Cardiff Met Conferences Newsletter - ENG

ISSUE 8

Cardiff Met Conferences Keeping you in the Know Cardiff Met Proves a Popular Exam Centre Venue With its large range of versatile spaces including halls and classrooms, it’s no wonder that Cardiff Met is a popular choice of venue to host exams.

Cardiff Met Conferences work with a number of companies to operate as an exam centre venue including the University College of Estate Management (UCEM), The Open University, Trade Skills 4U, The Chartered Insurance Institute, The Association of British Dispensing Opticians and Celtic English Academy.

“Clare and the Conference Team are a pleasure to work with given their friendly and professional support. They go the ‘extra mile’ by anticipating your needs and making helpful suggestions. Thank you!”

Celtic English Academy

Case Study: Celtic English Academy The Celtic English Academy (CEA), based in Cardiff is the first and currently only authorised Occupational English Test (OET) exam centre in Wales. OET is an internationally recognised qualification to help non-native English speakers register and practice in the UK healthcare sector and other English-speaking environments.

CEA has partnered with Cardiff Met Conferences to deliver monthly OET exams at the University.

Exam day is either a Saturday or Sunday and involves using multiple rooms for listening, reading and writing tests, in the morning and then individual rooms, for each candidate, to take the speaking test in the afternoon. All these rooms conform to strict OET exam regulations.

The exam rooms are complemented by reception, waiting and registration / cloaking areas. Particular attention is focused on making the exam experience enjoyable and stress free, by ‘putting people, and not the process, first’. Candidates and anyone who accompany them are invited to bring their own refreshments as well as being made aware of the cafeteria services provided by ‘The Gallery’ coffee shop on campus. We have worked together, to support 183 candidates to-date, with 100% satisfaction! In fact, on average, we have more than doubled the UK and Ireland benchmark.

“Thank you so much for all the help and support you and your colleagues have given me over the last week. Everyone has been so friendly and helpful making the 'job' that much easier and enjoyable to do.”

Open University

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Cardiff Council Training Centre partners with Cardiff Met for the 15th year running Cardiff Council have been hosting training sessions at Cardiff Met for over 15 years and have welcomed in the region of 18,000 people during this period. The training courses offer a wide variety of subjects including skills to foster, leadership and management, first aid, court room skills and accounting. This offers a range of flexible learning opportunities to support individuals to take their first steps back into learning and to assist them to progress to further learning, training or employment.

These Welsh Government funded courses are offered free to social care staff and include a range of courses that assist with the development of skills for those looking for work in childcare and social care.

“We have used Cardiff Met's Training and Conference facilities for many years - we keep coming back because the rooms are so bright and airy, nothing is too much trouble and the pricing is very competitive.”

Cardiff Council Training Centre

With customers that regularly book training facilities at Cardiff Met, we are able to set up an ongoing contract which gives the client the security of ensuring space is available for them at an affordable price.

Public Health Network Cymru Early Years Nutrition Seminar This February, Cardiff Met were pleased to welcome 50 Public Health professionals to Llandaff campus for an Early Years Nutrition Seminar. The event reviewed infant and child early years nutrition with discussions on new trends and potential changes to protect children.

As well as the plenary session that was held in the Hospitality Suite, there were workshops that specifically

focussed on Welsh Government standards in the early years.

PHNC selected healthy options for their catering with our Wye Eatwell finger buffet for lunch as well as fruit baskets with the refreshment break.

Special dietary requirements were catered for with our range of special diet menus, which were greatly received.

“We were very pleased with the event and will consider yourselves for future events.”

Public Health Network Cymru

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Intensive ‘Welsh in the Workplace’ in Nant Gwrtheyrn Sally and Eva took a trip up to North Wales in December to participate in an immersive residential ‘Welsh in the Workplace’ language course. The Welsh lessons ran throughout the day with Welsh conversation persisting during meal times too! The course included a trip off-site on the Wednesday afternoon to experience a mixture of Welsh speaking environments. It was a busy programme, which included guest speaker Twm Elias, a well-known nature enthusiast and author, as well as evening entertainment from a successful Welsh country duo, Gethin Fôn and Glesni Fflur.

Event Planning Tip Getting an event right is all about thorough planning. We’ve put together lots of useful information and a planning check-list to help you make sure you’ve thought of everything and that your event is a huge success! Download your free event check-list here.

Eva commented “We had a number of useful tasks to carry out during the course including preparing and giving a presentation in Welsh.

Nant Gwrtheyrn is a site of great history and beauty and is an inspiring place to immerse yourself in the Welsh language and culture.”

Sally Said: “Nant Gwrtheyrn is a special place to visit and staying on site for a Welsh course is an amazing opportunity. The students and tutors all stay on site, learning, eating and socialising together in Welsh. The food was amazing and the catering staff were so friendly and helpful – even they would speak Welsh to you or revert to English if you struggled.”

Take a look what they got up to, watch the video of their week!

Cardiff Met’s Plastic Free Pledge sold, and we’ve surpassed 2 million free water vends via the water coolers.

This is a 7.95% reduction in our waste recycling figures (equating to 7940kg of plastic).

During a Green event in Feb 2018, Cardiff Met invited it’s staff and students to put forward their sustainability ideas via a ‘Campus Pledge Tree’. The number one suggestion was to reduce single use plastic.

As a result 17 water coolers were installed on campus, along with discounted re-usable bottles available for purchase on site.

Since the implementation (April 2018) over 1250 re-usable bottles have been

The success of the campaign lead to Cardiff Met being the winner of the Sustainability Academy Wales award for Sustainable Procurement/ Supply Chain.

Cardiff Met have now also implemented single-use coffee cup collections (previously going to landfill), as well as a new Eco-Food box range, sold via the catering outlets to encourage reuse of food containers and further behaviour change.

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Meet the Export Breakfast Meeting Cardiff Met Conferences recently hosted the ‘Meet the Export’ event for Food and Drink Exportese, who also organised The Food and Drink Wales Export Club on behalf of the Welsh Government.

present with expert knowledge of the export market such as Welsh Government, Wolfestone and Liberty Marketing. It was a great event with lots of information shared about exporting food and drink.

There were delegates from a variety of food and drink companies such as Rachels Dairy, The Village Bakery and Abergavenny Fine Food Company.

There were a number of companies

The breakfast meeting offered delegates a choice of croissants, bacon baguettes and fresh fruit platter served on arrival, which were well received and much appreciated!

“Our event went well thank you – the venue was perfect for this.

Many thanks for all your help.”

Food and Drink Exportese

Student Work Placement For the 2nd year running we are very happy to have a Cardiff Met student with us on work placement. Bethan, a second year Event Management student, joined the team to gain first-hand experience in a real working environment. As part of her role, Bethan assists us in social media activities, digital campaigns and marketing projects. We asked Bethan a few questions about her time here and this is what she had to say;

Is it what you expected, has anything been a surprise?

Why did you choose Cardiff Met Conferences and what did you hope to achieve during your work experience?

What has been the most interesting task you’ve been given and how did you approach it?

• I chose Cardiff Met Conferences, as I know that I want to go into the corporate sector of events once I graduate. The fact that the placement’s main focus is on marketing is a large positive for me because I really enjoy marketing, especially through social media. I wanted to ensure that I developed my understanding of marketing corporate events within the work place.

• It is mostly what I have expected, other than the fact that it is quite hard to come up with ideas for marketing materials. I always thought this would be easy, but in reality it takes a lot longer than people realise as you have to get it just right. However, that is not a bad thing, as I definitely am a perfectionist so it suits me well!

• I have been given many interesting tasks, but probably the most interesting was being given the opportunity to set up the Instagram page. I felt as though the team put a lot of trust in me to do this effectively. I set it up and then we looked into possible posts and got the page up and running, following local businesses and other companies.

How will this work placement help you on your course and for your future employment?

• It will help me greatly, as I now have practical experience of being involved within a corporate role. On the events course, we have to give industry examples and now that I have helped out within the industry, I will be able to provide more examples that will make more sense to me. Future employment opportunities may arise, as employers like people to have as much relevant industry experience as possible.

Has the role given you any ideas about what kind of business areas you’d like to work in?

• 100%. It has reinforced that I do want to work within the marketing department for corporate events.

Have you got a meeting or event coming up that we could assist you with? Give us a call on 029 2041 6181/2 to arrange a show round of our facilities or to receive a competitive quotation for your next event.

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