Institutional Context
Summary
The University of Bristol’s mission is to ‘make a positive impact locally and globally by addressing society’s greatest challenges, through our distinctive education, innovative research, and the value we place on excellence, inclusivity, and partnership’.
As a research-intensive institution in one of Europe’s most creative and vibrant cities, we encourage and nurture strong partnerships that underpin both teaching and research and enable wide-ranging societal and economic impact at scale.
We are focussed on where we, in partnership, can make the biggest difference to global problems, to concentrate our efforts [on] three major issues: equitable and sustainable health outcomes, net zero and climate change; and the creative and cultural industries – with underpinning themes of data and digitalization and social justice.
Institutional context
Our University’s strategic ambition is to increase the scale of high-quality, high-impact research to address local, national and global challenges, through ambitious new investments and partnerships, and by nurturing supportive and inclusive research cultures to attract, develop and retain a diverse and collegial community of excellent researchers. Our vision is to be firmly established among the world’s top 50 great research-intensive universities, and the top 10 in the UK (University Strategy 2030).
Knowledge Exchange (KE) is explicit in our ‘Research, Enterprise and Innovation’ sub strategy “Research and development with focus”: Support and build on the University’s disciplinary and interdisciplinary excellence in tackling global challenges relating to equitable and sustainable health outcomes, net zero and climate change, and the creative and cultural industries – with underpinning themes of data and digitalization, and social justice. In doing so, we will embed our commitment to sustainability, knowledge exchange and collaboration with communities and partners.
Our Knowledge Exchange (“KE”) ambition is to accelerate our growing commercialisation, spin-out and scale-up activities, and to expand our research and innovation partnerships with universities, industries, businesses, government agencies and other innovation assets within the Bristol city-region, including Temple Quarter, the new Western Gateway, and beyond.
The University is already key to a rapidly developing innovation ecosystem within Bristol, where we were ranked 5th in the UK for spinout formation [Beauhurst, 2021], 3rd for investment into spinouts, and 1st for return on investment.
KE is also recognised as a key pillar in our Academic Promotions Framework, which values contributions across three broad areas: co-producing, translating and applying knowledge; linking the University with society; and exchanging knowledge with the broader community.
Our holistic KE approach involves local academic champions for business, public sector and community engagement, training and mentoring for all career stages, and dedicated expertise for finding and supporting partners. Our support for KE has both central and Faculty-level components, working together to offer integrated services for research and KE. Faculties have liaison and public outreach units supporting business, public sector and community engagement. The central Research, Enterprise and Innovation Division has dedicated teams for areas of KE including Impact Development, Policy Engagement, Public Engagement, Partnerships and Commercialisation.
In 2022, the University launched Bristol Innovations. The vision is for Bristol Innovations to become the heart of a vibrant, innovation ecosystem, that will enable industry to address its R&D needs, whilst stimulating the commercialisation of the cutting-edge research for which the University of Bristol is already renowned. The aims include brand development, the establishment of innovation entities, and growing research commercialisation. The entrepreneurial potential of the University has increased, as has our local growth and regeneration income.
Bristol further combines disciplinary excellence in our Schools with our cross-disciplinary Research Institutes. This research base and the cross-institutional KE support together develop and deliver strategic visions addressing society’s biggest questions. Their high level of external engagement with all sectors of society delivers a sustainable and translational research agenda with significant societal impact.
For further information, please send queries to pa-red@bristol.ac.uk
Local Growth and Regeneration
Summary of approach
Our Strategic Approach and Goals:
“Increase the scale of high-quality, high-impact research to address local, national and global challenges through ambitious new investments and partnerships…”.
“Accelerating and supporting enterprise by establishing our new Bristol Innovations platform to boost the translation of ideas to market, through spin outs and fostering partnerships with industry…and embed foreign direct investment…”.
Our geography: Bristol, West of England (Combined Authority, WECA) and Western Gateway (WG), including Swindon, Cheltenham, Southeast Wales and WECA.
How needs of the local area(s) are identified: meeting Bristol City Council, WECA and the WG.
Targeted activities to meet needs and the outcomes: industrial and collaborative R&D, consultancy, licencing, spin outs, and incubation, resulting in inward investment, jobs and GVA.
Aspect 1: Strategy
Our approach is emphasised through our Strategic Goals:
“Increase the scale of high-quality, high-impact research to address local, national and global challenges through ambitious new investments and partnerships…”.
“Accelerating and supporting enterprise by establishing our new Bristol Innovations platform to boost the translation of ideas to market, through spin outs and fostering partnerships with industry…and embed foreign direct investment…”.
Our desire is to improve society and the economy through knowledge exchange, building on excellent research. This encompasses a wide range of work, from developing new medicines to shaping more equitable socio-digital futures.
Our civil role has recently been embedded more deeply in our institutional strategy, via a new third pillar: ‘The Transformative Power of the Global Civic University’, where our partnership with Bristol City Council is essential. Two meetings of University Court (a body which encompasses many of our local partners) were dedicated to co-produce our University strategy, then to agree on implementation priorities.
Our strategically important geographical area(s):
The University of Bristol (UoB), has three ‘local’ geographies, the city of Bristol (the area covered by Bristol City Council (BCC), with whom we are extensively engaged) as well as the wider region, most directly the West of England Combined Authority (WECA) but also the emerging Western Gateway (WG), stretching from Swindon, to Cheltenham, across Southeast Wales and WECA.
Although not entirely geographically aligned, there are also two university partnerships that have existed for 20 years (the SETsquared Partnership) and 10 years (the GW4 Alliance), which enable organised interfaces between industry and multiple universities.
Other successful approaches to local include, collaborating with other regions, e.g., West Midlands and Gateshead, as well as devolved nations such as Wales. One example initiative is the UK Telecoms Innovation Network (UKTIN) which was established in 2022 with a £10M grant funded by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DMCS) to drive the 5G Supply Chain Diversification Strategy and will provide support for supply chain diversification in UK telecoms. It is delivered by a consortium of four partners: Digital Catapult, CW (Cambridge Wireless), University of Bristol and WM5G (in the West Midlands), who draw on their distinct strengths in a collaborative manner.
How needs of the local area(s) are identified: meeting local government, businesses and the public.
We clarify local growth and regeneration needs through engagement with these partners including:
Our engagement with our Combined Authority (WECA), co-developing the Local Industrial Strategy.
The SETsquared Partnership and the GW4 Alliance have lead roles that engage with our own University representatives.
Strong ‘key account’ partnerships with local industry, like Airbus, to understand local needs and convert them to Value Propositions.
Relationships with Business West and their business leaders’ ‘Initiative’ to shape the way our region is managed and developed.
Resulting in inward investment, jobs and GVA.
In this regard, the activities that create jobs and GVA include our National Composite Centre, MyWorld, Bristol Digital Futures Institute (BDFI), Engine Shed, SETsquared Bristol and the Quantum Technology Innovation Centre (QTIC+).
Where these activities spill over into industry income for the University, they are highly strategic, such as the National Composite Centre, MyWorld and BDFI.
Aspect 2: Activity
Our targeted activities to meet needs and the outcomes:
Our vision is to expand our involvement in Local economy and regeneration through our Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus (TQEC). The first phase of TQ opening was the launch of the research hub (MyWorld and BDFI facilities). The Dental School will move nearby to create new oral hygiene courses and promote access to free dental treatment. CM1 is currently expected to open in 2026, home to 4,600 students and 650 university staff, business, and community partners. TQEC will create a hub of ideas, research, innovation, and co-creation. Over ten-years TQEC will generate an estimated net additional gross value added for the West of England of £626M. It has served as a catalyst for a further potential £2 billion planned development (over the next 10 years), and the Temple Quarter Regeneration Area led by Bristol City Council and partners has the ambition to create 22,000 jobs and 10,000 homes.
Industrial and collaborative R&D:
The University brokers, builds and delivers 100s of collaborative R&D projects every year, approximately 75% with regional organisations.
A few notable examples of projects and their activities are below:
In 2021, ‘MyWorld’ is a £30M, 5-year, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Strength in Places project, designed to support local creative and digital enterprises. The programme is to build R&D facilities and provide grant funding, to stimulate interactions between local, national and global tech giants, including Netflix, Google, and Microsoft.
In 2020, UoB delivered extensive engagement to secure 27 business and civil partners to provide £72M of partner investment to leverage £29M of capital from the UK Research Partnership Investment Fund (UK RPIF) for the Bristol Digital Futures Institute (BDFI). UoB is investing around £80M in staff and infrastructure, which make this project our largest Local economic development intervention. The institute pioneers transformative approaches to digital innovation, developing systematic understanding of sociotechnical futures to drive the creation of digital technologies for inclusive, prosperous and sustainable societies.
At a much smaller scale, we deploy >£3m each year on early-stage impact acceleration, funding >100 different projects with collaborators in the business, public and NGO sectors.
The launch of the Bristol Innovations initiative in 21/22 will significantly expand our innovation and entrepreneurial potential and increase local growth and UoB income from it. The West of England Combined Authority (WECA) is represented in Bristol Innovations’ Board to help align strategies on local growth and regeneration. In 2020/21 collaborative research income rose from £36.7m to £43.8m, an increase of 19%. Our position also improved for industry income. The launch of Bristol Innovations is aimed to be a catalyst for securing more industry income through Innovation Special Purpose Vehicles (ISPVs). Bristol Innovations is providing an agile framework for a set of services, through which we can respond and adapt to opportunities with greater speed and efficiency. In doing so, we are better positioned to attract and engage with a diverse network of investors, funders and partners. It will focus on three priorities:
Understand partner needs and where possible aggregate business demand for new products and services.
Explore, assess and execute large scale opportunities requiring commercial Special Purpose Vehicles.
Join up and expand the enterprise and innovation portfolio.
UoB has been offering dedicated support for local engineering businesses (large and small) through our subsidiary, the National Composites Centre (NCC), part of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult; initial investment (£25M) came from the European Regional Development Fund, the South West Regional Development Agency and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. NCC (opened in 2011) is a world-leading research and development facility, where innovators come to make things lighter, stronger, smarter and more sustainable. With access to ‘beyond’ state-of-the-art technology and the best composites engineering capabilities in the world, NCC helps its customers solve the most complex engineering problems, in turn supporting investment in the region.
In 2019 the Digital Engineering Technology & Innovation initiative brought together advanced engineering companies, digital technology pioneers and universities to push the boundaries of digital engineering. The consortium, including the NCC and UoB, is supported by £8.2M from WECA and businesses.
Consultancy – a new consultancy service was launched in 2022 following market research through 2021. A small team provide commercial and pricing advice to academics, tailored to individual customers and sectors. We are helping academics value their expertise and time, build new partnerships and increase income.
Commercialisation - Sugar dots to supercharge photosynthesis, a quantum camera and a genuinely ground-breaking probiotic are among the Bristol innovations that have attracted over £74 million in investment in 2022. Bristol’s strengths in Intellectual Property management and commercialisation have placed us 6th in the UK for spinout formation, 3rd for investment into spinouts (Beauhurst), and 1st for return on investment (GovGrant). Highlights of early-stage investments in 2022 include:
QLM raising £12M to develop a new type of LiDAR (laser imaging, detection, and ranging) camera based on quantum technology that can see and quantify greenhouse gas emissions.
Ceryx Medical developing bioelectronic technology that can mimic nerve centres to control a range of autonomic or rhythmical processes in the human body.
Zentraxa receiving £320k for commercial development of medical adhesives for skin bonding and wound care.
Glaia securing £1 million to develop its carbon-based ‘sugar dots’, which increases crop yields and reduces emissions from crops by 30% when applied to the plants.
FluoretiQ receiving £1.1 M for its pioneering NANOPLEX, a 15-minute proprietary diagnostic platform for bacterial infections.
Research England, under their University Enterprise Zone programme, awarded £1.5M in September 2019 – matched by £500k from UoB – to partner with life science incubator Unit DX (now Science Creates) to triple their floor space and expand services to early stage life science/deep-tech companies. Several of the companies above are based there.
Our University incubation activities are focused through our Engine Shed (ES), SETsquared Bristol and QTIC+:
SETsquared Bristol supported over 80 high-tech start-ups and scale-ups each year via the SETsquared hands-on business acceleration programme, including mentoring and investor events. The 500+ corporates that interact with SETsquared have provided investment alongside angel investors and venture capital firms. Through bespoke training initiatives such as their Enterprising Women programme in partnership with NatWest and the Breakthrough Bursary in partnership with local community partners, SETsquared Bristol aims to be an inclusive incubator provide a more diverse range of individuals access to the training and support initiatives needed to create their own tech business. As of today, there is a woman founder or leader in 42% of our companies (compared to 10% nationally) and a founder/leader from a minority ethnic background within 24% (compared to 9% nationally) of our companies. More importantly, 45% of the investment raised by SETsquared companies in 2022 went into women-led tech businesses compared to a national average of 5%.
Building on University research, the Quantum Technology Innovation Centre (QTIC+) provides specialist facilities and expertise for businesses to address key market failures and to develop technologies for next-generation quantum and deep-tech enhanced products. development and commercialisation of quantum and emergent technologies. It has 8 resident companies now employing 42 people in high value jobs.
Student placements
In response to the needs of SMEs and other local organisations, UoB has run numerous student-placement schemes, including placing PhDs (and Engineering Doctorates) into companies to allow them to benefit from new talent and innovation supported by an academic tutor. As a member of the SETsquared Scale-up Programme, the University has facilitated 11 projects between local scale-up SMEs and its academics during the period, generating £540k income for the University and enabling new capabilities and products for the SMEs.
Aspect 3: Results
The result of these (and other) strategically driven activities is a University that is an integral part of the local innovation ecosystem and economy: from partnerships with local companies enabling them to compete internationally to commercialisation and spinout formation. Results are communicated online via University and social media channels, a range of targeted Newsletters as well as by extensive in-person (and latterly more virtual) two-way and multi-party engagement with our partners; thereby activities and results continue to drive further partnerships, innovation and engagements. Below are results in selected key areas.
| Activity | Outcomes | Impact |
|---|---|---|
| Engine Shed/ SETsquared Bristol | Since 2019, SETsquared Bristol has supported 173 companies who have: £170m combined revenue. £307m total investment raised. 1000 new jobs. |
New jobs per annum >200 World and European International awards Wider SETsquared partnership:
|
| Quantum Technology Innovation Centre | 28 new companies (including KETS, QLM, Nu Quantum, SeeQC); 339 new jobs; £81.4M equity, contract and grant funding. | Importance of quantum technology recognised in LIS. Highly skilled jobs created for the UK: 1/3 of UK’s funded quantum start-ups originated in Bristol. = “22x” ROI. |
| Research commercialisation | During the period August 2019 to July 2022, 17 new spin-off companies created. | At end of July 2022, the number of active Bristol spin-off companies was 73. Collectively those companies employ >1,000 people and in the last 3 years attracted over £1.1 billion of external investment. Spin-offs have impacted diverse fields from domestic violence intervention to hygienic touchless interfaces critical in the COVID-19 pandemic. |
| National Composites Centre (NCC) | The Technology Pull Through Programme sponsored projects to increase technology readiness levels totalling £1.4M (UoB projects =£990K). |  |
| UoB Partnerships | Contract and collaborative research income has continued to grow, from £80M (18/19) to £96M (21/22) (HEBCIS). Key partnerships currently account managed by the Partnerships team have generated £23.5M in income. Success in Innovate UK funding: since 2006/7 UoB is third in the UK (£109M) (this includes funding to the NCC). |
The first figure represents collaborative research and consultancy income for the whole institution over the period. These benefit the partners and, in many cases, the local economy. The second figure represents collaborative research with, and other income from 12 key partnerships account managed by an internal Partnerships team. During the period, the team started to account manage 14 current and potential key partnerships. Working in this way generates e.g., increased employment opportunities for graduates, collaborative research projects, involvement of partners in local ecosystem developments, and potential REF impact case-studies. |
Public & Community Engagement
Summary of approach
UoB have invested strategically in Public Engagement in Research (PER) for over 14 years – we were ‘early adopters’, which laid the foundation for strong relationships with local communities and publics.
Because of this early adoption we were able to bid to host the NCCPE with the University of the West of England. UoB’s strategy reflects the needs and interests of citizens locally and regionally, which enabled a holistic model for engagement which put public and community engagement on an equal footing with other stakeholders.
Our strategy now been adopted, “spun out” across the University to inform a new civic strategy which underpins our expansion into a new campus at Temple Meads in Bristol.
Aspect 1: Strategy
Our distinctive strategic approach to public engagement has evolved over the last 14 years, being guided by an Engaged University Strategy. Deep, ongoing and high-quality engagement between the University and its stakeholders has considered the needs of the public holistically across four aspects:
1. Partnership and collaboration in teaching and research
2. Contributions of staff, students and services to the public sphere
3. Valuing and learning from external expertise
4. Creating platforms for advancing public knowledge
This view is the foundation for strong relationships with local communities, publics, and staff who provide expert support for researchers to develop their engagement work. The “logic model” below captures the inter-connected inputs and outputs.
It outlines our holistic approach, specialist training and evaluation. It shows how impacts arise from lasting relationships, stronger research and better lives.
Priorities and goals:
Capacity – building researchers’ capacity and confidence to engage, securing funds for high quality engagement, brokering relationships and engagement opportunities.
Culture – foster innovative practice and embed engagement across the university. This objective has evolved into our approach to Responsible Research and Innovation.
Collaboration – developing sustainable partnerships and networks to strengthen our activity and involve people in shaping the University’s work. This has shaped the Civic Pillar of the University’s strategy.
Communication – sharing ideas, knowledge and best practice internally and externally.
In response to these goals, we have supported 2,022 researchers and trained over 2000 others in the three-year KEF reporting period. Detailed activities and results are below.
Equity, diversity, and inclusion are central to our work. Our commitment to best practice is based on principles of equity in collaboration, mutual respect, and reciprocity. Our partners’ feedback helps us reduce barriers to equitable engagement. Public engagement and EDI together are central for strengthening research. The Elizabeth Blackwell Institute for Health Research (EBI) is a member of EDIS, a coalition working to improve equality, diversity and inclusion within science and health research. EBI researchers are advised on research design, and the Institute funds studies with under-represented or under-researched populations. A Public Advisory Group brings community voices to the conversation around ongoing and future health research. The University’s Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Team has an array of guidance, toolkits and frameworks to support a culture of inclusion and belonging The University of Bristol is proud to hold an Athena Swan Silver Award.
The stakeholder map below shows the range of community organisations we have worked with since 2019. Each colour represents a type of organisation, and each subdivided block represents an individual organisation within that category. The block size is proportional to the number of interactions the Public Engagement team has had during the KEF period.
Governance and leadership are provided through two structures for public engagement and for civic engagement. Public Engagement with Research is the responsibility of the University Research Committee as it relates to co-creation of knowledge, leading to impact. Where our engagement extends to the wider Civic mission of the University, this reports into a relatively new Civic Committee.
This governance has been re-structured in 2023, to reflect the changing operating context. Key to our evolution is our interest in what is happening outside Bristol. We try to learn from the most relevant and novel practices in other HEIs and found the NCCPE review of 2020 KEF narratives instructive.
University Court is a key part of our governance structure and provides advice, opinion and counsel to the Board of Trustees - 45 members (out of 100) are externally nominated, with 20 from civic, cultural and community organisations. They were influential in the University’s decision to develop a civic pillar and committee as a prominent part of its overall strategy.
Resourcing and value for money
The team is resourced largely through HEIF and augments this with direct grants from UK and European funders. Over the KEF period the team has won 57% of grant proposals worth a total £3.7m. Most of this goes directly to researchers, partner organisations and communities; however, this has provided £545k to the team to support salaries, events, and materials.
Aspect 2: Support
This organogram highlights our key support roles and internal organisation:
Support infrastructure
Within the Public Engagement team 5 FTE provide support to our six Faculties, to events, and to evaluation of engagement. It is situated alongside other Research Impact teams within the Division for Research Enterprise & Innovation. This connects public engagement with other forms of knowledge exchange helping us take a holistic approach to multi-sector engagement with businesses, the public sector, NGOs, and communities.
Other engagement teams are located across the University: Civic engagement, Temple Quarter Engagement, and faculty-based Professional Liaison Network and Industry Liaison Office. The Partnerships team have developed a framework for building and maintaining external partnerships at all scales to support best practice.
Public engagement activities are resourced from many sources, including:
Impact Acceleration Accounts from six of the Research Councils provide over £3m/year to generate impact from research.
The Temple Quarter Engagement Fund (2019-2022) supported projects that meet our civic aspirations, with £175k from philanthropic donations.
The Brigstow Institute has sponsored over 97 engaged and co-produced research projects in the last three years.
The Participatory Research Fund (2021-date) has supported 14 collaborative research projects across all faculties, with the Elizabeth Blackwell Institute supporting a further eight.
The Public Engagement team has attracted direct grants from the European Commission, Research Councils, and others. We led a consortium of regional universities in securing three grants totalling €1,085,730 under H2020 and Horizon Europe MSCA programmes.
In the past three years, the team have advised on many grant applications with a major public engagement element, and embedded engagement training in our £60m Centres for Doctorial Training.
Reward and recognition
The University’s academic progression framework requires performance against four pillars, including Impact & Engagement. This pillar encompasses all forms of knowledge exchange and provides academics with a formal mechanism to recognise engagement across all sectors.
Engagement, including with publics and communities, is included in academic role profiles and senior academics are required to “actively involve themselves in promoting and embedding a culture of engagement beyond academia”.
The PE team is a hub for support, resources, and practical guidance to facilitate excellent engagement practice. They provide bespoke advice and creating opportunities for peer-to-peer learning (Aspect 4). The University co-hosts the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) and develops best practice through the Civic Universities Network.
Our Partnership portal hosts toolkits and guidance for effective partnership working. The Brigstow Institute has created guidance on engagement practice, ethical partnerships, and co-creation. Researchers can also sign up to Connect newsletter that provides further resources.
Building institutional capacity for high quality engagement and partnerships is possible through Academic Staff Development, Bristol Doctorial College and a number of Centres for Doctorial Training, directly supporting the Vitae Researcher Development Framework
Evidence of the uptake and effectiveness of the key support mechanisms
Operational
support for public engagement includes dedicated staff with engagement
expertise, engagement funding, training opportunities, staff recognition
and reward. The chart below shows the range and volume of support over
the KEF period.Aspect 3: Activity
Reports on specific programmes
Whilst individual researchers’ engagement activities are based on their work and the needs of their partners, the University approaches its major initiatives based on strategic need.
A key area is our role as an anchor institution and our contribution to Bristol’s One City Plan – the overarching strategy for the city. Our partnership with Bristol City Council (BCC) and the City Office has led to more than 20 live co-produced projects, including City Fellowships which provide six NGO and Council staff with the opportunity to co-produce research on decision-making in diverse communities. In 2019 we opened the Barton Hill Micro Campus, which hosts a range of community activities including: coffee mornings for those who identify as women, in collaboration with Bristol Somali Resource Centre and Barton Hill Activity club; the ‘Little library’; free legal advice from the Bristol Law Clinic; and a Festival of Nature family day. Another major project was Everyday Integration, working with BCC and 29 community partners to identify best practice and overcome barriers to sharing spaces and moving around the city. Our work with BCC and other city partners attracted attention of the Dutch City Deal Kennis Maken network who brought two delegations of Dutch university and city representatives to learn about our approach to knowledge exchange across Bristol.
These partnerships have led to long-standing collaborations and reciprocal benefits. Bristol’s status as the first UK European Green Capital in 2015, in which the University played a major role, has created a legacy of sustainability. As a result, we have embraced the Sustainable Development Goals in our strategic approach, which has fed into both our civic aspirations and their embedding in the One City Plan. In 2019 we became the first UK university to declare a climate emergency, joining our support for this agenda with BCC and community partners.
Showcase activities
Another area of collaboration has been in the city’s cultural activities. We are major partners in city-led public activities such as the Bristol Festival of Ideas, which has over 100 events in its year-round programme, and the Festival of Nature, the UK’s largest free celebration of the natural world. This is complemented by the University’s public programmes such as the Temple Quarter Arts Programme, Bristol Neuroscience Festival and Thinking Futures. Led by Public Engagement at University of Bristol, and working with a consortium of South West Universities, four FUTURES events (European Researchers’ Nights), engaged over 40,000 people in dialogue with over 260 of the region’s researchers each year, following successful funding bids to the European Commission and UKRI. These activities enrich the city’s cultural offering, build external partnerships that lead to future research, and provide opportunities for knowledge exchange, and experiential learning in engagement for researchers at all levels.
Our core approach to resourcing and value for money is to augment HEIF support with direct grants. The European Re-Cognition project examined the impacts of zero-carbon buildings. We used funding to build academic and practitioner expertise responsible research and innovation (RRI) in this area.
As a city with huge geographical disparities, we have built on established links with schools and multi-academy trusts to link our research to the curriculum and support teachers’ professional development. Our membership of Bristol Health Partners, and the multiple Health Integration Teams that embed community engagement in their work, helps address health disparities.
Participatory Research Funding enabled a variety of projects with partners in Bristol, the West of England, across the UK and in Africa and South America. These collaborations encompass creativity and design, scientific analysis, cultural studies, technology, inclusive education and environmental research.
Our partnerships with civil society and cultural organisations include the Black South West Network, Knowle West Media Centre, Bristol Museums, the SS Great Britain, We The Curious, Natural History Consortium, Babbasa and the Watershed. These are often multi-faceted relationships spanning advice, informing research questions to delivery and accountability as an outcome of UKRI-funded citizen science project CRT Bristol, we are piloting an accountability, rather than advisory model of partnership working.
Aspect 4: Enhancing practice
Evaluation is critical to our engagement; as well as measuring outputs and impacts, we see evaluation as a way of learning from and reflecting on our practice. Rather than applying a single approach, evaluation is tailored to activities and their outcomes.
Several professionals across the University, including the PE Evaluation Officer, support evaluation. Major engagement programmes are all assessed, with a focus on the participants and on the experiences of the researchers. For example, evaluation of Invincible showed that collaboration with artists gave deeper understanding of the implications of synthetic biology to both researchers and publics. A new approach to reflection was adopted through the Citizens Researching Together project exploring legacies of enslavement, which puts community partners at the heart of evaluation, making the project accountable to partners. These insights were shared with the Young Foundation and UKRI to inform future citizen science calls and are informing our institutional practice. We enable peer-to-peer learning through guides, including the ethics and practicalities of collaborative research. An introduction to evaluation is included in our suite of training videos for public engagement.
Evaluating the role of public engagement in REF2014, we collaborated with the NCCPE to develop a briefing paper based on analysis of impact case studies. This informed internal evaluation at Bristol, where we found that the level of public engagement in our case studies was consistent with the national average. Areas of success were shared internally to improve future engagement outcomes; In REF2021 Public Engagement featured prominently in 33% of Bristol’s Impact Case Studies and in general was more meaningful and better evidenced than in 2014.
Since 2019, the PE team have systematically logged internal and external interactions – see pie chart in Aspect 2. This then informs the team’s workplan, and feeds into plans for the related knowledge exchange teams.
Knowledge exchange through student projects is also evaluated, with students and partner organisations being encouraged to reflect on collaborative work. An example is the Faculty of Social Sciences and Law’s Bristol Model (£0.5 million from Research England) - a project which engages students in co-produced research projects in commercial and community organisations in Bristol. This is being evaluated at programme level to analyse and evidence the direct benefits of KE activity on students, recent graduates, and external partner organisations. All these initiatives influence wider institutional practices and are shared with sector colleagues.
Aspect 5: Building on success
Governance, support, and evaluation are described in Aspects 1-3 above. Examples of reporting on performance are given in Aspect 2 for the PE endeavour and in Aspect 3 for specific projects.
The University has used feedback from our internal and external communities, along with evaluative methods, to develop and refresh our strategic approach to engagement. The University commissioned an external evaluation of the Engaged University strategy and governance, including consultation with a wide range of staff with oversight and experience of engagement. One of the main recommendations – embedding engagement as a major strand in the next University Strategy – has been enacted through the civic pillar of our 2030 strategy. A second recommendation on governance has been addressed through the formation of the University Civic Engagement Committee which is accountable for decision-making on implementation of the civic pillar.
During this transition, mechanisms for reporting on engagement have remained, primarily through the Global Civic University Planning and Delivery Group. University Court’s role in providing an external viewpoint (Aspect 2) has directly informed how we consider our civic aspirations and how we collaborate with external partners.
As part of our role in the city’s recovery from COVID-19, the University is conducted Learning from our Partners - a research project on challenges partners have faced and how we might work with them. The project involved interviews with partners from a range of sectors, coordinated by leading social science academics. The conclusions were rigorous and rich in insight and informed the creation of our new third strategic pillar “the transformative power of the global civic university. This will in turn drive our actions as a civic university until 2030.
Note You are currently viewing the latest version of this narrative statement. View the previous version as published in previous iterations of the KEF (KEF1 and KEF2)