Institutional Context
Summary
Queen Mary University of London is recognised as the most inclusive Russell Group university and is a founding partner of the National Civic University Network, 4th in the 2020 UK University Entrepreneurial Impact Rankings and the first to receive a National Co-ordination Centre for Public Engagement platinum watermark. Our 2030 strategy aims to “Open the doors of opportunity” in partnership with our local and global communities.
With a broad research capability, 7th for quality of research outputs in REF2021, a distinctive history of community involvement captured in our Civic University Agreement and track record in innovation Queen Mary plays a critical role in the growth of East London and beyond, generating an estimated £760m GVA across the UK in 2019.
Institutional context
Queen Mary University of London is one of the largest in London and a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive universities. With its roots in four historic colleges in London Queen Mary has a long tradition of embedding research and scholarly activity in local communities dating back to the foundation of the London Hospital Medical College in 1785 and the People's Palace in 1887.
Today we have over 33,000 students and 5,400 members of staff operating from eight campuses across London and international sites including Paris, Malta, Singapore and China. Our students are drawn from over 170 nationalities, with approximately 41% from overseas. In 2021, Queen Mary was recognised as the most inclusive Russell Group university by The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide and an IFS study named us the best UK university for social mobility. Of our London undergraduate students, 90% are from state schools; 75% are BAME; 49% are first into higher education; 23% from families with assessed household income of less than £10k.
Queen Mary is a founding partner of the UK Civic University Network and our distinctive history of supporting local communities has been formalised in our Civic University Agreement. Local East London boroughs (Tower Hamlets, Newham, Hackney, Barking & Dagenham) have historically had very high levels of deprivation but exceptional potential due to population growth amongst 12-25 age population, above national average educational attainment and social/cultural richness and diversity. As an anchor institution we have played a critical role in delivering major improvements in local deprivation levels. Independent analysis in 2019 showed that Queen Mary supported an estimated £560m economic impact in London (£760m across UK) and supported 11,500 FTE jobs excluding the wider impact of skills, innovation and enterprise generation.
Our commitment to excellence in knowledge exchange is embedded in our Strategy 2030, which aims to ‘Open the doors of opportunity’ and states:
‘Entrepreneurship, innovation and engagement are an embedded part of our research culture. We will maintain our commitment to achieving impact and involving end users, patients, policy-makers and the public in the research we do.’
According to Times Higher Eduction, Queen Mary was ranked 7th for the quality of research outputs in REF2021 exercise with 92% of our research judged internationally excellent or world leading. We were the first UK university to receive the Platinum Watermark from the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement.
We have a strong track record for research commercialisation, working in partnership with businesses. Queen Mary ranked 4th amongst UK Universities in the Entrepreneurial Impact Ranking in 2019 and 2020 (Octopus Ventures) and has a growing portfolio of business-funded Innovate UK activity with a Future Innovator Award at KTP Best of the Best Awards 2020. In the last 5 years, Queen Mary Innovation Limited (QMI), QMUL’s wholly owned subsidiary, has set up 14 companies with a portfolio of over 30 companies ranging from early pre-seed entitles to organisations that are listed on AIM. QMI’s spinouts created nearly £50m of revenue during 2021/22 and £170m over a 5 year period.
For further information, please send queries to vp-res@qmul.ac.uk
Local Growth and Regeneration
Summary of approach
Queen Mary University of London is one of the largest HEIs in London and a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive Universities, operating from eight campuses located from Central to East London. Our strategic local growth and regeneration interventions are framed within our Civic University Agreement and primarily focussed on supporting communities in East London, many with high levels of deprivation.
Our growth and regeneration interventions impact major socio-economic challenges faced by our local communities, including supporting social mobility (e.g. business-led mentoring), addressing the skills needs of local businesses (e.g. Degree Apprenticeships), providing direct support for start-up SMEs (e.g. legal support, consultancy), innovation activities (e.g. technology transfer to local SMEs) and provision of infrastructure/facilities (e.g. QMB Bio-Incubator).
Aspect 1: Strategy
Queen Mary University of London is the fourth largest HEI in London with eight campuses located from Central to East London, the largest hubs of activity being in Mile End, Whitechapel and Charterhouse Square.
Queen Mary has a long and distinctive history of supporting its local communities and is a founder partner of the UK’s Civic University Network. This vision is echoed in the recent Queen Mary Strategy 2030 which was launched in 2019 and aims to “Open the doors of opportunity” with a strong commitment to supporting the growth and regeneration of our local communities.
Our knowledge exchange interventions to support local growth and regeneration are framed within our Civic University Agreement and informed by the makeup of our student body, with over half of home students from London, 15% from East London, 49% are first in their families into Higher Education and 23% from families with assessed household income of less than £10k. Our Civic University Agreement is focussed on five themes all of which impact local growth and regeneration:
Inclusive place-making
A healthy and sustainable future
Pathways for life
A cultural hub for East London
Enabling civic practice
Our strategic local growth and regeneration interventions are primarily focussed on communities in East London with historic high levels of deprivation (Tower Hamlets, Newham, Hackney, Barking & Dagenham, historically amongst the most deprived local authorities in England), but with exceptional potential due to population growth amongst the 12-25 age population and above national average educational attainment. Secondary geographic focus is wider London, with some discipline-specific activities aligned with distinct geographic ecosystems, for example alignment of Health-related KE activities with Barts Health Trust and UCL Partners areas, and Creative Industries with the Thames Estuary Production Corridor.
Queen Mary is committed to the new Whitechapel Life Sciences Quarter, a major strategic regeneration programme involving integration of the University, the NHS trust and the local community. In a small geographical area at the heart of Tower Hamlets there will be significant new laboratory space for innovative companies, a new clinical trials unit in the hospital, and a new University building housing the Precision Healthcare University Research Institute. Alongside the existing Digital Environment Research Institute, the Blizard Institute, the Queen Mary Bioenterpises Innovation Centre and the Queen Mary Enterprise Zone, this will be a formidable concentration of life sciences commercial expertise driving growth in the local economy.
Major strategic growth and regeneration interventions aim at unlocking the growth potential and aspirations of our local communities by addressing major socio-economic challenges, including social mobility (e.g. business-led mentoring), the skills needs of local businesses (e.g. Degree Apprenticeships), direct support for start-up SMEs (e.g. legal, consultancy), innovation activities (e.g. technology transfer to local SMEs) and provision of infrastructure/facilities (e.g. QMB Bio-Incubator). The University is also investing in the growth of Queen Mary Innovation Ltd, its wholly-owned technology transfer company, to increase its company formation and licensing activity and anchor a strong local innovation ecosystem.
The specific local growth and regeneration needs have been informed through close interaction with relevant governmental and non-governmental bodies to align with the relevant policy context, including:
Local London Industrial Strategy (under development) – Greater London Authority (GLA); Local Enterprise Partnership for London (LEAP)
GLA – The London Plan 2016, 2019
The Mayor of London’s Economic Development Strategy
London Borough of Tower Hamlets – Growth and Economic Development Plan 2018-23
East London Business Association
Knowledge Exchange activities that impact local growth and regeneration are categories as:
Strategic civic interventions – defined as major, discretionary, bespoke intervention backed by place-based strategic intent, responding to local need and typically developed in partnership with other local stakeholders.
Mainstream interventions – ongoing and generic activity that may impact locally but without necessary place-based strategic intent, for example academic consultancy.
In the following sections we provide exemplars from our portfolio of strategic interventions with major impact over the past three years.
Aspect 2: Activity
SOCIAL MOBILITY AND SKILLS NEEDS FOR LOCAL EMPLOYERS
Queen Mary has developed a range of interventions to address both supply-side and employer demand-side skills needs to support economic growth. Initiatives aim to address the challenges that some of our students face in obtaining the skills and networks needed to support employability. These issues particularly impact students from local communities with high levels of deprivation who may lack social capital and who disproportionately want to remain resident in East London following graduation to drive the local economy:
Degree Apprenticeships: Queen Mary were the first Russell Group University to deliver Degree Apprenticeships in 2015 to match talent to the recognised skills gaps of local employers. We provide a strong offering of programmes including Digital & Technology Solutions, Chartered Manager and Senior Professional Economist, in partnership with London-based employers including BBC, Goldman Sachs, IBM and organisations in the charitable sector. Degree apprenticeships offer a distinct approach to learning, particularly attractive to students from our local communities, with 55% of applicants from London and 20% from East London. We are expanding our Degree Apprenticeship offer through the London City Institute of Technology, which opened in a brand new £28M facility in Sept 2022.
The qMentoring programme provides employer mentoring for students from low-income backgrounds, typically from local communities. In 2022 qMentoring was a finalist for a National Undergraduate Employability Award. Our qInterns scheme provides relevant work experience for interns and supports businesses through the rich stream of talent within our student body, supplying creative ideas and labour for businesses. qIncubator is an initiative for QM students and recent graduates who have a business idea and are new to entrepreneurship. The main objective is for the participant to be equipped with entrepreneurial skills, knowledge and confidence to launch a new business.
INFRASTRUCTURE AND FACILITIES TO SUPPORT LIFE SCIENCE INNOVATION
Queen Mary Bioenterprises Innovation Centre (QMB): Established in 2010 in Whitechapel with £17M investment from Queen Mary and £7M from the GLA, QMB is currently the largest purpose built bio-incubation space in London providing 3600m2 of premium R&D space for early and late stage Life Sciences start-ups. Over the past seven years QMB has been operating at full capacity with tenants including hVIVO, AstraZeneca and AviadoBio. QMB also provides high quality meeting space and access to innovation and technology transfer support provided by Queen Mary Innovation Ltd.
To support further unmet need for additional bio-incubation space (Mayor of London’s Economic Development Strategy) we have established the Queen Mary University Enterprise Zone (QME) in 2019 with £1.5M funding from Research England and matching funding from Queen Mary. QME offers flexible, modern workspace for start-ups, with particular focus on Digital Health, MedTech and AI. Training to support the growth of innovative start-ups is also provided as part of the QME offer to local businesses.
Cadiovascular Device and Therapeutic Innovation Centre (CVDHub): Established in 2018 and funded by a £2.9M grant from European Regional Development Framework (ERDF) programme, with matching external funding from Barts Charity and Wolfson Foundation, the CVDHub engages SMEs to develop cardiovascular devices and associated innovations. The CVDHub provides a one-stop hub, supporting the £30M Barts Heart Centre clinical research facility. The hub acts as a physical gateway and broker of specialist research and innovation support to London’s SMEs and businesses with R&D and innovation expertise provided by Queen Mary and UCL.
DIRECT SUPPORT TO LOCAL BUSINESSES
In order to expand our knowledge exchange initiatives, we have recently established the £1.6M SKETCH programme (Student Knowledge Exchange Through Community Hubs) - a new, student-driven, multi-disciplinary professional services organisation. SKETCH is funded by the Office for Students (£650k), Queen Mary (£243k) and co-investment from partner organisations (£792k). Building on our qLegal, qNomics and qConsult programmes SKETCH provides pro bono, social impact-driven consultancy and venture capital services to East London’s start-up and Third Sector community. The SKETCH programme is delivered by six distinct pillars of activity:
qLegal is an award-winning service providing free legal advice and resources to start-ups, SMEs and entrepreneurs. qLegal won the ‘Best Contribution by a Law School’ award in the LawWorks & Attorney General’s Student Pro Bono Awards 2019.
QM Legal Advice Centre (QMLAC) provides free legal advice to members of the public and local East London community, as well as Queen Mary staff and students.
The Student Consultancy Project (SCP, formerly qConsult), places interdisciplinary groups of Queen Mary students into mini consultancy projects with businesses and charities. qConsult won the Employability Initiative category at The Guardian University Awards 2016 and the SCP was voted Best Student Programme at the Ernst & Young Global Career Services Summit Awards 2022.
qNomics offer free business and financial advice for start-ups, SMEs and entrepreneurs through the services of student advisors and interdisciplinary projects.
SBM Social Enterprise: a recently established initiative, SBM Social Enterprise delivers interdisciplinary social impact projects within the School of Business and Management and includes the award-winning QM Social Venture Fund.
qTech is the first initiative established within the Faculty of Science & Engineering and offers free technical and digital advice to local start-ups, SMEs and non-profit organisations.
TARGETED SUPPORT DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC
A range of support interventions to support the local economy were implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic, including NETWORK (Queen Mary’s Centre for the Creative and Cultural Economy) providing HEIF-funded vouchers for collaborative projects with local businesses to mitigate the significant adverse impact on the creative industries. As part of our Arts & Culture Strategy we have instigated online sessions, in partnership with London Mayor’s Office, Equity and Musicians Union, to share information on support being offered to help the sector survive the pandemic.
Queen Mary also hosted Tower Hamlets first vaccination centre, increased testing capacity through the Testing Alliance, donated PPE equipment and encouraged and enabled staff and students to volunteer in their local communities through mutual aid initiatives, local authority opportunities and supporting community groups.
Aspect 3: Results
As an anchor institution In East London Queen Mary has played a critical role in delivering growth and regeneration, positively impacting the local economy and supporting major improvements in deprivation levels. Independent analysis in 2019 showed that Queen Mary supported an estimated £560m economic impact in London, £760m across the UK, and supported 11,500 FTE jobs excluding the wider impact of skills, innovation and enterprise generation. Specific examples of the impact of our Knowledge Exchange interventions are outlined below.
SOCIAL MOBILITY AND SKILLS NEEDS FOR LOCAL EMPLOYERS
We currently have over 530 students studying on degree apprenticeship programmes including Digital & Technology Solutions Digital & Technology Solutions, Chartered Manager and Senior Professional Economist involving 69 employers (including Goldman Sachs, PWC, British Airways, BBC, Bart’s Health Trust, Siemens and various Government Departments), with 55% of applicants from London and 20% from East London. Student outcomes are exceptional, with 95% continuation rate (compared to 88% for the equivalent traditional degrees) and 86% of students graduating between 2019 and 2022 attaining a First Class degree.
To support major growth in our degree apprenticeship provision Queen Mary has recently opened the London City Institute of Technology (LCIoT) in partnership with Newham College and employers, including CBRE, Port of London Authority and Siemens. The LCIoT provides over 3,000m2 of state-of-the art new facility to meet employer skills needs in transport engineering, digital and data science with £28M from the Department for Education and GLA. The LCIoT opened in Sept 2022 and in its first year supports over 250 learners, with numbers planned to rise to over 1000 by 2025.
The qMentoring programme currently supports 120 students who receive a mentor, with mentors from a wide range of employers including Deloitte, the Civil Service and NASA. In 2019 we launched a new strand of qMentoring, prioritising female muslim students following analysis of graduate destination data which revealed that this student cohort underperforms in the job market six months after graduation. The qIntern programme has supported 329 internships involving 100 businesses over the past 3 years.
INFRASTRUCTURE AND FACILITIES TO SUPPORT LIFE SCIENCE INNOVATION
Over the past 3 years QMB has secured approx. 450 full time high skill jobs in Whitechapel as the incubator is in a mature operational phase and fully occupied. QMB has 9 businesses occupying space as tenants and has supported a total of 195 businesses through its extended operations. QMB has recently expanded its available space for incubation tenants as part of the £3M QME University Enterprise Zone initiative, which has allowed the creation of additional wet-lab space within QMB. New space has been leased to a multinational genomics sequencing company creating further employment and establishing Whitechapel as a highly competitive location for NHS sequencing contract work. QME opened in March 2021, providing 550m2 of additional incubation space via private offices and hot desks, and supports digital health and med-tech start-ups via training/mentoring support and access to pump priming funding. In just under 2 years, we have reached 90% occupancy across the private office space and 50% occupancy across the hotdesk space. Queen Mary graduates have been recruited by QMB tenants.
The CVDHub has created a directory of over 200 SMEs out of which nearly 125 received bespoke CVDHub support between 2019 and 2022. In addition to engaging with SMEs, the CVDHub also promotes and supports local academics/engineers in developing collaborative projects with clinicians to bring new technologies to the clinic. In total, 81 funding applications have been submitted with the support of the CVDhub and over £7.5m raised through these applications over the last 3 years.
DIRECT SUPPORT TO LOCAL BUSINESSES
Over the last 3 years, the SKETCH programme has increased and diversified the type of support it provides to businesses and society. As well as legal, financial and consultancy support, we now offer digital and technical support, social impact projects and a student-led investment fund for early-stage social start-ups.
The six SKETCH initiatives have collectively engaged with over 3500 students during this period. They have delivered a range of outputs (e.g. tailored advice letters, workshops, consultancy reports) to 1600 external partners, with roughly 50% of these partners being within the local East London community. The variety in the types of external partner should also be highlighted. For example, the programme supports a large number of organisations within the private sector such as start-ups, SMEs, and larger corporations. The Social Venture Fund has awarded a £15,000 investment to 4 female-led social start-ups since 2020, one of the most underfunded groups in the social venture capital sector.
The programme also provides extensive support to the public and third sectors, and individuals, with a particular focus on the local community in East London. For example, students supported the Tower Hamlet’s Council for Volunteer Service in developing a strategy for demonstrating their social impact. The SBM Social Enterprise pillar runs Project ReMAKE, matching students and entrepreneur mentors with formerly incarcerated people, to prepare them to re-enter employment. QM Legal Advice Centre and qLegal provided a legal review to the Nightline Association, who said “The service provided… was outstanding. Through their recommendations, we have been able to develop more robust, extensive and detailed guidance to Nightline’s throughout the UK on ensuring good practice” [Harry Cloke, Quality Assurance Lead, Nightline].
Further examples of impacts from our SKETCH Programmes are available here.
Public & Community Engagement
Summary of approach
Queen Mary is the sector leader in public engagement, as evidenced by the award of the first NCCPE Platinum Engage Watermark in 2021.
Building on the ethos of the People’s Palace and our other founding institutions, we are committed to engaging and collaborating with communities in East London and across the globe through our research, teaching and other core business.
Dedicated Vice-Principal and Deputy Vice-Principal roles provide senior leadership for engagement, championing and embedding a culture of engagement and social impact across the University.
Since 2012, our Centre for Public Engagement has enabled staff and students in all faculties and directorates to integrate high quality public and community engagement into their work, benefitting them and the world around us.
Aspect 1: Strategy
At Queen Mary University of London, our approach to public engagement is based on strong community links and a desire to be an engaged university and a good neighbour, building on the ethos of the People’s Palace – an important part of our history. This commitment underpins Strategy 2030 with its mission to “...generate new knowledge, challenge existing knowledge, and engage locally, nationally and internationally to create a better world.”
The excellence of public engagement at Queen Mary was recognised by the award of the Platinum Engage Watermark for Public Engagement by the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement in 2021, the first award made at this level. For Professor Paul Manners, Co-Director of the NCCPE, “The review demonstrated very strong support for engagement in all parts of the Institution. Engagement is woven into Queen Mary’s 2030 Strategy and is very much part of the core business of the institution. For many staff it was impossible to imagine the University without its public engagement work.”
Strategic investment in infrastructure to support high-quality public and community engagement includes the launch of BLOC, a new Film and Drama Arts Research Facility, providing a £1.4M state-of-the-art space to engage public audiences with our research, and the £438K refurbishment of Centre of the Cell’s STEMPod to deliver curriculum-linked science shows and workshops.
Building on our long tradition of work with local communities and partners, Queen Mary’s Civic University Agreement (CUA), launched in 2022, formalises our commitment to maximising our place-based impact in East London. Its five priority themes are a result of a two-year collaborative process with internal and external stakeholders. Over 300 people who live, work or study in East London – residents, third sector organisations, businesses and Queen Mary staff and students – contributed to consultations, co-analysis workshops and collaborative prioritisation to develop the CUA.
Public engagement is given strategic oversight and leadership at the most senior level by the Vice Principal for Policy and Strategic Partnerships, a member of Queen Mary’s Senior Executive Team (SET) who reports to Queen Mary’s Council and Senate, champions engagement across the University, ensures resource allocation during institutional planning and supports strategic funding bids. Since January 2022, funding for a new Deputy Vice Principal for Impact (Culture, Civic & Community) demonstrates Queen Mary’s strong and strategic commitment to public, community and civic engagement. Our Public Engagement Leadership Forum provides shared accountability among colleagues with regular updates on progress to those leading engagement projects across the University.
Members of the public and representatives from community groups provide oversight of our public, community and civic engagement at Queen Mary through:
Membership of our Civic Advisory Board, co-chaired with external partners, and through our Civic Champions Network due to be launched in 2023.
Acting as expert panel members on our internal funding schemes for public and community engagement and patient involvement, ensuring that projects are mutually beneficial.
Contributing to our Steering Group for the annual Festival of Communities, shaping the Festival’s content and ethos.
Queen Mary’s engagement strategy is enabled across the University by the Centre for Public Engagement (CPE), a dedicated team in the Office of the Principal with four full-time permanent staff and an annual operational budget of £230,000. Established in 2012, the CPE creates an environment where Queen Mary’s research, teaching and core business can be shaped, shared and conducted with the public as partners. The CPE provides advice and support, reward and recognition, and funding opportunities for all staff and students to engage with people beyond the University. The CPE also acts as a critical point of contact between community organisations and the University, facilitating new relationships and partnerships to improve the quality and impact of Queen Mary’s work.
As part of the Watermark process, we developed a new Public Engagement Action Plan which identifies five key principles that underpin the work of the CPE:
Aspect 2: Support
Staff at Queen Mary’s Centre for Public Engagement (CPE) work to embed a culture of high quality, impactful public and community engagement across the University. The CPE removes barriers to engagement by providing advice and support, training, funding, and reward and recognition pathways for staff and students.
Support includes:
Public engagement funding schemes (up to £81,000 per year) via monthly Small Grants and annual Large Grants to support new and existing public, community and patient engagement projects in the UK and internationally.
Fortnightly advice surgeries for staff and students to access expert CPE support to develop engagement projects and funding applications. During 2021/22, 73 groups attended these surgeries.
Training sessions in public engagement and related skills as part of regular staff development courses. 300 staff and students attended these training sessions in 2021/2022. The CPE also hosts regular peer learning seminars for sharing engagement practice.
Public and Patient Involvement support in partnership with colleagues in the Research Design Service (RDS) and the Barts Health Engagement and Diffusion team. Monthly funding and training supports patient involvement activities.
Funding, training and 1:1 support for staff, students and community organisations to participate in Queen Mary’s annual Festival of Communities.
Facilitating opportunities by connecting staff and students to external opportunities for public engagement across London, the UK and internationally. This includes funding and support to participate in Being Human, The UK’s national festival of the humanities.
At Queen Mary we know that staff and students are integral to our success. The following mechanisms recognise and celebrate their contributions towards public and community engagement:
Public and Community Engagement is a core part of our Academic Careers Framework and academic promotions criteria.
The Public Engagement Awards and Impact categories in the Queen Mary Research Excellence Awards celebrate achievements in public and community engagement.
Engagement projects are celebrated nationally and internationally through nominations to external award categories. Most recently our Legal Advice Centre was awarded the MacJannet Prize for Global Citizenship.
We build and maintain community relationships through our Community Engagement Manager and Civic Engagement Lead who work with a diverse range of community groups, organisations and charities across East London. They connect external groups with our research and teaching, bringing together a wealth of knowledge and expertise to address challenges and opportunities. Our East London Research Network enables staff to share best practice and new connections, helping us to achieve our civic ambitions.
Aspect 3: Activity
Public and community engagement at Queen Mary is embedded across our research, teaching and other core business. We engage with communities and partners wherever our work can have local, national and international impact. We embed principles of equality, diversity and inclusion in our funding, training and support for projects and other engagement activities. Our public and community engagement is shaped by purpose and designed with two-way, mutually beneficial principles throughout.
Engagement activities are delivered across Queen Mary at all levels and include:
University:
The annual two-day Festival of Communities explores living and learning together in Tower Hamlets. In collaboration with local organisations, it provides an opportunity for Queen Mary staff and students, community groups and residents to share ideas, experiences, and local opportunities and celebrate the best of our borough. Visitor numbers increased from c.3500 (2019) to >8000 (2022). 155 activities were delivered by Queen Mary staff and students and 33 community organisations in 2022.
Our work with Citizens UK includes embedding practical experience of community organising into undergraduate teaching. Students engage with community organisers and organisations to contribute to campaigns and understand civil society and activism from the inside out. This builds on our work with Citizens UK for >20 years, including on the evidence underpinning the Living Wage Campaign.
The COVID-19 pandemic saw us responding to immediate local needs by offering free hot meals to local families during school holidays, donating PPE equipment to a local hospice and the NHS, and hosting Tower Hamlets’ first vaccination centre.
Faculty / School / Institute:
People’s Palace Projects (PPP) investigates the power of creativity and collaborates with marginalised communities to make change. With a growing global network of partners – reaching >320,000 people in 16 countries since 1997 – PPP advocates for equality, climate justice and better health through the arts.
Centre of the Cell is the first science education centre in the world to be located within working biomedical research laboratories. It has engaged with >230,000 visitors since 2009 including, in 2021-22, through 406 curriculum-linked science shows and workshops for >13,000 young people.
Genes & Health is one of the world’s largest community-based genetics studies, aiming to improve health among people of Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage by analysing the genes and health of 100,000 local people. Community engagement and public and patient involvement activities ensure communities are involved throughout the research process.
The Queen Mary Legal Advice Centre has provided legal advice for >4500 people from 450 student volunteers since 2006. Students have won >£750K of disability benefits for vulnerable clients since 2019. The Centre has engaged with 8400 primary and secondary school students since 2015, including >1000 in 2021-22.
Children’s Health in London and Luton investigates the effects of reducing air pollution from traffic on children’s health. Over 3,300 primary school pupils in London and Luton are taking part over four years to investigate the impact of reducing air pollution on children’s lung growth, respiratory symptoms, activity levels and brain function.
Research centre / laboratory
Stay Home Stories is based at the Centre for Studies of Home, a partnership between Queen Mary and the Museum of the Home, which has deepened public and academic understandings of home since 2011. The project works with children and adults in London and Liverpool from different faith, cultural and migration backgrounds to understand diverse experiences of home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Turtle Project is a citizen science project created by Queen Mary's Eizaguirre Lab in collaboration with conservation NGOs from every island of the Cabo Verde archipelago, University of Cabo Verde and National Institute of the Sea. Involving local university students, communities and authorities, the project develops conservation strategies to improve the state of the sea turtle population. Since 2008, information from >5,000 loggerhead turtles is available in a database for other research and conservation groups.
Aspect 4: Enhancing practice
Queen Mary launched the Public Engagement Evaluation Toolkit in 2018 – a resource developed in partnership with Fast Track Impact, the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement and Dialogue Matters.
The toolkit provides a suite of tools to plan and integrate evaluation and monitoring into a public engagement activity – for example, ensuring evaluation fits the scope and scale of the project, and advising on methods in keeping with the activity itself. This toolkit provides a high-quality starting point to embed evaluation within public engagement projects at Queen Mary. It is available online and has been widely shared with the public engagement sector at national conferences and used by staff at other UK universities.
Training is available for staff and students on public engagement evaluation and impact, and equips attendees with the necessary skills and expertise to design and conduct project evaluations.
Individuals leading public engagement projects are supported by CPE and the Impact team to develop their own bespoke evaluation plans, and all projects funded by CPE Grant Schemes at Queen Mary are required to submit details when applying for funding. The CPE provides advice and training on evaluation for all projects. Project leads are invited to reflect on and share their learning through the CPE’s website, a central repository for engagement stories across the institution. Examples include:
A project exploring 1970s anti-racist activism in the East End.
A project connecting secondary school students with wildlife conservation NGOs around the world.
Our Engaged Topics Network provides a space for Queen Mary staff and students to reflect on their own engagement practice and to share their learning with colleagues from across the University. Termly meetings are arranged around specific themes suggested by the Network, and are reviewed on the Public Engagement Blog.
Evaluation of university-wide activities such as the Festival of Communities is carried out by the CPE. Feedback and data are collected from exhibitors and visitors via a trained PhD student evaluation team which is used to inform organisational, marketing and content decisions for future years.
To further improve Queen Mary’s approach to engagement evaluation, we plan to assess the impact of long-term engagement projects and share results of engagement projects more widely.
Aspect 5: Building on success
We have externally evaluated our support for public engagement through the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement’s Engage Watermark process, which assesses a university’s strategic support for public engagement and commitment to improving the support offered. The Watermark assessment requires a detailed self-assessment, staff survey, focus groups and one-to-one interviews to build a picture of the support available and identify areas for improvement. We were proud to be the first university to receive the first Platinum Watermark for Public Engagement in December 2021.
The conclusion of this process saw the launch of our Public Engagement Action Plan which incorporated feedback from the Watermark assessment alongside recommendations from >40 internal and external stakeholders. This data was combined to create a single document outlining our ambitions for public engagement at Queen Mary, and how we are seeking to achieve them.
Key actions as a result include:
Establishing a new senior academic leadership role with responsibility for public engagement. The first Deputy Vice Principal for Impact (Culture, Civic & Community) was appointed in January 2022 and works closely with the CPE, Civic, Impact and Arts & Culture teams.
Launching Queen Mary’s first Civic University Agreement to formalise our deep-rooted commitment to our local communities and partners.
Recruiting external community and patient experts to review our public engagement grants.
Launching the Public Engagement Leadership Forum, a community of academic and professional services staff to provide shared accountability for public engagement across Queen Mary.
Launching CPE on Tour, an initiative for staff to book a member of the CPE to present at staff meetings or events.
Queen Mary’s engagement work is led by the Vice Principal for Policy and Strategic Partnerships, a member of the University’s Senior Executive Team who reports to Council and Senate, and the Deputy Vice Principal for Impact (Culture, Civic & Community). Public, community and civic engagement activity across the University is reported in our financial statements and features prominently in case studies on our webpages.
Progress on our Civic University Agreement is monitored by our Civic Advisory Board (internal and external members and co-chairs) and our Civic Working Group (internal academic and professional services staff). A key priority in 2023 is the launch of a Civic Champions Network bringing together local stakeholders, staff and students on the CUA’s priority themes.
Queen Mary also participates in wider networks and partnerships to share good practice across the sector, including as founding co-partner of the Civic University Network and partner on the National Civic Impact Accelerator (with the advisory board chaired by our Vice Principal for Policy and Strategic Partnerships) and the Tower Hamlets Council-led NIHR Health Determinants Research Collaboration. Queen Mary welcomes visits from international delegations seeking to learn more about public and community engagement, including most recently from the Netherlands and Singapore.
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