Institutional Context
Summary
Kingston University’s mission is “to enhance students’ life chances, support staff ambitions and strengthen Kingston University's impact on industry, policy and the professions to enable a sustainable future socially, economically and environmentally”. We trace our origins to the foundation of the Kingston Technical Institute in 1899, and are deeply embedded within the south and south-west London region, delivering professional and vocational education, applied research and knowledge exchange with industry, public sector and civic partners. Today the university is located on four campuses consisting of four Faculties, housing nine academic schools. We deliver courses across 29 subject areas, Creative Arts and Design, Business and Management, and Nursing and Midwifery being our three largest areas of provision.
Institutional context
Incorporated as a University in 1992, we trace our origins to the foundation of the Kingston Technical Institute in 1899, founded on the conviction that teaching and researching technical and professional areas together would provide the skills and innovation needed at another time of extreme industrial and societal change. This conviction continues to guide our focus and is articulated through our Town House Strategy (corporate strategy; THS) developed during 2021/22 and launched in Autumn 2022.
The THS is named for our award-winning Town House Building, designed as a new space for learning, exchange of ideas and business and community engagement. This is at the heart of Kingston’s approach to external engagement. The core theme of the THS is society’s need for future skills which is encapsulated through our flagship Future Skills campaign highlighting the importance of skills for innovation and the vital role they play in driving a thriving national economy. This campaign is our platform to extend the reach and impact of our knowledge exchange activity and support for the local economy.
Kingston University is currently a community of some 13,300 undergraduate and 5000 postgraduate students across four campuses in central Kingston (Penrhyn Road and Knights Park) and the Kingston region (Kingston Hill and Roehampton Vale). We deliver teaching through four Faculties and nine Schools across 29 subject areas, with Creative Arts and Design, Business and Management, and Nursing and Midwifery being our three largest areas of provision.
Kingston is a university that is demonstrably ‘in, of, and for’ south and south-west London, but also part of London’s HE landscape: our top 10 boroughs for student recruitment (all levels) are in London, with four of the five of the south London sub-region boroughs in the top 10 in 2021/22 (Source - HESA). We also recruit the highest number of students from the south London boroughs of Kingston, Croydon, Sutton and Merton than any other HE provider. More than 12,000 of our students are from a BAME background.
This social and geographic footprint defines our area of focus and strategic relevance. We are an anchor institution and major employer in the Royal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames (RBK), and collaborate extensively with the local authority, local creative agencies, charities and business groups in realising mutually beneficial objectives. We also provide a bridge to enterprise networks in the wider London and SW England region.
We are a prime university partner in the South London Partnership innovation and growth programme BIG South London, and play a key role in collaborating with HE, FE and business partners to support economic renewal, help SMEs to innovate, understand potential for new cluster development and develop interventions to support higher skilled jobs creation and retention.
Our recognised strengths in entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation, our track record in business start-ups, degree apprenticeships provision, development of local strategic partnerships, close relationships with employers and support for sectors such as healthcare, cyber security and creative industries are all designed to meet needs of the local and regional economy.
For further information, please send queries to kef@kingston.ac.uk
Local Growth and Regeneration
Summary of approach
Kingston University is deeply committed to its place, be that through our historical geographical location or the frequent involvement of local users in research and knowledge exchange. As the largest higher education institution in south-west London, with a high proportion of students recruited from local London boroughs, our approach to local growth and regeneration reflects this footprint and is centred on our role as an anchor institution across south and south-west London and the wider south-east. We are a leading university partner in the delivery of strategic collaboration programmes geared to achieve a more cohesive south London economy, with reach nationally and globally through disciplines where we have internationally-leading research strengths.
Aspect 1: Strategy
Kingston University is a higher education institution that is demonstrably ‘in, of, and for’ south and south-west London, but also clearly part of London’s higher education landscape: our top 10 boroughs for student recruitment (all levels) are in London, with four of the five of the south London sub-region boroughs within the top 10 in academic year 2021/22 (HESA). We also recruit the highest number of students from the south London boroughs of Kingston, Croydon, Sutton and Merton than any other HE provider. More than 12,000 of our students (across all levels) are from a BAME background.
This social and geographic footprint, and our deep and long-standing historical presence in Kingston, create a sphere of influence that is reflected closely within our knowledge exchange activity and support for local economy. This defines our area of focus and strategic relevance. We are an anchor institution and major employer in the Royal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames (RBK), and collaborate extensively with the local authority, local creative agencies, charities and business groups in realising mutually beneficial social, cultural and economic development objectives across a range of projects. We also provide a bridge to enterprise networks in the wider London and SW England region, and our internationally competitive research (70% world-leading or internationally excellent, REF 2021) in disciplines such as Art and Design, Allied Health and Computer Science, enables us to apply research excellence for social and economic benefit across sectors that are essential elements of the south London regional economy.
Fig 1 Location of Kingston University in England, Greater London and the local area. Inset, Town House
Our institutional strategy, the Town House Strategy (THS), articulates our mission “to enhance students’ life chances, support staff ambitions and strengthen Kingston University’s impact on industry, policy and the professions to enable a sustainable future socially, economically and environmentally”.
Developed during 2021/22 and launched in Autumn 2022, the Town House Strategy is named for, and evokes the values of, our flagship Town House building (fig 2). The recipient of both the 2021 Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Stirling Prize and the 2022 EU Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award, the Town House is home to both library and performance space and provides a gateway into Kingston University for businesses and local communities and a means of encouraging collaboration and innovating across all our work. It expresses our strategic approach to place, engagement and consultation, support for the economy and communities in physical form.
Fig 2 Town House
This focus on consultation and understanding user needs is exemplified in the work and findings of the Kingston University/YouGov Future Skills Campaign which surveyed over 2000 businesses and 1000 students in 2021 and 2022, and clearly identified ‘skills for innovation’ as the most important for meeting the challenges they faced in a rapidly changing economic environment.
We are also a prime higher education partner in the South London Partnership (SLP) with university senior leaders participating in strategic actions by SLP to enhance FE-HE links, boost skills and create an investment proposition across five London boroughs.
Central to this is our participation in the BIG (Business Innovation Growth) South London Knowledge Exchange programme, where we have aligned our services for businesses function with a partnership of eight Universities and Further Education Colleges. BIG South London delivers a programme of seed and growth funding, as well as business support programmes and sector-specific networks, and has undertaken extensive business cluster mapping to identify areas for strategic actions by the consortium partners that will lead to higher value business growth, job creation and retention. Kingston has been directly involved in several of these initiatives, and we have built our understanding of the local business needs on the research carried out by BIG South London.
Aspect 2: Activity
Our Local Growth and Regeneration activity is organised around three central themes:
Supporting the local economy in the Kingston area:
As key partners in our estates vision, RBK supported our aspirations in delivering our award-winning Town House building as a hub for community and university collaboration. The Town House building, which was opened officially in March 2020, represents part of a multi-million pound investment in our estate and Kingston town centre and the local economy, enhancing its attractiveness to our population of commuting students and their economic impact in Kingston, and to the London retail and visitor economy.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, this close partnership with RBK allowed them to rapidly leverage our support for the Kingston Economic Recovery Taskforce, that had the remit to support Kingston residents and businesses through the pandemic, and look at the challenges presented by the pandemic and strategic opportunities for the future. This group formed a number of workstreams focused on the skills agenda, the green economy, and digital disadvantage, which the University has helped to drive forward, as well as with the establishment of the Kingston Innovation Network, a joint initiative focused on providing help and support for Kingston businesses as they navigated the complexities of trading in extreme circumstances.
In partnership with RBK, Kingston First and led by Creative Youth, Kingston University supported a successful proposal for £900,000 funding from the Greater London Authority to convert a vacant heritage space at the John Lewis Undercroft site (fig 3) into a new location for creative arts projects for young people, adjacent to a new accelerator location for start-ups, as part of a wider investment in workspaces across the SLP region. Over 300 Kingston students were involved in a project to help reimagine the space and we are in ongoing partnership with Creative Youth to develop and animate the facility.
Fig 3 John Lewis Undercroft
The Not My Beautiful House (NMBH) venture (fig 4) has provided a curated town centre retail space for students and local artists to exhibit and sell their work, a further commitment by the university to strengthen the Kingston visitor and retail economy. Initially funded through the Mayor of London’s ‘Make London’ programme (£70k), NMBH has been shortlisted twice for the Kingston Borough Business Awards as Best Independent Retailer and Creative Retail Awards best Pop-Up.
Fig 4 Not My Beautiful House
Boosting Innovation in the south London region.
Through the BIG South London ‘Hothouse’ innovation fund programme we have supported several micro and small businesses, and other organisations to develop new, innovative products or services and have helped numerous SMEs through a collaborative Innovation Support Programme with other south London partners. We have also delivered smaller-scale innovation voucher-style projects with a further tranche of local businesses and organisations, again with BIG funding. Funding for these schemes, totalling some £150k, was secured in 2021/22, with delivery now in progress.
In partnership with Roehampton University, Kingston University worked with Kingston Chambers of Commerce & Merton Chambers of Commerce to assess the economic and other factors behind low levels of business engagement with Chambers of Commerce, resulting in improvement recommendations. This has been shared more widely with other local Chambers of Commerce, local authorities and business improvement districts.
Also with funding through BIG South London, we have established a Creative Industries Network, (fig 5) a bespoke academic-led programme of peer-to-peer learning, mentoring, networking and workshops to help south London creative businesses design a plan to achieve growth and innovation.
Fig 5 Creative Industries Network cohort 1 participants
Providing support for start-ups and growing SMEs
Our highly successful Enterprise Education programme engages several thousands of students each year in action learning, hackathons (fig 6), and start-up competitions, building a pipeline of entrepreneurial students who subsequently go on to start a business. The programme is financially supported by Santander Bank, alumni donations and crowd-sourced funding. This is sector-leading activity and we have supported 747 new graduate start-ups over the past 3 years (source: HEBCIS). These figures include 163 international student graduates who have brought their high level of skills to bear on UK society and economy through the Graduate Entrepreneur and Startup Visa programmes, with 30 gaining Entrepreneur visas on graduation between 18/19 and 21/22.
The Kingston HackCentre, started in 2017, brings together approximately 3,000 students per annum, who work together on problem-solving for community, public, and business organisations. Some 40 organisations per year participate, setting challenges, offering provocations and illuminations, and gaining insights into new perspectives. Outputs for these organisations have included new product and promotional areas, or promotional collateral for their organisations, and feedback on their systems and approaches from the perspective of our diverse student body. Reviews of the events are provided by participating organisations.
Hackathons are used to engage firms in low-cost and early-stage collaboration with the university which can lead to more substantially funded KE initiatives, such as our
multi-faceted partnership with Salutem Care and Education.
Fig 6 Hackathon
Kingston Business School (KBS) has been delivering the BEIS-funded Help to Grow Management (HTGM) programme (fig 7) since 2021, as part of a national consortium of institutions with CABS accreditation. HTGM is a four-year, £4m funded project (2021- 2025) and KBS has supported approximately 350 business leaders – the largest cohort of any of the delivery partners – across London and South Central England per year to employ design-thinking approaches to help owner-managers develop the skills and confidence to make difficult decisions about how to keep their enterprise afloat and boost growth and productivity. HTGM includes training, peer to peer knowledge transfer, and one to one business coaching and also assists small business leaders in growing their businesses and facilitates further university-business collaborations and industry project partnerships. The programme team receive continuous feedback from participants and course tutors on how the programme can evolve to meet the changing needs of businesses.
Fig 7 Video of Help to Grow Management Course
Kingston University Women in Enterprise network has brought together a vibrant community of business-minded women to connect, share and support each other in their business aspirations. The network has also recruited a wide range of mentors to support the community. The services include monthly guest speaker events, peer-to-peer support network, regular 1-2-1 business advice sessions and mentoring services.
Aspect 3: Results
Our recognised strengths in entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation, our track record in business start-ups, degree apprenticeships provision, development of local strategic partnerships, close relationships with employers and influence on and engagement with sectors such as healthcare, cyber security and creative industries, are all designed to meet needs of the local and regional economy.
All activities described are co-designed and co-delivered with partners, based on a clear understanding of user needs and deep and long-standing collaborative partnerships. These are guiding principles running through all our work in the local growth and regeneration, as well as public and community engagement activity.
Individual and local academic action is one of the hallmarks of our institutional approach to supporting local growth. Individual academic engagement with local growth and regeneration activity is recognised and incentivised through consultancy policies, professional development and promotional routes. Kingston University uses the concept of academic ‘domains’ to enhance and shape modern academic careers, and two domains – Business and International, and Professional Practice (including KE) – provide academic staff with frameworks and benchmarks to understand how their participation in local growth and regeneration projects may contribute to career enhancement, progression, professional development, and personal impact and esteem. This gives a practical framework to guide choices by academic and research staff on how to embed, and act on, the learning gained from LGR projects in an academically meaningful way.
Senior university staff hold memberships of a variety of boards, trustee groups and governing bodies of key stakeholders to ensure ongoing communication and understanding of strategic needs; including with South Thames College Group, Kingston Chamber of Commerce, SLP Employment and Skills board, local NHS Trusts and cultural organisations. Kingston University is also within the Kingston Business Improvement District and an engaged stakeholder in this initiative.
Our strategic approach the engagement and communication is powerfully demonstrated in the Future Skills campaign, and we are acting on the findings of this major engagement activity to embed within our own practice. The 2022 Future Skills follow-up campaign started the process of incorporating Future Skills principles into the undergraduate curriculum in the guise of the ‘Future Skills Journey Map’ and through a programme of advocacy, led by our Vice-Chancellor Professor Steven Spier, for an holistic approach across government, business and higher education as a means of embedding Future Skills across the life-long learning cycle.
Public & Community Engagement
Summary of approach
At Kingston University, Public and Community Engagement is not a standalone activity but is embedded within our history, culture and actions. We are committed to our place and to supporting individuals and organisations throughout their lifespan and at each life stage. Our Town House institutional strategy builds on many years of deeply rooted community engagement across south and south-west London establishing an organisational culture of collaboration articulated through our vision of inclusivity, innovation, ambition and enterprise.
Aspect 1: Strategy
Public and Community Engagement is intrinsic to our activity as an anchor institution and major employer in the Royal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames (RBK). We collaborate extensively with the local authority, creative agencies, charities, community and business groups in realising mutually beneficial social, cultural and economic objectives across a range of projects.
As articulated in our institutional Town House Strategy (THS) our vision is that ‘Our university will be sought after by students and staff as a place to further their ambitions and to have impact on our communities’. Named for the award-winning Town House building THS recognises our civic leadership role for the communities we serve.
At the heart of our vision are the core values to be Inclusive by valuing the diversity of students, staff and communities; Innovative by applying new methods or ideas for the benefit of communities; Ambitious by pursuing excellence for the University and our communities; and Enterprising by recognising and acting on opportunities.
The THS provides four organising themes through which PCE activity channeled; these are:
Drive a progressive new model of education with the future skills and higher-level attributes most needed by employers and society.
Partner to develop students’ sought-after skills, and engage government and organisations with our ideas and expertise to further debate and influence policy.
Have impact in research, knowledge exchange and professional practice by concentrating our efforts where we can be creditable and authoritative.
Provide a collaborative, innovative and high-performing working environment for staff so that we are an effective and attractive place to work.
Consequently, Public and Community Engagement (PCE) is not a standalone function or strategy but is articulated throughout THS and expressed across the entire university.
This is visible through high-level engagement and advocacy undertaken by our Vice-Chancellor with political, civic and business leaders, to many grass-roots level projects undertaken by individual members of staff, aligned with support, recognition and reward through professional services and academic development frameworks.
Underpinning this vision are our cornerstone strategies for Estates and Sustainability, and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI). Led by the Provost and Chief Operating Officer, our pledge to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) follows many years of innovative action confirming our commitment to tackling Earth’s most pressing challenges. Ratified in 2021, our Sustainability Plan established a sustainability team to deliver robust sustainability programmes in relation to what we do (teaching, learning, knowledge exchange and research) and how and where we do it (operations and estates).
EDI at Kingston is governed by the EDI committee which reports to the Vice-Chancellor’s Senior Leadership Team and is led by the PVC EDI. The EDI committee is in turn made up of staff networks, the Network of Equality Campions, Athena SWAN development, faculty & Professional Services EDI Action Group members, and Trade and Student Union representatives, with all participating staff members receiving workload allocation in order to fully participate.
Aspect 2: Support
Responsibility for coordinating and facilitating PCE lies across and within all key institutional functions and academic frameworks, including:
Public Affairs and Insight provide a backbone function for PCE informed by a wide-ranging programme of public and political advocacy led by the Vice-Chancellor.
Partnerships and Business Engagement, led by the PVC, Knowledge Exchange and Innovation, leads on knowledge exchange aspects of strategy, incentivisation, funding and reporting PCE activity.
Enterprise Education supports in- and extra-curricular student enterprise, working across the community utilising design-thinking methodologies to find solutions to complex social and economic challenges.
Research and Impact led by the PVC Research and Impact, support academic research within communities and provide a methodological framework for evaluating impact.
The Graduate Research School provides training and development supporting researchers to work with communities through the Vitae Researcher Development Programme and RISE Research Leadership Programme.
Faculties undertake academic-led PCE aligned to in-curricula Future Skills programming measured against faculty-level Key Performance Indicators.
Access Participation and Inclusion lead on legal obligations under the Equality Act 2010 and the Public Sector Equality Duty.
Estates and Sustainability deliver public consultations and support local sustainability continuous improvement programmes.
Stanley Picker Gallery Participation Programme leads on community cultural programming, supported by a Participation Curator at Dorich House museum
Reward for academic participation in PCE is embedded as part of the Academic Domains Framework which ‘recognises and codifies the expanded range of activities, practices, civic, social and professional contributions that are part of a contemporary academic life at Kingston University,’ thus ensuring recognition and reward against an evidenced performance appraisal system.
Aspect 3: Activity
The University contributes hugely to the region’s cultural, educational and social life through public lectures, exhibitions and performances and by opening up sporting, health, conference and other facilities to local residents, businesses and community organisations. The University was instrumental in bringing the Rose Theatre to Kingston and continues to offer it financial and artistic support.
The Future Skills programme builds on co-created approaches delivering 500+ PCE activities each year whilst developing skills for creative problem-solving and innovation in our staff, students and communities. These include:
Our Place
Imagined as a welcoming environment where collaboration is encouraged, the award-winning landmark Town House (fig 1) hosts library and performance spaces providing a gateway to the University for residents and businesses.
Fig 1 Video tour of Town House
In a wide-ranging collaboration with Kingston Museum, Town House hosts the borough’s Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) collection (fig 2) whose multi-faceted work continues to have significance across moving-image cultures, photography, digital animation and the visual arts globally.
Fig 2 Galloping horse animated using photos by Muybridge (1887)
Attracting 7000+ visitors per annum Stanley Picker Gallery at Kingston University (fig 3) is one of the leading university galleries and commissioning venues in the UK which, alongside its partner venue Dorich House Museum, works with artists, designers, students, academics and the local community to encourage creativity, learning, research and innovation. Established in 1997 with the ongoing support from the Stanley Picker Trust, the Gallery forms part of Arts Council England’s National Portfolio and is a principal cultural interface between Kingston University and its civic communities
Fig 3 Michael Marriott, “You Say Volvo, I Say Potato…” (2018), installation view, Stanley Picker Gallery at Kingston University. Courtesy the artist. Photography Corey Bartle-Sanderson
The Squatter Years: Recovering Dorich House Museum’s Recent Past, a two-year project (2020/2022) exploring the recent history of Dorich House, focusing on the 1980s and 1990s and its transition from Sculptor Dora Gordine’s home and workplace to a museum. 31 volunteers supported 234 open days, cataloguing 2,400 items from Gordine’s Russian art collection and digitising of 107 large format architectural plans and 84 photographic prints.
Opened in 2020 and funded through the Mayor of London’s Make London Fund, Not My Beautiful House (NMBH) (fig 4) is a joint venture between Kingston University, Kingston University Students Union and Royal Borough of Kingston. Situated in town centre meanwhile space, NMBH relocated into the Ancient Market Place in 2022, seeing a 450% increase in footfall and represents 200+ local artists.
Fig 4 Not My Beautiful House
The Community Brain (TCB) (Fig 5) is a Kingston-based not-for-profit organisation we collaborate with on projects with academics from 20+ courses contributing expertise and insight enabling students to develop skills in ‘live’ situations. The cross-curricular projects focus on the importance of developing a sense of place and self, growing community assets and opportunities, and revitalising urban and suburban life. This partnership has brought together others (Local Authority, College, Network Rail, SWR and local business and communities) to enable greater impact and transferable learning. To develop the partnership a Director of TCB was appointed Visiting Senior Fellow in Kingston School of Art.
Fig 5 Community Brain's 'ShedX - Growing Ideas in Tolworth'
The Feltham Convening Partnership (fig 6) project is a three-year participatory citizen research project where 40 young residents are trained to become co-researchers evaluating and supporting the delivery of social and economic regeneration in partnership with Mental Health and Wellbeing, Post 16 Opportunities and Early Years provision, SEND, and Feltham Young Activists.
Fig 6 Feltham Convening Partnership
Kingston University brings interactive science to schools in our two mobile laboratories. Lab in a Lorry (fig 7) delivers STEM taster sessions that are fun, hands-on and interactive, directly to learners. Despite being impacted by the Pandemic, between 2019 and 2022 the labs made 50 visits (210 contact hours) to exhibitions, primary and secondary schools, colleges and community groups.
Fig 7 Lab in a Lorry
Our Biodiversity Programme supports 385+ volunteer engagement activities each year. Between 2019-2022 3410 volunteers devoted 4392 hours to campus-based ecology projects including eel surveys of the Hogsmill River in partnership with the Zoological Society London, the Cache In Trash Out project (fig 8), and the citizen Zoo Get InVoled project.
Fig 8 Biodiversity programme - Cache In Trash Out project
Creative problem-solving as social action:
The Overcoming Trauma Through Creative Writing (fig 9) project supports 23,000+ survivors of trauma, forced migration, domestic violence and sexual violence in conflict using expressive writing and expressive telling to create narratives around their experiences. It enables local and international agencies and non-governmental organisations to build cost-effective and sustainable programmes supporting vulnerable populations and cultural recovery, delivering dozens of training days for human rights defenders and faith leaders.
Fig 9 Video on 'Helping people in conflict regions overcome trauma through creative writing'.
In partnership with Great Ormond Street Hospital, The Get Better Books and Be Proactive projects supported 2000 children and their families by producing six books and ten animations to ease patient anxiety and help clinicians to better understand the complexities of children with learning difficulties, autism or additional needs.
The Times Higher Award-winning KU Big Read, now in its ninth year, has distributed 100,000+ books to Kingston students, staff and the local community, providing a springboard for community shared-reading initiatives, including those hosted with partner universities, public libraries and secondary schools through Read-Up Kingston! which uses shared-reading within educational transition. The KU Big Read operates alongside related initiatives such as Reading Force within the Armed Forces, among veterans (including those in prison) and the Church of England, all of which seek to boost connectivity and mental health through active involvement in shared-reading.
Performing Arts Community Engagement (PACE) (fig 10) reaches 2500+ people per annum through 60+ participatory arts projects in public and community spaces with a social impact focus by developing projects in collaboration with students and marginalised or socially disadvantaged groups and communities.
Fig 10 Performing Arts Community Engagement
Pandemic support and engagement
Built on strong partnership, insight-sharing and innovation, Kingston Communities and Economic Taskforce was established by the local authority and the University to support residents, businesses and the voluntary sector throughout the pandemic.
Working in partnership with local Primary Care Networks, South-West London CCG and Kingston Council, the University repurposed part of the campus into a 10-station vaccination centre with student and staff volunteers supporting delivery of 1000+ vaccinations a week.
Led by Royal Surrey County Hospital and working with a wide-range of partners, and members in Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities, The Cobham Project co-produced and disseminated interventions to reduce health inequalities and Covid-19 risks.
Professor of medical microbiology, Mark Fielder, made 200+ press appearances sharing expertise and advice across international and national media outlets. This included coverage in Sky News, Daily Mail, Yahoo Canada, CNN international, MTA International, Daily Telegraph, Newsweek, BBC Science Focus, BBC News and BBC Radio 4, appearing 13 times on Sky news between January and April 2020, including on a live Q&A in March 2020. He made regular appearances as a guest expert across the BBC regional radio network, explaining the science and importance of the guidance and answering listener questions. He hosted two public lectures at the University for students, staff and the community to inform and provide context around the emerging spread of coronavirus, and addressed Kingston borough council’s resilience and planning forum, acting as an expert to inform planning decisions and advised the Society for Applied Microbiology.
Aspect 4: Enhancing practice
In embarking on a new institutional strategy, Kingston University has renewed its commitment to a programme of continuous consultation with stakeholders and improvement across all activity. Community and public links were first mapped and valued in our Civic Engagement Consultation (2016). This foregrounded our Estates vision, culminating in the construction of the Town House building, and strengthened our relationships with civic and economic partners in the following years. The benefits of this approach were felt throughout the Covid-19 pandemic in our role supporting RBK and our local healthcare providers where co-production methods adopted by Covid Recovery Taskforces became embedded into place-based strategy-making.
Planning and Data Insights support data collection and analysis for strategic planning, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), producing dashboards to inform continuous improvement. Weekly Data Insights drop-in sessions support the commitment to delivering data-driven improvements. Participant and community evaluation programmes feed directly into continuous planning and are adapted to the needs of individual programmes, the participants and the wider community.
The Research, Business and Innovation Committee (RBIC) provides oversight for PCE activity within the context of the operation of research and knowledge exchange policies and strategies. Supported by teams outlined in Aspect 2, RBIC reports to Academic Council, the Vice-Chancellor’s Senior Leadership Team and the Board of Governors, supported by the University Clerk.
Aspect 5: Building on success
In 2021 Kingston University commissioned YouGov to undertake a national survey of over 2,000 employers and over 1000 students aimed at determining the portfolio of skills most needed to support a thriving national economy. The resulting Future Skills League Table highlighted the ten attributes key to business success are the creative problem-solving and innovative thinking skills inherent in public and community engagement interventions. The findings of the research led directly to our Vice Chancellor launching the Future Skills Campaign.
Our core values of inclusivity, innovation, ambition and enterprise developed through the Future Skills Campaign supported the launch in 2022 of the Future Skills Programme. Built on an institutional approach to re-imaged learning grounded in experiential, reflective methodologies, Future Skills delivers an evaluation framework across the Academic Domains Framework for reward and progression informing the THS themes focused on enhancing research, knowledge exchange and civic engagement practice.
We responded to the outcomes of our Knowledge Exchange Concordat (2021) survey which found that knowledge exchange was neither well defined, understood or rewarded. Given the large volume of civic engagement activity undertaken, these findings became priority actions to address in THS. The role of PVC Knowledge Exchange and Innovation was established in 2021 to deliver strategic leadership in knowledge exchange and PCE activity, including:
The commitment in the THS to establish new Knowledge Exchange and Research Institutes focused on growing collaborative activity in academic and stakeholder communities of practice
Supporting the Research Staff Development Strategy through which we promote a collaborative, innovative, and high-performing professional environment. Kingston RISE Research Leadership Academy was developed to enhance the research skills and leadership qualities needed to develop successful research careers.
Improving opportunities for showcasing civic engagement activity beyond the annual Civic Showcase event, including closer collaboration in the borough with charitable and third sector organisations, expanding the annual Festival of Research and Knowledge Exchange and ensuring Town House is freely available for community groups
Providing guidance and training for colleagues focused on accessing board-level opportunities and mechanisms for influencing policy.
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