Preparing for your graduation

The graduation ceremony dates and times can be found on the schedule.

To confirm your place, visit the graduation booking system. There is no charge for students to attend their ceremony, but if you don’t confirm your place on the booking system, it will be assumed you aren’t attending. You will need your student P number to book your place on the system - when you enter it, remove the P and just enter the number.

Students are allocated to a ceremony based on course and date of completion and cannot transfer to a different ceremony date.

We really don’t want you to miss out on attending your big day, and some ceremonies fill up quickly - so seating might be limited. We strongly advise you to book straight away to avoid disappointment. If, after booking, you can no longer attend, you can cancel later.

Don’t make any travel or accommodation arrangements for yourself or guests until all your tickets are confirmed via the booking system.

Ceremonies are held at Curve Theatre and not on the university campus. The address is:

Curve Theatre
60 Rutland Street
Leicester
LE1 1SB

For more information, visit the Curve Theatre website.

To be eligible to attend, you must have passed all elements of your course between the dates of 30 June and 24 November 2023 and received faculty notification of this result.

It may be possible for you to defer your attendance at graduation to a future schedule, but you must register this request with the graduation team by visiting the graduation booking link and confirming your deferral request.

Student tickets are not posted and are instead collected on the day of your ceremony at our Registration Desk on the ground floor at Curve Theatre.

If you or your guests have specific access or disability requirements, special seating arrangements or require support on the day, please confirm this when you book your place on the student booking system by 14 November at 5pm.

We will do our best to accommodate these, but may not be able to organise support on the day where we’ve not been previously notified.

All academic tuition fee debts to the university must be cleared in full or you will not be able to graduate. Please clear any other debts such as accommodation, library or AV equipment charges.

Payment plan arrangements for tuition fees agreed with the university will not permit attendance at the graduation ceremony until academic tuition fee debts are cleared in full.

Student enquiries about paying debts can be directed to income@dmu.ac.uk.

You can still book your place at the ceremony but you must clear the tuition fee debt before the ceremony in order to be permitted to graduate.

You can return library books by post if you are based in the United Kingdom, you may use our freepost service to return your outstanding loans. Please enter your email address on our returns portal and you will receive a postage label to print off and a link to find local drop off locations. If you experience any problems opening the link, please try using one of the following internet browsers: MS Edge, Chrome, or Firefox.

The parcel you send should be no bigger than 60 x 50 x 50cm and should weigh less than 10kg. If it exceeds these dimensions and weight you will need to split the parcel up and print off separate labels for each package by re-entering your email address on our returns portal. Once we receive the items in the post, library staff will remove them from your library account. If you have any queries about returning books by post, contact us at‘LibChat’ Home.

Please note you can also return library books on the day of your ceremony by returning them to Kimberlin Library or taking them along to Curve Theatre where you can drop them off at the registration desk.

Guest tickets are posted to UK addresses around one to two weeks before the ceremonies along with an information booklet. Guest tickets for international addresses are not posted and are to be collected on the day at Registration at Curve Theatre.

Graduation is a time of celebration of your achievements for you, family and friends; children are welcome to attend the ceremonies.

However, ceremonies are formal events lasting up to 1.5 hours, with moments of darkness, music, theatrical lighting and loud applause. It is not a recommended event for young children who, experience shows become restless during ceremonies.

If you wish to bring children as guests, they will need a ticket to enter the graduation auditorium, this includes toddlers on laps. Children’s tickets are £17.50 per child, including toddlers on laps.

Babies 12 months and under do need a ticket, please contact academicawards@dmu.ac.uk, or by phone on +44 (0)116257 7307 (Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm).

Children cannot be left unattended and must be accompanied by a responsible adult at all times. The safety and well-being of children is the responsibility of accompanying adults and children cannot be cared for by DMU or Curve members of staff.

Please note prams and buggies aren’t permitted in the graduation auditorium and there is a buggy park at Curve for student and guest use. Property left at the buggy park is left at the owner's risk.

Don’t make any travel or accommodation arrangements for you or your guests until all tickets are officially confirmed via email.

Additional guest tickets – if they are available – will go on sale on the university’s online store on 21 November on a first come, first sold basis, staggered by ceremony date. You can either access the store as a guest or set up an account to complete the additional tickets purchase.

It’s important to note that, as we cannot guarantee that extra tickets – or the amount of extra tickets needed – will be available for your ceremony, students should not rely on them. There are occasions where there are very few, or no spare tickets available for sale.

Additional tickets bought on or after 21 November and before 3 December will be seated together with the initial tickets purchased.

Additional ticket sales will close on 3 December 2023.

Please note we do not issue reminder communications about additional ticket availability.

Any tickets remaining after 3 December can be bought directly from Curve Box Office from 19 December. These tickets will not be seated with any previously bought tickets, so please bear this in mind when including guests who need to be accompanied. Curve details are:

Telephone +44 (0) 116 242 3595

Please note we do not issue reminder communications about surplus ticket availability.

On the day of your ceremony, any remaining guest tickets available will be for sale on a first come, first served basis directly from Curve Theatre Box Office. There is no guarantee that spare tickets will be available however.

Guests without tickets can watch the live streaming of the ceremony either online or in the screening room at Curve Theatre, Rehearsal Room 2 on the Mezzanine on a first come, first seat basis. You don’t need to book a place for this.

All ceremonies are live streamed on the university’s website and the DMU YouTube channel.

We understand that some students may be unable to meet the cost of robe hire and guest tickets for their guests. The University Graduation Support Fund aims to help students who face financial difficulty in meeting the costs of attending their graduation.

You may be eligible to apply for this fund, an application form and supporting evidence is required.

The Graduation Support Fund graduation support fund will open 12 noon on 26 October and closes on 14 November at 5pm. Applications received after this time will not be accepted

Graduation ceremonies involve :

• Bright, theatrical lighting and music
• Large digital screens showing text and video footage
• Short video
• Long periods of applause
• Large crowds, some crowd congestion and general crowd noise
• Queueing
• Being seated in a row with other students next to, behind and in front of you
• Moments of reduced lighting
• Raised voices and PA system announcements
• Food and drink smells
• Sounds and lights associated with flash photography

Speakers are located on the Curve stage and students are seated in the Studio, behind the speakers. A plan of the ground floor is available visit the Curve Theatre website.

Ceremonies start on time and last approximately one and a half hours.

If you would like to discuss how we can adapt your graduation experience to support your requirements, please email academicawards@dmu.ac.uk,and we will do our best to help you.