Monday 01-12-2025 - 09:00

Hey everyone!  

It has been an incredible semester for our societies, from preparing for shows, screening films, and running quizzes, to running complex scenarios, our societies have covered it all there is something for everyone. Our societies have run weekly sessions, incredible socials and events for everyone to enjoy! Feedback from both committees and members have been positive. Members have been engaging incredibly well with events and socials making them even more fun, and committees have been working their socks off organising new and creative events for people to enjoy! 

It has been a pleasure so far to be working with our societies and seeing all of the wonderful things they do and it's great to have a space here to highlight them and put them in the spotlight! 

- Cai, Societies Officer 25/26 

This article has updates from: 

• Book Club 
• B.ART.A 
• ADMiTs 
• Christian Union 
• Pool Society 
• Musical Theatre 
• South Asian Society 
• Drama 
• Muslim Society 
• Irish Society 

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Book Club 📚 

We've had a pretty chill first semester; our society had a couple of trips to our new sponsor Books’n’Cup that has been a great social aspect to our society really making us be able to form connections. We also had our first collaboration with tabletop, with more collaborations to come in the next semester. 

 For national self-care week our society all made bookmarks to help us wind down from a stressful first semester. We had a really successful movember fundraiser where our society completed a 24-hour readathon where we raised £100.  

Overall, we have had a really fantastic first semester and we are so excited for the next semester! 

B.ART.A 🎬 

In semester one Barta has held many screenings including: Minecraft, Twilight, Descendants, and Death of a Unicorn. We have held many socials and events including karaoke nights, the pilgrim arts ball with Drama, Musical Theatre and Costume Society. 

We have fundraised for Movember doing many different Movember fundraisers including a karaoke night, an upcoming pub quiz and some fun forfeit fundraisers such as pie the president and the ice bucket ticket which helped us reach our goal of raising 1k! 

We have done some fun collabs over the first semester including a Halloween party with drama, a cozy online screening of Mean Girls with LGBT society and a Jaws 2 screening with film society. To finish off the semester we are planning an exciting Christmas party at the end of the year!! 

ADMiTs 🎨 

ADMiTs has gotten off to a great start with some incredible guest facilitators like former members Katie and Danny, as well as movement sessions with Minoti and Luena. Scarlett has led us in drum circles and reflections, and we had a fabulous Halloween party. We were blown away by the attendance of our first ever Art, Drama, Music Quiz to raise money, and continue to be delighted as our community grows! 

Christian Union 🌟 

We’ve had such an encouraging first semester, filled with new faces, fun events, and lots of opportunities to grow in faith and community together. During Freshers Week we welcomed around 15 new people and kicked things off with a trip up Arthur’s Seat, an ice lolly stand, sandwich bar and a big sports night.  

Each week we gather to study the Bible, hear from guest speakers, and learn more about who God is and what it means to follow Him as students. These evenings have been a real highlight and a great place for people to ask questions and explore faith in a relaxed, friendly environment. We’ve also had some brilliant socials and had the chance to get together with other unis including Herriot Watt and Napier for some joint socials. 

We’ve just returned from our CU Weekend Away, joining with the CUs from Napier, Heriot-Watt and UHI. It was an amazing few days of teaching, worship, games, a ceilidh, and lots of time to build deeper friendships. We’re now looking forward to our Christmas Dinner, which is set to be a joyful evening and a great chance to invite friends along before the end of term! 

Pool Society 🎱 

The Pool Society has had an incredibly successful start to Semester One, with interest and participation growing far beyond what we expected. This year we launched our first ever QMU Pool League, which has quickly become one of the most popular weekly competitions in the Union. With dozens of players taking part, close matches every week and a table that changes constantly, the league has brought a brilliant competitive atmosphere and a real sense of community to the space.  

Alongside the league, we’ve been busy running a range of events for members of all abilities. These have included: The first ever QMU Fresher’s Pool Tournament A milestone event for us with an excellent turnout and fantastic engagement from new students. A Six-Ball Shootout: Fast-paced, chaotic and great fun — one of our most talked-about nights so far. Two Trickshot Challenges: These brought plenty of creativity, laughs and some surprisingly impressive attempts. 

Musical Theatre 🎼 

This semester, QMU Musical Theatre Society has been buzzing with activity! We’ve held our regular Tuesday meet-ups all term, hosted monthly karaoke nights, and teamed up with BARTA Drama and Costume for the Pilgrim Arts Ball. Between cosy hangouts—like bonfire nights and rewatching classic MT shows—and our hugely successful Halloween party, our members have had no shortage of ways to get involved.  

We’ve spent many brilliant evenings in our sponsor venue, Pilgrim Bar, and we’re rounding off the semester with our showcase, Echoes Behind the Curtains, written, created, and performed entirely by our talented students on the 29th and 30th. It’s been an incredibly busy and rewarding semester, filled with new friendships, freshers finding their feet, and celebrating our final-year members in their last year with us. Here’s to an amazing term—and even more to come! 

South Asian Society 🌏 

This semester has been an exciting and vibrant one for the South Asian Society, filled with community-building, celebration, and student-led initiatives. We kicked off with our welcoming Taster Session, where new members connected over shared culture and interests. This was followed by a cosy Coffee Meet-Up at The Beach House, giving everyone a chance to socialise in a relaxed setting. Our Pizza Party at Civerinos brought together a great turnout of students for food, fun, and new friendships. We also collaborated with ResLife for a joint Diwali Celebration, lighting up the evening with music, activities, and festive joy. To keep the momentum going, the society hosted a lively Halloween Party and an energetic Bowling Night at Tenpin, both of which were huge hits among members. 

One of our biggest achievements this semester was our successful Bake Sale, where we raised funds while sharing homemade treats and cultural flavours with the wider student community. The South Asian Society looks forward to welcoming even more students and continuing to build an inclusive, supportive, and fun community next semester! 

Drama 🎭

This semester has been a fantastic start to our year, starting off with a great number of new faces joining alongside our returning members, rocketing our number of members up to 86! With all of our wonderful folk we’ve pulled off some firsts for the society, such as our haunted walk at Halloween, and expanded opportunities we began offering last year with workshops on writing and audition skills (and more scheduled to come!) and our pantomime, The Little Mermaid, which involves more of our members, is almost twice as long as Cinderella last year, and for the first time includes song and dance!  

We’ve also run some fantastic events including classic quizzes, a scavenger hunt, movie nights, the performing arts ball and a games night, and collaborated with our fellow societies including TAGS, Barta, Musical Theatre and Costume. We’re also working steadily towards some very exciting things in the coming weeks and next semester including four entries into the SCDA One Act Play competition, a disco to ring out first semester, and our spring show, Romeo and Juliet! 

Muslim Society ☪️

We have had some really fun events this semester. We had our cafe meet up and Arthur's seat hike. 

And then we participated in charity week which is a campaign run by a charity called Islamic relief every October. This is our third year participating in charity week. Basically, students around the UK and other countries run events and raise money for children and orphans across the world. The money raised goes to countries like Sudan, Palestine, Morocco, Syria etc.  

So, for charity week the QMU Muslim society members ran half marathons and 10ks at the AJ bell great Scottish run , we also climbed Ben Ledi to raise money, we had an auction dinner in collaboration with Edinburgh Muslim society, Herriot Watt Muslim society and Napier Muslim society and we also did a bake sale on campus. We managed to raise £3291 in total. We then had a Totals dinner in Glasgow where our totals were revealed and the Scotland universities total which came up to a whopping £133,061. We were so happy to be part of this, and we genuinely wanted to thank everyone who supported us, donated and helped us. Even a pound made a difference, and we couldn't have done it without our community.  

Irish Society 🍀

This month has been nothing short of elite chaos in the best way possible for the society! We kicked things off in style at the iconic Musselburgh Races, with our amazing Sponsors Dropkick Murphy's. We decided to commit to the theme a little bit too hard and dressed up as actual horses for the craic. Yes, full mane, full hoof… absolutely no regrets 🐴.  

Next up was our County Colours Jersey Night, where people showed up in their home county colours. The competition for ‘best dressed county’ is still under review! And finally — the main character moment of the month — our crossover Christmas special with the QMU men's football team. We threw on our finest festive knits. We headed out for what can only be described as a cultural exchange of pints, to watch the electric Irish rugby match. Between the horses, jerseys, and Christmas jumpers, we had an INTERESTING but fun first semester!  💚

LGBT+ Society 🏳️‍🌈

LGBTQ+ Society has had a great semester. We kicked off Welcome Week with a teddy bear picnic on campus that over 30 people and their teddies attended - this is also where we introduced and announced the name of our new mascot, Bloop. 

The rest of the semester we've had coffee meetups, Halloween and Christmas craft nights where we painted coffin boxes and made snow globes, more trips to drag shows including Glamoor and a special Death Becomes Her tribute, and attending Edinburgh's Trans Day of Remembrance vigil at Bristo Square.

We collaborated with BArtA for another virtual film night on Mean Girls day (October 3rd), and TAGS for a board games afternoon at Secret Solstice. 

Our biggest collaboration was the November Gaylidh in partnership with University of Edinburgh and Heriot Watt's queer societies, featuring a live ceilidh band and a raffle at Lauriston Hall. There were 180+ tickets sold and QMU sold 30+ of these which is amazing considering we were the smallest university in the collaboration by far. This was a charity event and an incredible £768.00 was raised for Equality Network.

The year is rounding off with The Big Christmas Party in Maggie's which is a collab between six societies: BArtA, LGBTQ+, Film, Pool, Climbing and ADMiTS.

Next semester will be just as packed with activities: in the pipeline are collabs with Book Club, ADMiTs and Film, a self-defence day like the one we ran last year, and a big event with a drag open stage for anyone to have their moment to shine! 

Thank you to all the societies for sharing what they've been up to - love your photos especially!