DISCO Community Ambassadors

About me

I wanted to apply for this role after working on the Swing Dance Committee, as this had introduced me to the power of events and how one or two people can make a visible difference in building a community.

My aims in the School of PET Disability Committee and my DISCO work as a whole were to create a sense of community, help build up platforms for students to find resources and campaign for issues that affect them, and to find creative ways to reduce anxiety to help disabled and neurodivergent students find a community.

My Projects

In the Physics and Engineering building, we don't have many clear, accessible student spaces, and the ones we do have are not known about. This launched my first project to help make these common spaces fit-for-purpose and also just to introduce students to them! I have met with the building manager and ran a student consultation on what is most wanted and needed in these spaces, in order to make effective and useful changes with the limited budget that we have.

My other main project, alongside Committee and DISCO work, was to help increase the accessibility of societies in order to allow students to have more avenues to find a community. I have worked on this outside the project also, but these two projects intersect when thinking about how to get departmental societies (for us, Physsoc, York Engineering Society, and Women in Engineering) to run collaborative events with us, and to help them make their events accessible and disability-friendly. The aim of this would be to increase student-department relations, as well as reducing the anxiety around going to events.

A lot of my job has been starting projects and creating jobs with ways to keep them sustainable in mind. The School of PET Disability Committee formed only a few months before I joined the project, and we were yet to run our first event, so we had to bring everything up from the foundations. It made it a much more creative task as I could choose whichever areas of student life would be most useful to target with our projects! It also meant that any structures we put in place could be designed so that they could be run easily, and so that it is clear what the next steps are for future committee members!

Future of the Project

Other areas we've noticed that cause particular issues for disabled and neurodivergent students are lab work as it is very intense, inflexible, and stressful, and SSPs- which are often written without taking the demands of a physics or engineering course into account, and how easy it is to get behind if you miss even one lecture. Office hours are also often reported to be quite intimidating, so we want future projects to address these issues in order to get the best support for physics students. We also want to keep up the community atmosphere by continuing to run events - particularly our body-doubling study group! These are long-term projects I hope to continue working on as a volunteer and with the rest of the amazing committee in years to come.

I've loved the DISCO project for the range of skills it has taught me - it's been really fun and creative at times, it has pushed me to try new things - like building websites and platforms with specific aims -  and I've been at the forefront of designing and running projects. Overall, it has been incredibly rewarding to see the difference I have made. I hope the committee and this toolkit continues to empower and offer support to many more disabled and neurodivergent students in the years to come.

About me

Being the Wellbeing and Community Champion for the Pantomime Society truly sparked my passion for building communities that are both accessible and supportive. It was incredibly fulfilling to organize wellbeing events, work alongside the rest of the committee, and see firsthand the positive difference strong communities make in university students' lives. Before this, I gained valuable experience nurturing online communities on Discord and even took a Wellbeing course in sixth form to better support my classmates.

All of these experiences and skills really prepared me to revitalize the Chemistry Disability space, which had unfortunately become quite quiet after the Chemistry Disability Forum dissolved during COVID.

Launching the Chemistry Disability Community

My first goal was to understand if there was interest in a Chemistry Disability Community, so I held an initial open meeting and discussion. From that, I learned a few key things:

• Busy Schedules: Chemistry students are incredibly busy! This makes it hard for many, especially those not in their first year, to come to in-person events. This was particularly true since I started this project midway through Semester Two, when students usually have less time for extracurriculars.

• Lab Access: Accessibility in labs is a major concern for students.

• Helpful Resources: Knowing what services and locations are available (like SSPs, ECAs, and quiet rooms) is super valuable, and students really wanted a handy resource specifically for Chemistry students.

These points led me to shift my focus to a more online approach, which meant creating an Instagram, developing resources, building a website, and putting a lot of effort into our shared Discord server. I also had some great discussions with the Chemistry Teaching Labs and found out they're actually working with other universities to compile a list of lab provisions for disabilities, which was fantastic news!

Next Academic Year...

My plan is to put up posters all over the department promoting the Community with QR codes that link to all our social media and website via Linktree. The posters will be aimed at first-year students because they typically have the most free time and will hopefully be able to commit to contributing to the community for a couple of years. This long-term involvement will be brilliant for building a strong sense of community. The website's resources will also be most relevant for first-years, as they include lots of orientation and informational content (exactly what I wished I had in my first year!). I'm confident that this strategy will give the community the boost it needs to become well-known and easily approachable.

I have learnt a lot about community building and I am extremely grateful for the opportunities provided by Mandy and the DISCO team. I struggled a bit during my term, worried that I would have little (or no) impact, but I have learnt that no matter how small your work seems, you are making a difference and planting the seeds of a community which can only grow! Just remember- never give up, community building is a greatly rewarding experience in the long-run (I promise)! ❤️

I was grateful for the opportunity to start conversations around studying with a Disability. Starting the project, I had lots of ideas, particularly around making the Department of Education more accessible, ensuring lecturers used subtitles, and raising awareness of the help the University of York can provide (such as Student Support Plans) and how to access them. Meetings with my fellow ambassadors were inspirational, it was very encouraging to be working towards goals alongside passionate students who had similar intentions for the University.

Starting a community from scratch is always difficult. Setting up social media and encouraging fellow students to attend events were particularly challenging. I started with my friends (and whoever was in my class before the event ran) and was able to receive some attendees to chat about the Disabled student's experience and eat snacks. This was a lovely experience, and I was thankful for their time. This time around, a sustainable committee was not able to be formed, but advertising for informal meetings and more formalised 'Body-Doubling' events definitely introduced people to the Disability Community (even though nobody attended!). In the end, any impact, however small, matters, and the wider university projects definitely made me feel supported and valued. 

I was appointed as the Disability Community Ambassador for the Department of Psychology following my voluntary involvement in the Psychology Disability Committee (PDC). The PDC has now been running for three years and has already progressed through many of the stages outlined in the DISCO project’s development framework. Having worked with the PDC for over a year prior to this role, I brought a strong working knowledge of what kinds of events, initiatives, and structures tend to be effective in disability-focused student groups. This experience was both a strength and a challenge; it sometimes made group collaboration more complex, as I had to balance my existing ideas with the need for each department’s group to develop its own distinct identity.

On a personal level, my time in the PDC has provided me with a real sense of community, and it has been a privilege to support the development of similar groups in other departments. I sincerely hope that these groups continue to grow and that the connections between student-led initiatives can be maintained across the university.

While the DISCO project as a whole is broad in scope, my work in this role was clearly defined: helping to establish departmental-level disability community groups. I was especially encouraged by the ongoing conversations around long-term sustainability. Plans to continue involving previously engaged students are promising, and I am hopeful that this model will foster a strong and lasting impact across departments.

At the beginning of my term, I had several ambitions, including: developing a student wellbeing survey to track experiences over time; creating a student-designed chronic pain resource; redesigning the website for visual cohesion; building a social media post bank; and designing an awareness-week calendar. Due to the demands of the DISCO project—including developing toolkits, organising events, attending regular meetings, and supporting the alumni network—I had to scale back on some of these goals. Nevertheless, I maintained detailed records of all my work, so that future student leads can pick up these initiatives and continue building on them. I can also continue some of them within my voluntary role! 

A key learning point for me has been the central importance of sustainability. While initiating community groups requires considerable effort and coordination, maintaining them is often more achievable with the right structures in place. I am proud to have contributed in practical ways to the ongoing sustainability of the Psychology Disability Committee 🌻.