Battle of the balls!

words by Sam Smith, video by Nicolas Verdier

The Summer Ball is the biggest event of the third term for both Canterbury Christ Church and Kent universities. Students gather to celebrate the end of the academic year, and their respective unions are expected to arrange a line-up of music to entertain them.


The line-ups of the Canterbury and Kent summer balls are always compared and contrasted, with much chagrin often directed at the CCCU student union for booking what many feel to be inferior acts.


This can often be attributed to the much larger budget Kent Uni has to work with, allowing them to book a larger number of popular bands and musicians.


However, this year the booking decisions of both student unions have been questioned by angry students.
As usual, the line-up of Kent Uni’s ball is full of big names, such as drum-and-bass superstars Chase and Status, rapper Tinchy Stryder and Radio 1 DJ Edith Bowman. However, the choice of teen-pop band McFly as the headliners has caused some concern, with students going as far as to create a Facebook page campaigning against the choice.


More than 2,000 people have so far joined the page, protesting against what they claim to be a badly-made choice of headline act. To quote the page itself, the general consensus seems to be “Seriously, what are they thinking! We're not 12...”


The concerns for CCCU students are less to do with the headlining act and more to do with everything else. Popular rapper Professor Green will be the main act, but for many the other performers leave a lot to be desired. The main criticism is the fact they are simply not famous, with names like Jodie Connor, Modestep, Beat a Maxx and Russo not being familiar to many.


We spoke to Andrew Cameron, Events and Marketing Co-Ordinator for the CCCU Students Union, about the process of organising such an event.


“We can’t discuss this year’s acts and the exact prices, but if you work on around 1,200 people coming the event, around £40 average ticket sale, we spend about £40,000 altogether on the whole event. Compare our costs to Kent, who spend £50,000 on their marquee alone, you can see we are working on a much smaller scale.”


Despite the smaller budget, Andrew is happy about the acts he has booked: “Professor Green, and many of the acts that we’ve previously had, should cost a lot more than we’ve paid for them. We’ve got some quite good contacts in the industry and we do make some good deals.”

Kent University students wanting to buy tickets for their summer ball should click HERE, and Canterbury Christ Church University students should click HERE to purchase tickets for theirs.


Kent students angry about McFly can join the Facebook protest page HERE.