Institutional Context
Summary
Keele was founded as a University College in 1949 with the sponsorship of three local authorities, receiving its Royal Charter in 1962. Keele continues to be true to its pioneering vision to make a difference to society through inter-disciplinary education and research. Since 2017 we have re-stated our commitment to the local area through a series of Keele Deals.
The University plays a key role in driving regional economic growth, supported by its growing research base, and the Region’s transition to Net Zero. We contribute £0.38bn to the regional economy each year, and have delivered CO2 savings of over 10,000 tons in the last 5 years. In 2021, the University was named Global Sustainability Institution of the Year.
Institutional context
Keele is located between Manchester and Birmingham in the Borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme, part of the North Staffordshire urban conurbation which also includes Stoke-on-Trent. At 250 hectares, Keele’s campus is the largest single campus environment in Europe.
13,500 students now study at Keele. Our teaching and research spans humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and health. Our Medical School was founded in 2003 and now compares with the most highly ranked in England.
Our research base has grown by over 75% since 2014, with 80% recognised as world leading or international excellent in the most recent Research Excellence Framework exercise. Research from all three of the University’s faculties (Humanities and Social Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, and Natural Sciences) performed strongly, with particularly strong performances in Allied Health Professions, English Language and Literature, Engineering (Bioengineering/Regenerative Medicine and Chemistry), Public Health, Health Services, Primary Care and Physics. We have also developed strengths in areas of smart systems and artificial intelligence.
The University’s role in the economic and social life of the area is as important today as it was 70 years ago. This is supported by well-established University-owned science and innovation park. The main centre for high value employment locally, the Park is home to eight Innovation Centres, housing 60 companies. It contributes £75m a year in GVA to the regional economy and has grown by 25% in the last five years.
A mixed-use environment, the campus has provided the setting for the unique Smart Energy Network Demonstrator (SEND) which uses the campus as a town-scale ‘living laboratory’. Installed in partnership with Siemens, the demonstrator provides a platform for research, development and innovation in the smart energy technologies required to address climate change.
The Keele Deals
Since 2017 we have re-stated our commitment to working for the benefit of the local communities through a series of Keele Deals.
The 2017 New Keele Deal (now referred to as Keele Deal | Economy), the first and most ambitious Deal, supported a plan to deliver £70m of investment by Keele University, Staffordshire County Council, Stoke-on-Trent City Council, Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council, University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust, and the Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire Local Enterprise Partnership to exploit the potential of Keele University’s world-leading research and facilities.
Its aim was to tackle low productivity and improve business competitiveness in the region, deliver a significant number of higher value jobs for the next 20 years, contribute to improved health and healthcare, and grow a culture of innovation in the local business community. The Deal also committed to saving around 4,000 tonnes of CO2 per year and put our region at the heart of the UK’s transition to a lower carbon economy.
That Deal led to the creation of one of the largest University Local
Growth and Regeneration Programmes nationally, achieving £70.6m in
investment to date to support local growth.
Further Deals have since been agreed to address other needs and
priorities in the local area - Keele Deal Culture, Keele Deal Health and
Keele Deal Recovery.
For further information, please send queries to gateway@keele.ac.uk
Local Growth and Regeneration
Summary of approach
Keele continued delivery of its ambitious programme of business support to encourage innovation-led growth, with programmes around innovation leadership, sustainable energy, medtech innovation and SME digital transitions. To date, these programmes have enabled 948 local businesses to benefit from Keele’s expertise, and secured extensions to 2023.
An independent economic impact assessment suggests that the University generated £265m Gross Value Added into the local economy through its core activities in 2020/21, £375m into the region as a whole. Our Local Growth and Regeneration activities generated between £60m and £80m in Gross Value Added in the period to 2022.
Keele’s current focus includes supporting the digital economy, low carbon transitions and the growth of Keele Science and Innovation Park.
Aspect 1: Strategy
External engagement is central in Keele’s Strategic Plan and Mission. Keele’s refreshed Knowledge Exchange Plan 2022-26 provides the framework for local growth and regeneration in the context of a landscape transformed through our Keele Deals agreed with local civic partners. These have provided growing opportunities for researchers and students to work with local SMEs and wider business communities to deliver innovation-led growth.
The Keele Deals
The 2017 New Keele Deal (now referred to as Keele Deal | Economy), the first and most ambitious Deal, supported a plan to deliver £70m of investment by Keele University, Staffordshire County Council, Stoke-on-Trent City Council, Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council, University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust, and the Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire Local Enterprise Partnership to exploit the potential of Keele University’s world-leading research and facilities.
Its aim was to tackle low productivity and improve business competitiveness in the region, deliver a significant number of higher value jobs for the next 20 years, contribute to improved health and healthcare, and grow a culture of innovation in the local business community. The Deal also committed to saving around 4,000 tonnes of CO2 per year and put our region at the heart of the UK’s transition to a lower carbon economy.
That Deal led to the creation of one of the largest University Local Growth and Regeneration Programmes nationally, achieving £70.6m in investment to date to support local growth.
The subsequent thematic deals - Keele Deal Culture, Keele Deal Health, and Keele Deal Recovery included in their strategic priorities further support for local growth and regeneration.
Keele Deal | Culture (2018) included objectives to support creative entrepreneurship and SME growth, through incubation support, research-informed leadership development, student/graduate talent, and world-leading specialist expertise to help drive the innovation-led growth of the creative SME sector.
Keele Deal | Health (2019) built on strong clinical research relationships across the region, and UK leading strengths in primary care, public and patient engagement, musculoskeletal health and rehabilitation bioengineering. The Deal aimed to underpin the growth and development of the Bio/MedTech cluster on the Keele Science and Innovation Park, and build on a Staffordshire healthcare business network of over 150 members.
Following Keele’s immediate response to the impact of pandemic conditions on businesses (see Activity), Keele agreed Keele Deal | Recovery (launched early 2021) with civic partners, which reflected shared ambitions to ‘build back better’. As well as reviewing and revising existing programmes to address the new realities of the post-pandemic economy, it reflected the need for the University to play a role in supporting business resilience through accelerating digital transitions, and included objectives around:
The completion of Digital Innovation Centre 7 in Spring 2022, enabling over 300 SMEs to benefit from its data analytics transformation programme, and providing an innovation hub to enable leading companies in this area to benefit from the University’s expertise and graduate talent in advanced data science and analytics.
The creation of a Digital Society Institute that will provide a gateway to digital and data expertise in the University.
New partnerships with the FE sector to develop the longer-term skills pipeline for digital and data-driven industries, including a focus on communities most at risk of missing out from digitally-enabled working futures.
We are currently working on the next Keele Deal, which is likely to encompass a number of priority areas for partners, including productivity and health, and the realisation of a sustainable energy strategic growth corridor along the A50/A500.
Knowledge Exchange Plan 2022-26
Our KE Plan includes Local Growth and Regeneration objectives across SME Innovation and the role of Keele’s Science & Innovation Park, future skills needs, Net Zero, recovery and resilience, health and wellbeing, building our four Institutes (Social Inclusion, Sustainable Futures, Global Health and Digital Society) and student and graduate outcomes, including the role of graduates in the local economy.
The Plan identifies eight project/programme areas, the following including a focus on local growth:
1. SME Innovation
Maintain a focus on the development of a strong place-based innovation alliance to drive forward progress on the UK Government’s 2.4% target for R&D investment.
Continue to deliver a programme of support for SME innovation in the local business base, with the aim of helping a further 500 SMEs between 2021 and 2025.
This includes:
Further expanding Keele’s portfolio of innovation support for local businesses into advanced data analytics, smart energy supply chain development and digital health.
Developing our programmes of leadership skill-building for SME owner managers and senior teams to better respond to the demands of the recovery period through process innovation.
Building on the foundations of SME innovation put in place over the last HEIF period to develop our portfolio of collaborative industrial innovation projects, supporting an increased number of businesses to attract significant government funding into industrial R&D - an additional 15 projects over the next four years.
Further development of the Business Gateway to improve partner experience and facilitate increasing intensification of RD&I relationships.
2. Science & Innovation Park
Continue to develop Keele Science and Innovation Park as a high-value employment growth site, attracting and developing sectors able to benefit from Keele’s research and expertise. Innovation Centres 7 & 8 (advanced digital and veterinary science) to be completed by 2022, and a further two expected to be completed before 2025 (Innovation Centre 9 - Materials for Sustainability and Health is currently in early stages of development).
Further develop the research, student, graduate and technician engagement with Science Park companies.
3. Smart Energy
Realise the full benefits to the local area of Keele’s Smart Energy Network Demonstrator working with partners to deliver a programmed roll-out of localised smart energy systems, including the completion and initial implementation of Zero Carbon Rugeley, and the design and early delivery of a system in Newcastle-under-Lyme.
To support the region’s ambitions to build on its comparative advantage in the energy sector by stimulating green growth through strategic economic development and inward investment, including development of an Innovation Centre at Keele aimed at the clean energy sector.
Develop improved pathways for skills development linked to smart energy management, building on the national analysis being undertaken by the EnergyRev consortium, and local analysis with partners in SEND and Rugeley.
4. Skills, Progression & Mobility
Develop a local skills and progression strategy aligned to the role of the University in supporting the area’s recovery, innovation, inclusive green growth and social mobility.
Agree a further programme of degree and higher-level apprenticeships and related professional learning in this context.
Support the development of T-level skills in the local area through the Institute of Technology with Newcastle and Stafford College.
Develop Keele’s response to increasing job losses, the changing labour market and skills needs in the aftermath of the pandemic.
Extend Keele’s role in local careers guidance, working with the Skills Hub to offer Keele’s digital careers service to local jobseekers.
5. Digital Society
Create a Digital Society Institute that will provide a gateway to expertise in advanced digital expertise, collaborative research and student and graduate capacity.
Enable over 500 SMEs to benefit from a Keele data analytics transformation programme, backed by graduate talent.
Enter into new partnerships with the FE sector to develop the longer-term skills pipeline for digital and data-driven industries,
Work with Staffordshire County Council and other partners to complete cross-organisational proof-of-concept projects in public policy and practice data analysis, moving towards the establishment of a Staffordshire Centre for Data Analytics during 2022.
6. Arts, Culture & Creativity
Maintain a focus on urgent priority areas for local communities such as animating town centres.
8. Keele Deal | Health
Deliver a Keele Deal I Health that responds to both the enduring health challenges in the region and emerging needs relating to post pandemic recovery and resilience, focusing this on supporting place-based workforce development, service transformation and sector innovation and growth.
Keele is an active member of Midlands Innovation Universities – helping to shape, contribute to and benefit from its programmes, including programmes to support economic, social- and health-related impact from the commercialisation of intellectual property generated by the Universities.
Keele is particularly active in the Energy Research Accelerator, contributing strengths around smart localised energy systems alongside other energy and transport expertise from across the region. Keele is the institutional lead for the Research England Development Fund Hydex business engagement project.
Aspect 2: Activity
Responses to the Pandemic
The first half of the review period was dominated by the need to address the demands of the pandemic. As part of a wide-ranging set of responses, Keele organised a Keele Talks Business webinar aimed at supporting businesses through the emergency response and immediate post-pandemic on topics our partners identified as a priority. These were watched by over 800 people.
We added a further New Enterprise ‘Basecamp’ programme to our portfolio, to address the initial and projected demand for support for necessity entrepreneurship, and the need for SMEs to pivot into new markets.
We also shared Keele’s academic expertise on Long Covid with employers, to support them in understanding the condition at a time when little was known about it, and addressing it effectively in the workplace.
The University played a key role in addressing the conditions for town and tity centre economies at a time when retail and leisure outlets were shut down. ArtsKeele worked with creative partner Appetite and the area’s Business Improvement Districts to turn the Three Counties Open Art exhibition into a seasonal light show, which toured four town centres and Trentham Gardens. 247,300 people engaged with the cubes, and the experience has presented a new medium for the University to engage directly with communities.
Local Growth Programmes
Keele continued to run all of the local growth programmes initiated as part of the Keele Deal Culture. Mercia Centre for Innovation Leadership supported a further 71 business leaders to develop their skills and capacity in leading innovation-related change. The Keele Research and Innovation Support Programme developed, resourced and delivered three-month innovation support involving Keele academics and graduate talent for 96 businesses. The Smart Energy Network Demonstrator (SEND) provided consultancy and three-month project support to 143 businesses. Business Bridge, our healthcare and medtech focused programme supported 40 businesses to develop new products for the NHS, and Basecamp provided support for 60 entrepreneurs.
Science & Innovation Park
2019/20 saw the completion of the Denise Coates Foundation Building, in collaboration with Staffordshire County Council, providing a new home for Keele Business School alongside business tenants, and purpose-designed innovation spaces around a central atrium. Completed in August 2019, the facility was quick to attract business tenants, and provides a valuable hub for the wider Science and Innovation Park and for our collaborative activities with external partners.
This model of co-location with industry was also deployed in the new Vet School facility nearby, which was completed during 2021/22.
During 2021/22 we also began work on investment planning to enable the continuation of development on the remaining 52,980m2/570,280ft2 development site. This will see Keele seeking investment partners to enable us to provide high quality facilities for supporting innovation in materials, and businesses working in the energy and environment sphere.
Digital Transitions
In 2021/22 we introduced a new SME programme to support the digital transitions of existing SMEs and encourage digital entrepreneurship. This is part of a major strategic development programme over the last two years which includes the development of a Digital Society Institute to work with businesses and other sectors, a new innovation centre part of the University as a hub for business and public sector engagement, a Town Deal-funded Digital Society Centre in the centre of Newcastle-under-Lyme, to support digital entrepreneurship, community-based engagement, student knowledge exchange and enterprise, and Staffordshire Centre for Data Analytics, a local public policy intelligence initiative, as well as our contributions to Silicon Stoke .
Low Carbon Transitions
The early part of the review period was also dominated by the UK’s arrangements to host COP26 and the opportunities this provided to inform and engage businesses on the opportunities in the low carbon economy, and the role they can play in supporting the area’s transition to Net Zero.
In February 2021 Keele worked with BEIS officials to deliver the UK Government’s first regional business-facing event on net zero - Your Business Journey to Net Zero. Keele pulled together a team to design key elements of the programme, including the Ministerial Panel (chaired by Keele’s Vice-Chancellor) with academic contributors and our industry and civil society partners. The University secured a significant proportion of the participant base through its networks and marketing efforts.
Keele ran a Festival to coincide with the COP26 Summit against the dramatic backdrop of Luke Gerram’s GAIA. The Festival included events for regional business audiences.
The Smart Energy Network Demonstrator (SEND) has gained an international profile for innovation in localised smart energy. The initial infrastructure was installed in 2018/19 in partnership with Siemens, for whom this is a flagship innovation project. The success of the SEND programme has led three major industrial partnerships at the forefront of UK energy revolution:
Zero Carbon Rugeley – led by Engie UK (now Equans UK) as part of the UK Industrial Strategy’s Prospering from the Energy Revolution programme, the project has delivered a citizen-informed design for a smart localised energy system of Rugeley.
A partnership led by Cadent and Northern Gas Networks, the Hydeploy project saw Keele become the first site in the UK to accept hydrogen, a fuel with near zero carbon emissions potential, into its domestic and commercial gas supply.
HyDex which connects businesses across the hydrogen economy to support end-to-end value chains.
Skills
Keele partnered with Newcastle and Staffordshire College Group as the Higher Education Partner in the area’s Institute of Technology, which gained planning approval in early 2023.
Backed by training providers, NSCG, Keele University, Burton & South Derbyshire College, and Axia Solutions, alongside key employer partners; Dell, Hitachi, Moog and Siemens, the £13M Institute of Technology (IoT) development will bring together industry, education and research to jointly design and develop education and training opportunities aligned to the skills needed by employers, the local, regional and national economy, and Government priorities..
Aspect 3: Results
Keele commissions independent assessments of the impact of its individual programmes as delivery comes to a close, which include feedback from beneficiaries.
We recently commissioned a comprehensive Economic Impact Assessment, which estimates an economic impact regionally, across all of our programmes, of between £50m and £80m (taking into account overlapping programmes). The estimations for individual programmes are shown below.
Source: Hatch (2022) Keele University Economic Impact Assessment
This work also included a baseline economic impact assessment, indicating an economic impact outside the Local Growth and Regeneration Programmes of £375m annually.
Public & Community Engagement
Summary of approach
External engagement is central in Keele’s Strategic Plan and Mission, embedded in education and research, not pursued as a third mission. Keele’s leadership structures ensure that that high quality public engagement practice is recognised and rewarded as a mainstream activity.
Keele’s refreshed KE Plan provides the framework for public engagement in the context of an landscape transformed through our Keele Deals agreed with local civic partners. It encompasses seven broad areas of impact can (see image below) each demanding a powerful integrated institutional response which extends beyond light-touch public engagement and knowledge-exchange. These provide ever growing opportunities for researchers and students to work with local partners and communities to address the needs of local communities and wider.
Keele’s engagement priorities and contribution areas
Aspect 1: Strategy
Institutional context
Encouraging impactful external engagement is central to Keele University’s Strategic Plan and Mission, embedded in our education and research, and our organisational support frameworks. The University has played a leading role in this area nationally.
Institutional leadership is embedded in our governance structures for research and education and built into mainstream academic planning.
Internal governance arrangements for external engagement
In 2016 we adopted the National Co-ordinating Centre’s manifesto for public engagement, signalling an intent to move beyond individual centres of excellence and wholeheartedly embrace public engagement, and leading to two major UKRI-funded institutional development projects.
Since 2017 the University has developed, through co-production, a number of focused ‘Deals’ with Civic partners, to identify needs and deliver regional impacts, and further strengthened the environment for engagement through the KE Concordat evaluation and gap analysis and action plan.
Keele’s KE Plan provides the current framework for all external engagement, and encompasses the commitments made to local partners since 2017 in strategic agreements called the Keele Deals (Economy, Culture, Health and Recovery), and includes the institutional improvement priorities identified through the KE Concordat and Keele’s Cultural Strategy.
The period covered by this narrative encompasses the pandemic and post-pandemic period, including the development of The Keele Deal | Recovery, which built on our initial emergency responses.
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI)
Equality and diversity has been identified as a key area for development. Our approach has been to support two forerunner areas of public engagement - Public and Patient Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) and Public Arts.
The EDI journey for PPIE started with Keele’s membership of the National Institute for Health Research’s (NIHR) Race Equality Public Action Group, followed by the delivery and evaluation of pilots for the NIHR’s newly developed Race Equality Framework for PPIE. A Faculty Race Equality Ambassador for PPIE was appointed, to enhance engagement with underserved communities. Keele is highlighted as an NIHR case study. Membership of Keele’s PPIE team has fundamentally changed, with 50% now from BAME communities.
ArtsKeele makes a significant contribution to the area’s cultural landscape (113 cultural outputs in 21/22). As part of the Keele Deal, it has played a central role in supporting diverse artists in the cultural regeneration of the Potteries, and in creating a more inclusive environment for Keele’s increasingly diverse student and staff base. Strong, British and Black, a collaboration with Staffordshire-based Kwanzaa Collective UK was the first of a series of cultural programmes, which over the last two years has seen 50% of concerts and 75% of exhibitions involving artists from previously under-represented backgrounds.
Aspect 2: Support
Reward and recognition
In 2018/19 we introduced engagement into all academic role expectations, followed by inclusion in revised promotions criteria. Keele Excellence Awards include an award for External Engagement. Breaking the Mould was introduced in 2019 to reward and recognise our partnerships.
Professional Support
External engagement is supported by a Faculty embedded Engagement and Partnerships team. Clinical impact and public engagement is supported by the Impact Accelerator Unit (IAU). The IAU also supports engagement through web platforms such as Befree and Jigsaw-e
The Partnership Development team organises and delivers training directly to Schools and Faculties and via the annual impact festival (now part of Research at Keele month). We are a founding partner in the development of Epigeum’s online training programme. Engagement features within the core training core training of the Keele Doctoral Academy, and is available through all Doctoral Training Partnerships. Civic and social learning also features among the Keele Institute for Innovation and Teaching Excellence’s priority themes.
Working with Communities
KE Plan’s focus on inclusion and co-creation with seldom-heard communities is supported by Keele’s investment in Co-Create, and Participatory Research funding. Examples of leading projects include Zero Carbon Rugeley - a UK leading exemplar in the national energy landscape and Restorying Riverscapes
Engagement with Policy-makers
Our investment in Staffordshire Centre for Data Analytics (SCDA), founded through a partnership with Staffordshire County Council and Staffordshire Police, continues to grow opportunities for academic communities to work with policy-makers. To enable impactful projects to spring from it, the University has been growing its research base around policy-related and business analytics.
We provide funding for projects to enable policy engagement and impact, and have in place a 1-1 mentoring programme open to all staff and PGRs.
Festivals, events and open days
The Arts and Public Engagement team have led and organised Keele’s Annual Public Engagement Festival, which will be relaunched next year following a venue change. The team support Keele Hall readings, and with Comms colleagues also the COP 26 Festival and Keele Green Festival. The team deliver the Three Counties Art Show, which makes a highly valued contribution to the Cultural Regeneration of Stoke-on-Trent.
Professional Services teams support tours of the Smart Energy Demonstrator. Other vehicles for public engagement, such as the Observatory (which attracts around 900 visitors a year) and Arboretum and National Flowering Cherry Collection, are supported by Estates and philanthropic funding outreach teams.
Student engagement
The University has invested significantly in Student Knowledge Exchange. The KRISP programme has now provided over 500 opportunities for students across the institution to work with SMEs and purpose-led enterprises. Our Law School students deliver legal advice clinics for commercial and family law, and McKenzie Friend support through CLOCK.
Keele’s commitment to making societal engagement a key part of our student experience is underpinned by a Sustainability in Education strategy. Keele not only embeds sustainability in the curriculum, but also creates opportunities for practical projects with external communities, part of the basis for our recognition as Global Sustainability Institution of the Year in 2021.
The Keele Gateway
In January 2021 we relaunched the Keele Business Gateway as Keele Gateway, broadening its role as a single enquiry point for organisations and communities interested in working with the University, and providing valuable intelligence on our partners.
Location of recorded external partners April 2021
Aspect 3: Activity
Responses to the Pandemic
The first half of the review period was dominated by the need to address the demands of the pandemic. In addition to scientific and clinical research contributions at national and local levels, this included academic membership of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies SPI-B, and contributions to the evidence, diagnosis and care of Long Covid,. Keele staff volunteered at the Lighthouse Lab at Alderley Park, led an international engineering challenge to address the demands of health services, and reopened the campus for national antibody self-testing and vaccine trials.
At the local level, Keele’s contributions included:
enabling all final year medical students to graduate early to work on the front-line, and nursing students to work in the NHS during their final year;
knowledge sharing with employers on long covid;
essential advice and support for people and families in crisis;
the donation of significant stocks of PPE and essential chemicals within the region;
and co-produced research to inform future Local Resilience Forum responses to pandemic events.
As normality returned, the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences was able to resume public and patient involvement activities (PPIE). In 2021-2022, 471 meetings took place. Engagement included 61 public co-applicant meetings, 211 study advisory groups, 10 steering group meetings for studies and 34 meetings in partnership with the Research Design Service. A further 155 PPIE meetings were delivered across studies and implementation projects.
As the initial emergency responses subsided, we worked with partners to develop the Keele Deal Recovery, which was launched in February 2021.
Strategic Engagement Programmes
Three case studies linked to our strategic priorities are presented here.
Low Carbon Transitions
In February 2021 Keele worked with BEIS officials to deliver the UK Government’s first regional business facing event on net zero - Your Business Journey to Net Zero..
Keele organised a public Festival to coincide with COP26 (28 events and 22 visitor sessions, involving over 7,000 participants), Luke Jerram’s GAIA providing a dramatic backdrop to events.
The Festival included a leaders’ summit chaired by the Director of Keele’s Institute for Sustainable Futures, which proved to be a pivotal moment for the area’s net zero transition, leading directly to the creation of Staffordshire Climate Commission to develop, oversee and champion a diverse programme to achieve climate change commitments.
The Smart Energy Network Demonstrator (SEND) programme has already achieved an estimated reduction of 10,202 Mt in CO2 (based on its specified programme methodology), as well as providing a significant SME support programme. Over the last year the demonstrator has seen over 1,000 visitors, including overseas government delegations.
The Demonstrator’s public engagement and impact includes a focus on the role of hydrogen technologies. The review period saw the conclusion of campus-based Hydeploy trials, which introduced hydrogen into the domestic gas supply, and included research on public acceptability. The Research England-funded HyDex programme got underway with Keele as the lead partner, to better connect hydrogen innovation with user communities. The project period saw the successful delivery of Zero Carbon Rugeley - the co-production of a Smart Local Energy System design with local communities, based on the approach developed at Keele.
Cultural Regeneration
Keele’s convening role has also been in evidence where Keele Deal Culture has enabled the University to work more closely with cultural partners and local communities. By July 2022, this had enabled 53 cultural or creative events, engaged 276,500 people, supported 86 creative or cultural businesses, and generated £241,000 for the local economy.
Keele’s leadership role alongside other partners led to the development and agreement of the City’s Cultural Compact and establishment of Stoke Creates, the CIC co-chaired by the Director of Keele Institute for Social Inclusion, supporting collaborative research proposals with local cultural communities. These efforts have culminated in the award of a significant Arts Council England's Cultural Development Capital grant for a heritage project in which Keele and Stoke Creates are partners, adding to major partnerships with V&A Wedgwood and Ironbridge Gorge Museums Trust.
Digital Society
Over the last two years a major strategic focus for the University has been our contribution to supporting digital transitions, in wider society as well as the business sector. As well as a new Digital Society Institute and innovation centre, this has included a Town Deal-funded Digital Society Centre in the centre of Newcastle-under-Lyme, to support digital entrepreneurship, community-based engagement, student knowledge exchange and enterprise, and Staffordshire Centre for Data Analytics.
The Digital Society Centre is supported by a Shared Prosperity Fund project delivering student KE opportunities around:
Digital Society and Economy (20 projects)
Sustainability (10 projects);
SME innovation - (15 projects);
Access to Justice – up to 120 individuals supported;
Culture and Creativity 10 projects; and
Digital Entrepreneurship – supporting entrepreneurial readiness for around 30 individuals, and early stage incubation of 5-10 new businesses
soon to be the University’s
Digital Society Centre.
The University is also a partner in the development of an Institute of Technology (IoT), led by Newcastle and Stafford College, a consortium of education providers and key employers from across the Midlands.
Aspect 4: Enhancing practice
In 2021 Keele undertook a comprehensive self-evaluation in this area, as part of its commitment to the KE Concordat. This built on the discussions with stakeholders underpinning the development of the University’s KE Plan, and the institutional EDGE assessments undertaken in 2017 and 2019 (before and after institutional development work enabled by UKRI funding). As such it was firmly anchored in the delivery of the KE Plan’s objectives.
The process was owned and moderated at a senior level by Keele’s Academic Strategy Group, and forms part of our presentations on KE matters to the University’s formal governance structures.
The approach to the assessment recognised that it is an important means not just of gathering evidence, but also of fostering a healthy culture of open reflection, learning and development, building ownership of institutional improvement priorities.
The improvement aims identified included:
To extend Keele’s contributions to addressing EDI challenges;
To grow contributions to policy-making;
To increase the number of proposals for research funding with external partners;
To achieve a shift in academic attitudes to working with external partners building a broader understanding that impact is integral to high quality research; and
To build the skills of researchers at all levels to work confidently in external arenas.
The following priority actions were identified:
Priority 1: Create a researcher development framework for KE;
Priority 2: Make significant progress in promoting Equality, Diversity and Inclusion;
Priority 3: Continue to improve the coherence and communication of the Professional Services offer;
Priority 4: Develop KE dashboards;
Priority 5: Develop a toolkit for feedback from external partners;
Significant progress has been made on Priorities 2 and 3, enabled by a fundamental institutional review of support for student KE, partnership and business development, which will see enhanced capacity for P&CE. And work is well underway on Priority 1.
Aspect 5: Building on success
The Keele Deals provide a framework of accountability to partners, which takes the form of a regular informal round table to share progress, clarify priorities, and understand impacts.
All programmes and projects have mechanisms to gain feedback, which are reviewed at operational level. Where Project Executive Groups exist, this can form part of the Project Manager’s report. Local Growth Programmes are subject to independent Summative Assessments, which include qualitative feedback from partners.
Case Study: Smart Energy Network Demonstrator
The Smart Energy Network Demonstrator measures its impact by capturing the outcomes from visits. This is initiated by a follow up email that is sent directly after the event to capture comments and questions related to our activities, and advise on their activities including investments, jobs created and carbon saved.
Case Study: Community Legal Outreach
CLOCK fully established a pioneering online platform to capture all aspects of its operation – the nature and scale of demand from litigants, their insights and experience, partner involvement, judicial outcomes and data. The online platform has enabled a swift response to new issues emerging during the pandemic, and analysis relating to CLOCK’s objectives.
Case Study: Student Knowledge Exchange
An account of the learning process underpinning the development of impact evaluation framework for the OfS Knowledge Exchange project can be viewed here.
The University also recently commissioned a regional baseline public perceptions survey to gain an understanding of the wider public’s view of the University’s impact, beyond those who have had direct engagement with the University.
YouGov:August 2022
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