Five things to do this week

1. Big Top Ball, a circus-themed ball featuring circus performances, musical acts and food stands laden with popcorn and candyfloss, is back this year once again on Lower College Lawn on the 11th of April. Buy your ticket to the freaky party for £30 this Wednesday and Thursday outside the Rector’s Café between 12:00 and 16:00. Included in the ticket price is a surprise cocktail on arrival, free entry into a raffle worth over £400, and access to a circus tent reminiscent of those you used to go to with your parents as a child to take pictures with ponies in a ring of sawdust.

2. On the Rocks volunteer and venue manager applications close tonight at midnight, so you still have the best part of a day to fill one out. The committee is looking for volunteers to help the subcommittees with running events, distributing merchandise and selling tickets during the festival. Venue managers have a slightly more important role, as they have sole responsibility over one venue and all its events, ensuring that transitions between events run smoothly and that the audience get in and out without causing too much chaos. If you’re interested in being part of this fabulous arts festival, fill in an application form on the festival’s website, ontherocksfestival.com, before midnight. Good luck!

3. St Andrews Film Blitz, a competition set up by the film department which asks students to make their own three-minute films in no more than sixty hours, is back and better than ever. This year there is a theme, to create a film inspired by a song, the competition’s organisers hoping that this will give the creative process a clear focus. You can sign up this week outside the library on Tuesday and Wednesday from 09:00 until 17:00. It only costs £10, and within that price you’ll have unlimited access to certain equipment, workshops in screenwriting, cinematography and editing, and entry to a screening of all the films at the Byre Theatre on the 12th of March.

4. As part of Fairtrade Fortnight, a nationwide celebration of Fairtrade products, our Fairtrade Steering Group has organised a variety of events for St Andrews students and residents. Among the many exciting things lined up is a chocolate tasting at Iain Burnett, during which you’ll learn about the cocoa’s journey and transformation from producer to the chocolatier on South Street. A list of all the events taking place locally over the next couple of weeks can be found on the Fairtrade Fortnight website.

5. ACHIK, a student-run social enterprise offering zero-credit micro-credits to poor farming and mining communities in Guatemala and Bolivia to enable them to start up their own textile production businesses, is hosting a party at 1 Golf Place this Tuesday at 20:00 in celebration of its recent venture into e-commerce with the launch of its official website, http://www.achikexports.com/, and etsy store, https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/AchikExports. The enterprise group helps these communities by buying back their textiles and selling them here to connect them to an international market otherwise out of reach. All of these products are on offer on Tuesday night, so go along to buy a beautiful, hand-crafted alpaca shawl and relax over a few discounted drinks in aid of a good cause!

Images courtesy of http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki