Institutional Context
Summary
Imperial College London is a research-intensive university with a mission to achieve enduring excellence in research and education in science, engineering, medicine, and business for the benefit of society. Our international reputation for excellence in research and teaching sees us ranking among the world’s top ten universities.
Imperial is rated as the UK’s most innovative university, and 10th in the world. Knowledge exchange and innovation are at the core of how we operate, empowering initiatives such as The Transition to Zero Pollution and the Global Development Hub.
Imperial’s main campus is located in South Kensington, with additional sites across West London and Surrey, including a new 21-acre campus in White City designed to facilitate innovation and entrepreneurship.
Institutional context
Our Academic Strategy (2020-2025) states that we will be:
Entrepreneurial - We translate ideas into new products, services and companies, including contributing to industry and the economy; and
Engaged - We collaborate with communities, stakeholders, governments and industry locally, nationally and internationally to ensure that our work is relevant, timely, and accessible.
We operationalise this Strategy by collaborating with business and nurturing enterprise, by informing decision making and policy and by engaging and empowering communities.
Collaborating with business and nurturing enterprise
Imperial works with over 500 industry partners annually to translate research into commercial applications. Key activities include:
Our Industry Partnerships and Commercialisation (IPC) team helps our academics and businesses work together to translate new insights into commercial opportunities. In 2020-21, over 13% (£47.3m) of our total research income (£363m) derived from industry partnerships.
Imperial Business Partners (IBP), our flagship industry partnership programme, brings businesses closer to our innovation ecosystem, through our world-leading experts, startups, scale-ups, and other businesses. Over 20 partners from a variety of sectors have joined the IBP programme.
Through Imperial Consultants (ICON) and Imperial Projects (IPROJ), our academics have provided expertise to over 1,000 companies from 60+ countries over the past year and generated an income of almost £70m since 2019.
We provide world-class support to startups. The Imperial Venture Mentoring Scheme (IVMS) links our staff and students to a pool of experienced entrepreneurs, while the Imperial Enterprise Lab provides bespoke workspace and mentoring to Imperial students. From 2019-20 to 2021-22, our student startups have generated £258m in external investment.
Imperial is making significant investments at White City campus, developing a network of facilities that enable co-locating companies to grow including the White City Incubator (IWCI), the Translation and Innovation Hub (I-HUB), Scale Space, and The Invention Rooms.
Between 2019 and 2022, Imperial College Business School Executive Education has provided short-courses to 10,450 participants from almost 4,300 companies.
Informing decision making and policy
Through our Public Affairs office and seven Global Challenge Institutes, we ensure that Imperial contributes to important public policy debates, engaging with decision-makers at regional, national and global levels.
The Centre for Climate Change Innovation project (renamed Undaunted in 2022) connects UK policymakers, industry, and academics, to accelerate the growth of pre-seed and early growth climate innovation SMEs in London. This project, a partnership between Imperial’s Grantham Institute and the Royal Institution, attracted funding of over £4.5m between 2019 and 2022.
Engaging and empowering communities
Imperial’s vision for Societal Engagement is to “empower people through engagement with science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM)”. Our societal engagement team provides training, resources and guidance to staff and students on public engagement and runs a variety of activities such as: schools outreach and widening participation, public engagement with research, community engagement, and patient engagement. Imperial offers a range of online and in-person public events, including the Great Exhibition Road Festival (55,000 participants in 2022).
For further information, please send queries to kef@imperial.ac.uk
Local Growth and Regeneration
Summary of approach
Our local growth and regeneration activities are primarily focused in Hammersmith & Fulham, where we are developing our 21-acre White City Campus. Working in partnership with key local organisations, our shared vision is to transform the area into a global beacon for innovation in the scientific, tech and creative industries.
At White City we are building the facilities and networks to enable companies to co-locate and innovate. We have established an ecosystem that offers support, creates connections and promotes innovation amongst a wide range of enterprises. We have created a range of programmes to support local communities in developing the skills, networks and confidence to fully participate in and benefit from the presence of Imperial and the growing local economy.
Aspect 1: Strategy
Imperial’s local growth and regeneration strategy centres on our 21-acre White City Campus (WCC): a collaborative campus where academics, researchers, student and staff entrepreneurs, businesses, charities and the local community work together to create high-quality jobs and economic growth whilst addressing global challenges.
The WCC sits at the heart of the science and technology-based local regeneration plan for the White City Opportunity Area (WCOA) (2013), one of 45 such areas across Greater London that were identified in the Mayor’s London Plan as providing “significant capacity for [economic development] and new employment”. The WCC is surrounded by significant pockets of deprivation, with several areas falling within the 20% most deprived in England.
In order to deliver inclusive growth and regeneration at and around White City, we work closely with the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham (LBHF). In 2016 we launched a strategic ‘Partnership for Growth’ with LBHF. The WCC is a core component of the LBHF Industrial Strategy ‘Economic Growth for Everyone’. Imperial is a founding member of LBHF’s Industrial Strategy Board, where we work in partnership with other key local partners such as URW-Westfield, Novartis, Berkeley St James, Television Centre and White City Place, and representatives from local schools, colleges and non-profit organisations.
The WCC campus anchors the White City Innovation District (WCID), of which we were a founding sponsor. The WCID connects a growing network of more than 100 co-located organisations, as well as residents, businesses, education providers and local community groups and encompasses Imperial’s Hammersmith Hospital Campus, the new MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences, organisations like the Royal College of Art and ITV Television Centre, and new initiatives focussed on developing local skills like EdCity and Fast Futures. It is home to established global businesses like L'Oréal, Novartis and ADC Therapeutics and businesses at the ‘scale up’ phase of development, including Autolus, One Web and Avacta and Imperial staff and student spinouts like Pureaffinity and Multus Media.
In partnership with LBHF we run Upstream, an initiative which connects, supports and promotes the science, tech and creative sectors throughout the Borough. In 2019, Upstream and Imperial launched the Deep Tech Network (DTN) which connects business and academia and develops a deep-tech innovation ecosystem around the WCC.
Regionally, Imperial participates in two ERDF projects:
Better Futures stimulates technological innovation within CleanTech SMEs in Greater London. It is a partnership between Imperial, the Greater London Authority (GLA), Sustainable Ventures, West London Business, Imperial Consultants and the Old Oak Park Royal Development Corporation (OPDC).
The Centre for Climate Change Innovation supports the growth of early-stage Climate Tech start-ups and acts as an innovation broker for climate innovations in London, it creates links and opportunities between Climate Tech SMEs, investors, potential clients, policy makers and the public. The project is run through Undaunted, a climate innovation partnership with the Royal Institution.
Aspect 2: Activity
A. Spaces and infrastructure
Imperial is developing cutting-edge facilities and collaborative workspaces at the White City Campus, offering businesses – from start-ups to global enterprises – the opportunity to work alongside world-leading academics and researchers at every stage of their growth and development.
The Translation and Innovation Hub (I-HUB)
The I-HUB provides over 17,300m2 of adaptable, high-specification laboratory and office spaces for over 60 start-ups, spinouts, local businesses, charities, and corporate partners, including Saab, the George Institute for Global Health, MiNA Therapeutics, Sixfold Bioscience, Multus Biotechnology, Precision Robotics. I-X, an Imperial collaborative environment for research, education, and entrepreneurship across AI, data science and digital technologies, are also based in the building.
Imperial White City Incubator (IWCI)
Based within the I-HUB, the 1,670m2 IWCI is dedicated to small, early-stage technology businesses, offering the largest concentration of flexible laboratory and office space with specialised commercialisation services in London (Research England, 2019).
Whilst based at IWCI, 93% of teams survive and outgrow the incubator over three years. With our support, SMEs grow, moving out of the shared lab into company-dedicated labs within the IWCI, and then graduating out of it to their own spaces, with many based in White City.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Incubator-based companies adapted their technologies and applied their skillsets to help the global fight. For example, MediSieve re-focussed their work to develop magnetic blood filtration systems to remove the inflammatory cytokine interleukin 6 (IL-6) from the blood of COVID-19 patients.
Scale Space
Imperial ThinkSpace has partnered with digital venture builder Blenheim Chalcot to build the 18,500m2 Scale Space facility. Including laboratory and office spaces, Scale Space houses over 30 start-ups, spinouts, local businesses, charities, including DNAe, Puraffinity, Modulr, Avacta, Liberis, Researcher. The Imperial College Business School has teaching and research facilities in Scale Space, including for the Institute of Deep Tech Entrepreneurship.
The Invention Rooms
Opened in 2017, The Invention Rooms is a 2,000m2 community and innovation hub with workshops and event spaces supporting new ways of working with the local community and our partners.
The Dangoor Reach Out Makerspace: A workshop and design studio for young people to get hands-on experience of making and prototyping, hosting funded programmes, including the Proto Challenge and the Maker Challenge
The Advanced Hackspace: This facility provides staff, students, businesses and the wider community with access to specialist prototyping and manufacturing equipment. The Hackspace also provides training classes, networking opportunities, funding, mentoring and technology showcases. Between August 2020 and September 2022, the Hackspace supported over 2,800 members, with many accelerating their ideas to form successful start-ups.
Interaction Zone: A community event space hosting a range of activities including family science workshops, community networking events, training and professional development sessions and participatory research activities.
B. Facilitating collaboration and networking
As well as creating physical spaces promoting collaboration and innovation, Imperial is creating networks, organising events, and offering bespoke support to a wide range of researchers, enterprises and organisations. Some key highlights include:
Imperial College Academic Health Science Centre (AHSC)
The Imperial College AHSC is a strategic partnership between Imperial, the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), and three NHS Trusts. The first of its kind in the UK, it facilitates the translation of scientific and engineering advances into new ways of preventing and treating disease, directly benefitting patients at the AHSC Trust’s nine hospitals located across London and the South East. Imperial works with our Integrated Care System to align research with the clinical needs and existing inequities within the local communities.
Upstream
Launched in January 2018, Upstream is a partnership project between LBHF and Imperial. Upstream’s work is driven by the belief that local networks facilitating collaboration and learning accelerate the growth of organisations and places. Upstream’s vision is for Hammersmith & Fulham to have an inclusive, thriving eco-system of ambitious science, tech and creative organisations. Core activities include:
One-to-one business support: Both direct support and connecting and enabling organisations to support each other to grow, innovate, and achieve impact.
Deep Tech Network (DTN): Upstream has worked with Imperial Chemistry Department and Enterprise Division to create the DTN. Since 2019, it has hosted regular showcase and networking events, encouraging interaction and collaboration between business and Imperial’s researchers, and developing a deep-tech innovation ecosystem around Imperial’s White City Campus.
Life Sciences Roundtable: Supported by Imperial, Upstream also convenes quarterly C-suite life sciences roundtables. This brings together industry, academia, researchers and hospital-based practitioners to further knowledge exchange and collaborative opportunities and tackle common challenges.
Impact & Innovation 110: A publication featuring a directory of 110 organisations in White City, Hammersmith and Shepherds Bush that have made a positive impact in their field often through innovative research or its subsequent application.
Digital Creative Network West: a network created partnering with West London Alliance and West London Business to foster and strengthen relationships between anchor organisations, start-ups and academia in West London.
Peer-to-peer networks
Tenants at White City can also access a leaders’ network and a series of learning opportunities through peer groups, such as the Lab Masterminds group.
Better Futures and Better Futures+
Better Futures is a ERDF-funded partnership project led by the GLA. Aimed at stimulating technological innovation within CleanTech SMEs in Greater London, it provides a tailored package of innovation support. Since 2016, Better Futures has significantly improved the success rate of CleanTech companies. Imperial delivers this programme alongside Sustainable Ventures and Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation. The total project values across the consortium have been over £5M (£2.5M ERDF and £2.5M matched funding).
Better Futures+ is a £900K programme funded by the GLA’s Green New Deal and delivered in conjunction with the same partnership with the additional partner of West London Business. From April 2021, the programme has been providing a range of activities including investment readiness and growth support with innovation advisers, access to new supply chains and markets, including new international markets, innovation vouchers for academic collaboration projects, paid short-term internships, marketing support events, workshops, and masterclasses.
Centre for Climate Change Innovation (CCCI)
Between 2019 and 2022 Imperial has run the Centre for Climate Change Innovation project (renamed Undaunted in December 2022) funded by the ERDF, HSBC, GLA and Foundation Prince Albert de Monaco. The funding amounts to just over £4.5M.
The project’s aim is to accelerate the growth of pre-seed and early growth climate innovation SMEs in London. It does this through three activities: a pre-seed accelerator programme (the Greenhouse); innovation brokerage between early growth start-ups, investors and clients; and support for climate innovation clustering through networking.
C. Embedded inclusion and engagement
At White City we have developed and delivered a range of programmes that support local residents and businesses to develop the skills, networks and confidence they need to fully participate in a growing innovation economy. Some key examples include:
Maker programmes
Based at The Invention Rooms, we offer making programmes for young people aged 11 to 18 to develop their STEM skills and confidence through prototyping and problem-solving. The programmes are designed to reach young people from underserved backgrounds who would not otherwise participate in HE widening participation initiatives. Participants gain practical skills in using equipment such as 3D printers and many other skills including product development, team-working, presentation and communication skills. The flagship maker challenge for 14–18-year-olds allows participants to prototype their own ideas, with past projects including lighting-up cyclist gloves to indicate in the dark, and a device preventing fires propagation.
Since 2017, the maker challenge programmes have supported more than 1,000 young people. In 2021-22, two-thirds of participants were from households earning under £50,000 per year, and 39% of participants were from households without previous experience of attending higher education. We are now offering careers support to participants including 1-1 consultations, careers talks, and advice and support with 6th and UCAS applications, as well as FE, apprenticeships and T-Levels.
Agents of Change
Agents of Change is a pioneering community leadership network with 200 members that supports, empowers and connects female community leaders to drive positive social change. Established in 2018 by Imperial and a consortium of local partners, the network brings together community leaders with local businesses and organisations. Alongside the network, we provide a free 6-month leadership programme designed to equip participants with the confidence, capacity and connections required to take on leadership roles in the local community. To date, more than 45 women have graduated from the programme with a fourth cohort starting in January 2023.
Aspect 3: Results
A. Supporting local economic development
Imperial White City Incubator (IWCI)
Since October 2016, the IWCI has supported 29 start-ups, 13 of which have successfully graduated and moved to their own space from the programme. Collectively, start-ups based in the IWCI have raised just under £430M in external investment and created over 481 jobs of which 87% are within Hammersmith and White City area. Between 2019 and 2022 there have been ten new companies supported, of which three have graduated, with two staying in London and one moving elsewhere. These ten companies have raised over £69M of investment. The support provided was recognised by winning the Incubator/Accelerator/Coworking Space of the Year 2022 at the West London Business Awards.
Many of the incubator SME work is at the forefront of environmental and sustainable science. Examples include Polymateria and Addionics.
Knowledge exchange is ongoing: founder of Mina Therapeutics, who graduated out of the incubator to their own floor in the I-HUB, presented to our Innovators Programme, sharing his experience, facilitating connections and growing our network for incubator companies.
Upstream
Working with LBHF on Upstream, since 2018, we have provided one-to-one advice to over 330 businesses in the science, tech and creative industries, held nearly 100 events, and developed an active online community with over 4,000 participants.
Better Futures and Better Futures+
Between 2019 and 2022, the project supported 131 start-ups, with 38 working with Imperial through internships and innovations vouchers and 22 bringing new products to market. The support has been hugely beneficial to climate tech founders and their teams in over 230 companies across both projects: 90% and 98% respectively of Better Futures (6 years of operations) and Better Futures+ (2 years of operations) companies are still trading. This compares very favourably to London’s start-up survival rate of only 39.4% after 5 years and the UK 2-year survival rate of between 82-91%. The SMEs participating in the project have fundraised c. £200M of equity and grant financing (from the Beauhurst database). 71% and 78% respectively of Better Futures and Better Futures+ SMEs have maintained or increased their FTEs.
Centre for Climate Change Innovation/Undaunted
Between 2019 and 2022, 58 start-ups have been supported through this initiative. 80% have passed each stage gate and proceeded to raise funds or make sales. In total, they have raised about £6M and many are making significant sales. Only two of the 58 have ceased to trade and in many cases the companies have grown rapidly. We have supported 20 more mature start-ups, delivering bespoke offerings to facilitate obtaining new investment, finding new customers, having technical support from researchers and interns from Imperial, developing policy input to government, navigating business and technical issues, and improving their visibility. In this period, these start-ups raised very large amounts of national and international investment (about £200M), went to IPO successfully, and in many cases grew very rapidly. One of these companies, Notpla, won an Earth Shot Prize in 2022 – a testament to the quality of the graduates from earlier phases of our accelerator.
B. Our social impact at White City
Previous studies have shown that our local engagement activities deliver significant economic and social value. A study by WPI Economics (2019) estimated that approximately £2.7M of social value were delivered in the first two years after the launch of The Invention Rooms. We are also seeing strong signals that our programmes are supporting participants' progress into new opportunities and roles. In 2022, 24 maker challenge graduates applied to study at Imperial, with eight students being offered a place and seven students accepting an offer. Maker graduates have also been successful in taking up apprenticeships with companies such as Airbus. Similarly, graduates from our Agents of Change programme have reported taking on new positions and roles in the third sector, for example in adult education.
Public & Community Engagement
Summary of approach
As a university focused on science, engineering, medicine and business and our impact in the world, at Imperial we engage because we want to be a responsible actor in society. We aim to share ideas, gain insights and create positive outcomes for the public and research. We coordinate a varied programme of events, activities and partnerships around four strands: schools outreach and widening participation, public engagement with research, community engagement, and patient engagement. Our dedicated teams support staff and students to engage through practical opportunities, training, funding and networks. Our approach is rooted in collaboration - it’s about being a good partner and a good citizen, to include and inspire others, sharing our passions and challenges and finding solutions together.
Aspect 1: Strategy
Societal engagement (SE) is a core theme within Imperial’s College Strategy and Academic Strategy. Through engagement we aspire to make our work accessible, relevant and responsive to the needs and insights of society. As a university focused on science, engineering, medicine and business and our impact in the world, we want to share our passions with other inquiring minds, be a trusted source of expertise, and to collaborate, partner, and find solutions to common challenges together. We aim to be inclusive and socially-engaged, achieving and sustaining co-designed, participatory research with local relevance and global impact.
Our vision for engagement set out in our Strategy for Engaging with Society, is to empower people through engagement with science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) across the following activity strands:
Working with schools, pupils and teachers to widen participation in STEM and universities.
Engaging members of the public in our research through dialogue, festivals, workshops, and participatory research.
Partnering with our local communities to address challenges and to be a responsible civic university.
Involving patients, carers and their networks in engagement with medicine and health research.
Our strategy includes an outcomes framework (see section 5).
We work with underrepresented groups from diverse socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds through our programmes. We work locally (in areas surrounding our campuses), in wider London, nationally, and globally. Our target audiences for engagement activities are specific to the needs of the communities we partner with and/or the health or research focus.
Our Academic Strategy describes four themes: creating a sustainable, healthy, smart and resilient society. Our Engagement teams collaborate with academic leads to develop strategic engagement with research programmes and build engagement capacity within these areas. For example, the 'Future Fridge’, an interactive pop-up, enabling dialogue between public participants and Transition to Zero Pollution researchers (Sustainable Society theme).
Our Public Engagement (PE) team are guided by an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) action plan to inform, improve and monitor our work towards diversifying the groups we engage with (publicly and internally). Completed actions include:
Imperial’s staff diversity networks and EDI Forum are represented on our Engagement Networks, providing insights, guidance, and wider links to our staff communities.
As part of our commitment to the Race Equality Charter, PE team members are undertaking training to embed EDI thinking, including on unconscious bias and race equality.
Outreach and Patient Engagement teams are developing similar strategies guided by practice in their areas (e.g. NIHR Race Equality Framework).
Professor Maggie Dallman, Associate Provost (Academic Partnerships) and Vice President (International), is the senior lead on engagement strategy to ensure SE is supported and integrated within policies, practices and procedures. Engagement is integrated within the leadership structure, and is represented on key strategic forums, including on the Knowledge Exchange Concordat. Project-level steering groups are created as needed (e.g. for the Festival).
Central Public and Community Engagement teams (see organogram below) work alongside Schools Outreach, the NIHR Patient Experience Research Centre, and colleagues within Academic and Professional Services departments, to coordinate engagement programmes and spaces, providing training and advice and facilitating connections to audience groups. Our work is guided by the institutional strategy for public engagement with research and innovation, and extensive consultation with public partners.
Aspect 2: Support
Our central teams provide capacity building initiatives to support and recognise the breadth of SE work across the institution. These include structured training programmes, supported practical opportunities and reward and recognition structures.
We have an extensive training programme for staff and students, including courses relevant to all career/study stages. Our skills and attributes map underpins our training, providing a personal development roadmap for individuals. Staff can access training opportunities, from the in-depth six-month Engagement Academy to shorter masterclasses (see image below).
For students we deliver:
an accredited 20-week module on Public Engagement (PE) for second-year undergraduates (15-20 annually).
PhD sessions within the Graduate School Research Impact programme, and sessions with Centres for Doctoral Training aligned with the goals of the centre (c.150 annually).
Training for Student Ambassadors working on outreach programmes (c.100 annually),
Content on Public and Patient Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) and Outreach embedded within BSc and Masters courses.
Imperial also runs open-access online training on patient and public involvement, and participatory research.
Reward and recognition
PE has been recognised within academic workload planning and promotions criteria since 2019.
Engagement Academy is accredited by the Institute of Leadership and Management since 2021.
The annual President’s Awards for Excellence in Societal Engagement sit alongside awards for research and education, recognising staff, students and community partners (seven rounds, 47 winners). Awardees report increased motivation to do engagement and encourage others to get involved, and that their efforts had been valued at a senior level.
Funding
The PE team administer cross-university seed funding to support engagement ideas (launched 2017, c.5 projects annually, up to £2,500 each).
We adapted the scheme based on the needs of our community, including:
Rapid Response Seed Fund to support engagement through the pandemic (launched April 2020, 7 projects annually, up to £2,500 each)
Participatory Research Seed Fund (launched February 2022, 6 projects, up to £5,000 each).
We administered a Community Science Seed Fund to support STEM projects led by residents and organisations (2019 and 2020, 5 projects annually, £2,000 each).
Seed fund project leads report gaining new skills, inspiration, partnerships and funding opportunities.
Communications and collaboration
Our central teams communicate with engaged researchers and practitioners across Imperial to share learning, promote opportunities and facilitate the development of engagement practice.
Internally:
SE web pages and monthly SE Newsletter (920 subscribers).
Two networks bring together departmental academic, professional services and engagement staff to share opportunities and consult on needs and solutions (c.90 members).
PPIE leads meet to share best practice and troubleshoot (c.40 members)
Externally, we communicate with public and community groups via web pages, newsletters, partner channels, and Imperial Spark twitter account.
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. We include content on creating inclusive, accessible and equitable engagement within our training; convene dedicated discussions at Engagement Network Meetings such as around Black Lives Matter; and are increasing representation on our funding and awards panels.
Aspect 3: Activity
Imperial has established engagement platforms providing opportunities for researchers and public groups to connect, and facilitate the exchange of knowledge, ideas and solutions. Examples relating to the four Strategy for Engaging with Society themes are:
Our Public Engagement programme enables public participants to access current research, have fun, and share experiences and insights with researchers.
Example: Great Exhibition Road Festival
Rationale: create a programme of free events for all ages, celebrating science and creativity, connecting our staff and students with the public through dialogue activities, workshops, and exhibitions.
Audience: 55,000 public participants, June 2022 (online and in person), 130+ participating research teams, 35 cultural/education/community/creative partners.
Outcomes: 95% exhibitors agreed it was rewarding/motivating, 75% gained new ideas or perspectives on their work. 92% public participants rated it excellent/good, 88% say it increased their interest in the topics they saw, 85% say it increased awareness of current research.
Meeting needs: Feedback from previous years indicated a gap in activities for young people. Therefore the Young Producers programme was established to co-create content appealing to young visitors, in 2022 resulting in SONDER, an exhibition and experiential event about the sun.
Our White City Community Engagement programme focuses on those living and working locally to our White City campus. The Invention Rooms is a community space hosting activities connecting researchers and residents.
Example: Family Engagement Programme
Rationale: Provide opportunities during school holidays and weekends for local families to engage in creative activities about research, to meet with researchers, building confidence in interacting with STEM as a family.
Audience: families, many of whom are underrepresented in STEM (1,300+ people attending holiday workshops annually)
Outcomes: “The session was REALLY GOOD! My son said that it was EXCELLENT!!! Even I was drawn into the session and learnt a few things.” – parent from Meet the scientist session.
Meeting needs: To develop more sustained engagement with families, we created the Saturday Science Club (6 sessions over 12 weeks). During the pandemic we partnered with community group NOVA to deliver online ‘Meet a Scientist’ events for local families (247 children and families involving 22 Imperial researchers).
Imperial’s Schools Outreach programme supports teachers and pupils to engage with research, gain experience of higher education, and widen participation in STEM. Researchers and students are involved in delivering outreach programmes.
Example: Twig Science Reporter, provides teachers and students with resources based on cutting-edge science, with input from researchers, facilitating discussions about the research process (c.10,000 weekly views in English, 30,000 in Spanish).
Imperial’s NIHR Patient Experience Research Centre coordinate involvement and engagement activities enabling the public (specifically patients and carers), to use their lived experiences to inform clinical developments and health research.
Example: People’s Research Cafés are co-created by researchers and public partners, enabling the sharing of ideas, comments and questions to help shaping the research project (c.650 attendees to six café sessions to date).
Our central teams support researcher teams beyond our engagement programmes. Examples of department-led projects include WellHome: a participatory research project co-designed with the White City community, focusing on indoor air quality involving over 100 homes of children with asthma.
We value and support wide-reaching to smaller-scale, longer-term engagement (see image):
Aspect 4: Enhancing practice
Underpinning our Strategy for Engaging with Society, is our outcomes framework detailing key indicators and measures of success against our nine objectives against which we evaluate our work.
We systematically evaluate our programme-level SE work to understand impact and improve practice.
Examples by external evaluation specialists:
Evaluation and visitor demographics of the annual Great Exhibition Road Festival involving feedback from in-event creative methods, visitor online survey (308 collected in 2022, 700 collected 2019), contributor survey (26) and volunteer survey (16). Qualitative observations and snapshot interviews accompany these data. "The people at each stall were so enthusiastic!! They were answering any questions regardless how silly those questions were and they spoke about their subject with great passion!” (visitor highlight)
White City Saturday Science Club evaluation gathering family feedback within each session (6 sessions over 12 weeks) and adapting based on insights. Methods include drawing activities, feedback postcards and mini-interviews (6 families per programme), and follow-up interviews with researchers (4). Families felt more confident in talking about science with their children following sessions, and researchers cited enjoying conversations with families as their main benefit from being involved.
Our Engagement teams collate and share evaluation findings to inform our wider programme. For example, drawing together data on our collective engagement efforts in White City during the pandemic, engaging over 3,000 members of the public, 128 members of staff, 127 students and 27 local partners (March 2020 – April 2021).
The Public Engagement team provide cross-college evaluation support. This includes:
Masterclass available to all staff and PhD students dedicated to planning and evaluating impactful engagement (c.30 staff per year, 92% report increase in understanding)
Session within our staff Engagement Academy, led by an external evaluation specialist from the cultural sector (c.15 staff per year).
Session within our Public Engagement undergraduate module, led by evaluation specialists from the PE team (c.20 students per year).
Online evaluation resources, including for public and patient involvement.
Advice on individual projects from Engagement team members specialising in evaluation.
Convening a monthly reading group for members of the Outreach, Public and Community Engagement teams to discuss recent engagement research, enabling critical review of evaluative methods and learning from findings, developing academic grounding for our practice.
We share and disseminate evaluation learnings to our wider staff and student networks. We do this through our training (e.g. Masterclasses, Engagement Academy, Engagement Day), networks and dedicated skills-share sessions (e.g. with recipients of seed funding), blogs and insight reports, as well as through the collaborations we have with researchers and partners as part of our annual PE programme.
Aspect 5: Building on success
Since the development of Imperial’s first SE framework in 2015, the scale and impact of our work has grown enormously. Our most recent Strategy for Engaging with Society 2022-23 reflects the developments in our internal and external landscapes. We monitor and report on the aims and activities detailed in our strategy in several ways.
Our all-staff SE survey measures the impact we are making towards embedding an institutional culture of engagement (response rate 10%, August 2019). The findings show the extent to which our aspirations are shared and enacted across the institution and inform our capacity building and public programmes. Participation in engagement is increasing – 50% of respondents had been involved in some form of engagement activity within the past year in 2015, 63% in 2019. Plans are to launch a similar survey in 2023.
We systematically evaluate all engagement capacity building initiatives (see section 2), and evolve our approach based on feedback. For example:
Engagement Masterclasses: 92% of attendees surveyed report that the session increased their motivation for engagement, skills and understanding of the topic, 95% would recommend the session. We have opened these masterclasses to PhD students following feedback from our community and demand from our student body.
Engagement Day: 92% of attendees felt more confident to take a participatory research approach in their PE following Engagement Day 2022, 93% would recommend Engagement Day. We introduced a networking breakfast at the 2022 event based on feedback that attendees would like more opportunities to meet colleagues.
We have the philosophy, infrastructure and teams in place to work in partnership with many organisations to deliver our SE strategy in a way that is responsive to the needs of our target public groups. For example, with over 20 South Kensington cultural and academic institutions to deliver the Great Exhibition Road Festival, and with community patient groups.
In early 2022, we engaged The Institute of Community Studies to carry out a community listening and priority exercise to help us shape a new civic plan for our White City Campus. The exercise involved 25 stakeholder interviews and 8 workshops (c.10 participants each), including residents, third-sector organisations, schools, faith groups, business leaders, students and researchers. The work is guided by a Steering Group comprising of community partners and College stakeholders. Through this work we are gathering evidence to understand our current local impact, community priorities and opportunities for future civic engagement.
Progress and learning around SE is communicated to internal and external stakeholders through publications, newsletters, and events.
Internally, through our capacity building programme (section 2), networks, communications and news stories (c.7 per year) we share learnings with staff and students.
Externally, through networks, conferences and reporting, such as journal articles about the Engagement Academy (2020) and PPIE in the human challenge COVID trials (2022), and a panel session and poster about our Undergraduate Public Engagement module at Engage Conference (2021). We report on engagement work to funders and donors (e.g. annually to NIHR).
Our colleagues across the institution also share their work within academic and engagement fields (e.g. Archer et al, 2020).
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