, group or team but don’t feel able to host this conversation yourself, we may be able to match you with a willing host from ulabscot
• If there is any other support that would help, please do let us know.

To help put this into context, here’s a bit of a timeline of how the taster events fit:

• Event support information available – mid April
• Suggested window for holding events – May and June
• Intro to U.Lab course available from the Global U.Lab team – end of July
• U Lab proper begins 8 Sept 2016

We hope that you feel able to accept this invitation in the open spirit in which it is intended.  We have put some more details on our blog to help you decide whether you want to host a taster event.