Winter Clubs Fair 2025: Group Involvement Guide
Last Updated: November 20, 2024
Here are all the ways your group can get involved in Winter Clubs Fair!
What is Winter Clubs Fair?
Winter Clubs Fair is an event organized by Student Group Services. The event gives student groups the chance to recruit new members at the beginning of Winter term, and showcases the variety of involvement opportunities we have on campus. Tables are set up in the Students’ Union Building (SUB), and students are encouraged to walk through and chat with the student groups who are set up at each table.
Get your group involved!
While Winter Clubs Fair is technically smaller than Fall Clubs Fair, there are a wider variety of ways for your group to get involved and many of these ways are FREE (with the exception of walk-up shifts for standard tabling). Whether your group benefits from showing or telling, we hope you can find the right recruiting method for you.
Standard Tabling
The main way student groups recruit at Clubs Fair is through tabling. Each group who signs up to table will get a designated 6 ft x 2.5 ft table to set up a trifold, banner, or anything else to help display what their group is about. Tabling is more about talking than other recruiting techniques, so this can work for all kinds of groups. Make sure you hone in on what makes your group unique, practice your pitch, learn how to listen actively, and make your display pretty! If you want to learn more about tabling, check out our Tabling 101 article.
This option is available to all registered student groups. Sign ups will be free but will be limited to 3 per student group. For example, your group can sign up to table all day on one day and for the morning on the next day, or on all three afternoons.
For groups who miss their chance to sign up, walk-up shifts will be available if space allows. Walk-up shifts will be $10 per shift, cash or student group cheque only.
Student Group Showcase
During Winter Clubs Fair, we also offer student groups the chance to shine on stage! At noon from January 7-9, showcase your club on SUBstage for up to 15 minutes at a time! This feature for Winter Clubs Fair is exclusively available for student groups to use. It’s a great opportunity for dance, music, theatre, and even sports-related groups to show off what they have been working on during the Fall semester, and recruit more members.
This option is free and is available to all registered student groups, regardless of whether the student group is signed up for a tabling shift at Clubs Fair. Groups will be allotted one performance slot, unless space allows us to offer multiple slots. To accommodate staffing needs, we will not accept walk-ups for the stage. Submitting a proposal does not guarantee your group a performance slot or a tabling slot.
Activity Zones
Does your group usually table at Clubs Fair, but you wish you could do something more interactive in the space you’re given? Do your club events tend to be hands-on, with tons of demonstrations or activities? If you answered yes, you should sign up for one of our activity zones! With more space than a standard table, we’re bringing back activity zones this year to give groups the chance to better demonstrate their activities and values without putting on a huge show. Not everything can be a showcase, after all! And this year, activity zones will be on the main floor with the rest of the fair to help increase traffic to these spaces
Each group who signs up for an activity zone will get a designated 10 ft x 10 ft space with a custom layout, ranging from standard tables with chairs to small round tables to no tables at all! This option is great for groups who play board games or video games, demonstrate science experiments, do art, or anything else that works in a larger, more interactive space.
This option is available to all registered student groups, and groups who choose an activity zone shift will not be allowed to book a standard tabling shift at the same time. There will be no charge associated and groups will be limited to 1 full day activity zone shift, which they can combine with 1 shift of standard tabling in a morning or afternoon on another day! To accommodate staffing needs, we will not accept walk-ups for the activity zones.
When can we sign up?
Showcase proposals can be submitted via BearsDen as of November 6, 2024. Standard tabling and activity zone sign ups will open on November 20, 2024 via the Events Network. Please ensure you read through the updated operating guidelines before signing up to table.
All forms will close on December 8, 2024 at 11:59 PM. We highly reccomend that you sign up for our newsletter and keep an eye on our website so that your student group can come prepared.
What else can we do to recruit members in Winter term?
Signing up for Winter Clubs Fair is just the first step towards getting more members—you need to give them something to look forward to! Consider planning some events for the first few weeks of school. This way, you’ll have something to invite people to when you talk to them at Clubs Fair. Make sure your event submission is done at least 15 business days BEFORE the event, though; for events during the first week of classes, we recommend submitting to the Dean of Students Office at the beginning of December to accommodate the winter closure.