The University of London is home to the Senate House academic complex which serves as a prestigious conference venue in central London. Our sustainable events venue in London provides elegant conference spaces, meeting rooms and even filming locations.
We are ideally located, allowing us to provide sustainable meetings in London’s city centre so reducing the need for delegates to travel to events by car. This means we can help contribute to reducing the environmental impact caused by the event industry in London and ensure we support delegates and event suppliers to be as sustainable as possible.
When it comes to sustainable events in London, we’re leading the field and are proud of our green event practices. Our expert team have worked hard to implement green policies around our events, from reducing waste to ensuring our catering service sources food as sustainably as possible. Our excellent audio-visual and technical equipment ensure we’re an eco-friendly meeting venue, with the facilities to offer remote sessions too. As one of the leading green venues in London we’re also proud of our biodiversity drive, with our bees boosting the Bloomsbury ecosystem and beyond.
We’re very aware of the role food consumption plays in climate change and have endeavoured to improve our offerings both in terms of taste and environmental impact. We do not serve unhealthy food and drinks at our events and conferences. Instead we’ve opted to serve healthy, balanced meals with plant-based options prioritised.
We’ve worked hard to reduce the amount of paper used at our conferences and events. We never use paper to promote our events and have a digital booking system allowing us to correspond digitally too. Whenever we provide delegate packs, they are made from recycled materials and we actively encourage them to be recycled afterwards. We also provide delegates with reusable name badges that we collect at the end of each event so they can be used again.
The University also strives to reduce the waste that is generated through our events. We have stopped providing plastic water bottles to delegates and instead ensure water is freely available at our water stations. We only provide reusable cutlery and we have changed catering suppliers to ensure the food packaging we buy in is fully recyclable.
Looking ahead, the University has even bigger aspirations and will work to develop a bold new plan to rid our catering operations of single use plastics.
Our unrivalled central location enables our staff and event attendees to utilise public transport and reduce their carbon footprint. We’re a 10-minute walk from Euston station and 15 minutes from Kings Cross station. We’re also spoiled for choice with tube stations including Goodge Street , Russell Square and Tottenham Court Road. Not to mention countless bus and cycle routes.
The University has excellent in-house audio, visual technical equipment and video conferencing facilities reducing the need to transport heavy equipment and enabling an innovative alternative to physical attendance. This allows us to run sustainable meetings and events by reducing the emissions that are produced.
We’re also proud to support the local, national and international film industry at University of London Venues. By enabling home grown film makers to shoot in our venue we’re able to reduce the carbon footprint that might be otherwise incurred by travelling abroad to film.
Due to Senate House’s art deco aesthetic we’re often used by film and TV shows to stand in for New York, in fact some scenes from the Batman franchise were filmed here. This reduces any unnecessary flights over the pond, reducing carbon emissions.
Many famous shows and movies have used Senate House and its surroundings gardens as a backdrop such as Killing Eve, Bodyguard, Patrick Melrose. James Bond even turned our Macmillan Hall into airport security for the next instalment of the franchise.
Bees are the earth’s predominant pollinator, pollinating a third of all the food eaten globally and as such are crucial to the resilience and sustainability of our ecosystem. Here at the University of London we know this and wanted to give bees a home in the urban jungle of our capital city.
We’re very lucky to be surrounded by green spaces in Bloomsbury with Russell Square to our east, Malet Street gardens to our west, Gordon Square to our north and Woburn and Torrington squares amongst our buildings.
That is why on the roof of our IALS building you will find 3 beehives. To encourage and aid their pollination we have planted a variety of bee friendly flowers across our estate. In 2018/19 our bees produced 170 pots of honey and we continued our annual bee training course, training another 10 beekeepers. We also have our honey tested each year to identify the pollen in our honey.
If you’re looking for an environmentally conscious and eco-friendly events venue in central London, then University of London Venues is well-suited to your needs.
Contact our expert events team to find out more about our green events policy and find out how we can support you to make your next event even more sustainable.
Make an enquiry here, give us a call or drop us an email today.
