The 2022-2023 Sheffield Students Union school year saw Iwan James elected as its Wellbeing and Sports officer, a position that Iwan has held since June of 2022.
For his original campaign, Iwan ran on three main policy points that he intended to complete if he was elected for his position: boosting inclusivity, establishing a five-year plan coinciding with Sport Sheffield that would fulfil student interest, and improving mental health accessibility.
His inclusivity policy is based on a main idea in which each club at the university would be given a gold, silver, or bronze ranking for how inclusionary each club is regarding BAME, LGBT+, mature, international and disabled students and what they are doing to improve their inclusivity.
Iwan said: “Currently, the work is still being done behind the scenes to finalise the mark scheme and master document of the scheme but I’m hoping to have this ready within the coming weeks and to pass it as a policy in the SU council so that it can have a longer legacy.”
The bigger step that he made towards his goal for inclusivity within the ‘Black and Gold Community’ is the newly implemented LGBT+ only gym sessions and the trans-only swim sessions. He worked on this alongside Jamie Shipp, the SU’s part-time LGBT+ Officer.
Iwan said: “Last semester, following a consultation asking LGBT+ students their experiences in sport and the gym, which highlighted how uncomfortable certain areas in sport were for LGBT+ people, we ran a four week period for each session with the gym hour on a Sunday and the swim session on a Tuesday.”
The feedback on this project was positive. They plan to run this trial for another four weeks on a different day this semester in order to improve turnout.
His five-year plan is still in the works as he figures out, alongside Sport Sheffield, what exactly it is that the student body would like to see. With this planning, Iwan also has the desire to give students a broader sense of all the ways that Sport Sheffield and sports at the university can impact the community and wellbeing support.
Since wellbeing is the second half of this position, Iwan has been working to make sure that mental health accessibility is not a lost cause among other sport-related projects on his resume. This past semester he created wallet-sized wellbeing outreach cards, built in with QR-codes that take you to numerous mental health services online. The idea was created in the hopes that the card would stay on you without you realising, just in case it was needed.
Looking ahead to the second semester of the year, he said, “I’m hoping to run a more specific wellbeing campaign this semester as at times that part of my role has been under-represented”.