Running an event

Visit the Imperial Events and hospitality webpage or contact Campus Services - roomsandcatering@imperial.ac.uk to secure venue bookings, catering, AV support and to hire furniture for your event. Please note Campus Services charge a fee for their support.

Please visit the Imperial Venues website if you are looking to organise an event but are not a current Imperial College London student of staff member.

Contact your speakers as soon as you have a preferred event date in mind. Please contact the IE team before inviting any high-profile individuals to speak at your event. 

Please note it is not standard practice to pay speakers a fee or honorarium. You may wish to cover your speaker’s travel expenses, but this is at the discretion of your department. Please review the Imperial College London Expenses Policy for more information.

Risk assessments are required for all events held at Imperial. Please complete the Risk Assessment and consult the ‘review & sign off’ section for information on who needs to review and sign off the risk assessment for your event. Please note: the IE team are not responsible for reviewing or signing off your risk assessments.

Please notify George Wrigley  the head of security services and the IE team if any high profile individuals will be attending your event.

Everyone has a right to free speech within the law. It is essential to Imperial’s mission that opportunities for free and open discussion shall be safeguarded and staff and students should be exposed to the widest possible range of views. 

The starting point should always be that an event should go ahead and that cancellation is exceptional and undesirable. So far as is reasonably practicable, freedom of speech within the law will be secured for students and staff of Imperial, and for any visiting speakers.

To support our values relating to freedom of speech and academic freedom, staff and students are expected to familiarise themselves with the Freedom of Speech Code of Practice and Events Procedure which apply to all staff, students, honorary staff, visitors and authorised external speakers.

Escalating events for approval through the Event Request Form will only be required in exceptional cases i.e. any event where there is a real likelihood that speakers and other participants may:

• not be able to enter or leave the premises safely, and/or
• breach the law as described in paragraph 1.7 or otherwise and/or be unable to deliver speeches and participate in debate or discussion in good order, and/or
• that a breach of the peace may occur.

View the Freedom of Speech - Code of Practice and Events Procedure

If your event falls into the above criteria please fill in the Event Request Form.

Invitations - e-invite templates for in-person and virtual attendees.

Joining Instructions – joining instruction templates for in-person and virtual attendees.

Name badge template for events - This template works with Durable 54 x 90mm badge sheets which are available from Office Depot on ICIS. Name badges trays can also be purchased from Office Depot.

You can also find templates for all sorts of events assets on the new brand platform:
Powerpoint templates
Event signage
Pull-up banners
Email banners

Please contact Campus Services if you would like your event to be recorded.

You can also contact the Conferences and AV team if you are interested in live streaming your event through the Imperial YouTube account.

Ensure you have sought the speaker's permission to film and record their speech or lecture.

Visit the submit an event what’s on page if you would like your event added to the Imperial what’s on page. This is open to any current Imperial students or staff members who are hosting a university-wide event. Please note it will take up to five working days for your event to be added from the date that we receive all key event details.

Where appropriate your event may also be included in the monthly Events programme email. If you would like to request for your event to be featured in a future events programme email please get in touch at events@imperial.ac.uk

Other ways of promoting your event include contacting relevant organisations and asking them to advertise your event to their members, and through using the power of social media. We would suggest promoting your event on relevant Facebook groups and coming up with a hashtag for your event and tweeting about it.

You can also request for your event to be shared as a news story by contacting the relevant faculty media manager or officer.

If you are organising a free event that requires attendee registration, you can create a registration form using Qualtrics and embed it within your events listing page on the university website. For more information on this process please refer to the attendee registration section on the Creating an event - things to consider page.

If you are organising an event that requires tickets to be purchased by attendees, you can set up a payments and registration page on Imperial's online store. For more information on this process please refer to the taking payments section on the Creating an event - things to consider page.

Eventbrite is an external event management and ticketing platform used widely across the university. For more information on this process please refer to the Using Eventbrite section on the Creating an event - things to consider page

Please refer to the Creating an event - things to consider page for information on your data protection responsibilities when hosting an event.

If you need to cancel or postpone your event, remember to change the event status to Cancelled, Postponed or Rescheduled in the event editor. You can find out how to change the Event status on the Using the new Events system for Authors page.

If you are using Eventbrite, please contact all registrants via email to let them know the event has been cancelled.

Remember to send a full Event briefing  to the speaker, chair and vote of thanks (if applicable) one week out from your event. This is to ensure everyone knows what they are doing so the event runs smoothly.

Send joining instructions a week out to everyone who has registered for your event. Different instructions need to be sent to your in-person and online registrants. Reminder joining instructions to all in-person registrants need to be sent 2 days before your event and to all online registrants the day before.

If you have requested AV support from campus services and need slides for your event, you will need to send these through to conference.av@imperial.ac.uk at least 3 days before your event.

• Upload your event images to the Imperial asset library.
• Send a follow up email to all registrants thanking them and listing the event recording if they wish to watch it again or if they missed the event.
• Tweet about your event and check the Twitter coverage via the hashtag(s) for the event or associated tweets
• Complete an evaluation of your event using our Event evaluation template.