The Trinity campus emanates a certain je ne sais quoi. Even the ugly bits (cough, Arts Block) play a central part in the daily lives of students and shape the experiences that come with getting that hard-earned Trinity degree. Ents candidate Finn Hallwood wants Trinity students to claim even more of that space and hopes to add to the mythical aura of Trinity during his time as Ents Officer.
Besides helping organise Movember events, Hallwood has been involved with Jailbreak, Ireland’s largest student-led charity event, from his first year at Trinity. Since then, he’s worked his way up to the role of director in his Senior Fresh year and has been serving as head tracker the past two years. Hallwood endearingly describes Jailbreak as his “one and true love”, reflecting that his love for organising events all stems from Jailbreak. “I would call it a selfish thing”, he says and continues; “the reason I run events is because I want to see people enjoying it, I want to see people smiling, I want to see them having fun. I want people to come up to me at the end of it and be like ‘that was the best event I’ve ever gone to’ — because I’ve gotten that a couple of times from different events I ran, specifically Jailbreak last year.”
“There was one person who came up who was graduating and was like ‘this is the most fun I’ve had during my entire college experience’. Hearing that is something so brilliant, because that means you’ve done your best, and it means that what you’ve done is something that people are enjoying, and that is something I want to give for the rest of Ents. It’s selfish, but I enjoy it, and I hope that I can continue to do that.”
It is with success stories like this and the experience he’s gained from four years of event planning and facilitating under his belt that Hallwood hopes to take on the role of Ents Officer.
In his manifesto, Hallwood sets out to release an Ents calendar before the start of each semester, which “is more about setting out the timelines of themes, weeks, and events”. Practically, the first semester calendar would be released the week before Freshers’ Week, to avoid confusion. He also wants to create a working group with the aim of figuring out how to integrate postgraduates and mature students more into Ents. He also wants to “make sober events more available”, running them consistently and getting rid of the “sober” subtext, so they don’t become secondary.
Additionally, Hallwood wants to implement Irish as a working language: “Basically you’d have these phrases that people use when they’re scanning your tickets, small phrases that you’re popping in here and there. Just kind of getting people to get an ear for it. Just so people hear it more. Because I think at the moment, it’s there and it’s awesome that the SU is putting Irish out there for everyone, I think doing it in small little pockets of things where people hear it, and then once you start hearing it you’re like ‘oh this is cool, I’d love to get an idea about what this is a little bit more’.” He highlights the mini Gaeltacht events as places where both people who don’t speak Irish, those who are beginners and those who are fluent get to mix and come together.
Another key point of Hallwood’s manifesto is his aim to make the completion of the Active Consent online module an entry requirement to attend all ticketed Ents events. All attending Ents events would have to show a PDF of the consent training module with their ticket. “It’s a bit of an extra step for getting into events”, he admits, but highlights that “with this module there would be a baseline understanding throughout college. It’s not implying that people don’t already know, but it’s giving that baseline, and making a culture of awareness and safety — not that safety isn’t there already, but it’s just reinforcing that”.
What Hallwood is most looking forward to, though, is creating something that will last in the years after he’s left the bright green pastures of College Green behind him.
Firstly, he hopes to build upon the newly-created Volunteer Forum by updating the Ents Officer’s mandates to include running a minimum of three long charity campaigns throughout the year. Ents would be pulling from existing initiatives, such as Movember and Breast Cancer Awareness Month, helping “people who are organising incredible events and giving them more a platform to do it” in addition to setting up new campaigns such as for Mental Health Awareness Month.
Hallwood’s big ticket item, and the initiative that is closest to his heart, is the monthly live music showcase he hopes to put on. Utilising Trinity’s iconic spaces on campus, the showcase would be set in the Atrium, giving a platform to the “abundance of excellent bands and musicians we have in this college”. He paints the picture:
“We’d have the central area of the Atrium and the band would be there. You’d have the roll-in bar there on the ground floor in the corner. You’d have these really cool lightings, like orange and pinks and stuff to make it a, you know, a really cool space. Then you’d have all floors be places to watch the band. You could be watching them from up in the rafters — it’ll be awesome.”
“I want people to have cool experiences in cool spaces — because we have those on campus,” Hallwood notes.
He hopes that these live music events will come to have the same legacy as Pav Fridays. It would be a commitment from Ents to ensure a tradition that will platform and encourage a deepened musical community at Trinity: “I just love pushing people who have a passion into a place where they can just let that, not explode, but let it out, and then other people can see that and then those people get passionate about that and then they can go do their own stuff.”
Additionally, he sees these live music events as a way to build relationships with labels, promotion companies and artists in order to address the longstanding dissatisfaction with Trinity Ball’s lineup. He emphasises how building these relationships and getting these contacts will take time and is realistically not something that he himself, or anyone in his year, will get to experience, but that someone has to get the ball rolling: “The reason I’ve given a long-term solution is that this is what is need,” he comments. He wants to try and push to have influence on the stages that are realistically within Ents’ capability to control, but hopes to ensure that TBall is kept on campus: “when you talk to alumni and hear their stories of TBall, it’s something so special — being on campus — that it should stay there,” he says.
If you were wondering how your potential future Ents Officer would wish to celebrate his hypothetical win, the answer is strikingly relatable: sleep. “Running events is such an experience, and so is campaigning,” he says, “you expense all of your energy doing it”.
And so let’s hope that Finn and the other candidates, no matter the result, get to enjoy a little bit of sleep in the end. A quiet, if one will, after the storm; though for those elected, the wind may merely be gathering strength.
