Practical project at leisure centre

Business and retail students from West Suffolk College joined forces with local Bury St Edmunds business Planet Laser to host a special night for students.

The students were tasked with the researching, planning, organising, advertising and ticket sales for the event so as to experience what it is like to work on a live brief end to end – just as they would if running a business of their own in the future.

Victoria Irving, business and retail student age 19 from Risby said: “Prior to the event itself, we had a talk from Planet Laser. They spoke to us about what they would like to change and we learned so much around running a business and event organising.”

She continued: “We all really enjoyed working on this project, it was really fun to be able to combine the theory with the practical and to work alongside a real customer on a live event.”

With 20 different students working on the event, they were split into different groups including Media and Marketing, Customer Service and Security and Safety.

John Cross, director at Planet Laser said: “The students ran the event so professionally, from event planning, promotion and execution on the night. Based on this experience, we would be more than happy to work with the college again to perhaps organise something on a more regular basis.”

He continued: “This was great for us as a business as the student age bracket is the one we have least footfall. The perception that laser tag is ‘just for kids’ is a hard one to overcome. It’s a great team building game from age 6 to 60.”

For more information about the Business and Retail course at West Suffolk College go to https://wsc.ac.uk/find-a-course.