Institutional Context
Summary
Newcastle University traces its foundation to the 1830s and was established to respond to the North-East of England’s industrial, maritime, agricultural and healthcare needs. We are deeply committed to our region and have a proud record of civic engagement and of driving social and environmental justice. We orientate our research and education to benefit society, economically, culturally and environmentally. We are a research-intensive university, acting as an innovation hub for our region. But as well as being locally engaged, we are globally connected. Our research-informed education provides opportunities for students from all backgrounds to fulfil their potential as global citizens. To achieve our vision, we work closely with public, private and voluntary sector partners, locally, nationally and globally.
Institutional context
Our University vision has societal benefit at its heart, embedding Engagement & Place (E&P) in our core strategies - Education for Life, Research for Discovery and Impact, and Global.
We have designed our structures and processes to operationalise this vision:
Our Pro-Vice-Chancellor E&P chairs our institution-wide Engagement and Place committee.
Our Policy Academy increases the effectiveness of academic input to local and national policies.
Our Enterprise Academy increases collaboration between academics and industry.
We hold annual Engagement & Place awards and are planning our first Public Engagement Festival.
We are a major contributor to the regional ecosystem, working closely with Local Authorities, businesses, NHS, as well as the Culture and Community & Voluntary Sectors. For example:
We work closely with the North of Tyne Combined Authority and have been heavily involved in the development of the North East Devolution Deal.
Our Academic Health Science Centre – Newcastle Health Innovation Partners - awarded in 2020 includes the NHS and Newcastle City Council.
Nationally, we have led work on health partnerships and the publication of ‘Reimagining the relationship between Universities and the NHS’ (2021)
We have a shared post with Tyne & Wear Citizens and our Social Justice Advisory Group brings together partners in the CVS. Being a University of Sanctuary we have supported refugees and asylum seekers, most recently from Ukraine.
We are leading the national ‘Driving the Electric Revolution’ challenge. Our work with the North-East Battery Alliance is placing the region at the centre of the green industrial revolution.
We are working closely with industry to build our portfolio of degree apprenticeships, CPD and Lifelong Learning.
The Northern Accelerator programme has dramatically increased the quality and quantity of our spin-outs.
The Arrow programme has successfully connected research expertise with innovative regional SMEs looking to grow.
Our ‘Collaborative Newcastle’ agreement seeks to maximise synergies with Northumbria University, particularly around the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Our award-winning Helix site - a joint venture with Newcastle City Council and Legal and General – creates an ecosystem for knowledge exchange. National Innovation Centres in Ageing, Data and Rural Enterprise, as well as the NIHR’s Innovation Observatory are based here, co-locating research with end-users, Helix is also home to many of our growing portfolio of spin-out companies.
Our VOICE network operates across the globe and captures the opinions of end users and shapes the products and services of the future.
The success of our Engagement & Place strategy has been widely recognised:
The 2022 THE rankings placed us 1st nationally and 8th in the world for Impact, based on work towards the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
We have National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement Gold Watermark Accreditation (2022).
We have been awarded a Race Equality Charter (REC) Bronze Award in recognition of its work towards tackling race inequality in higher education, including our approach to partnerships
In 2023, we published ‘Innovating Together – Universities in the North-East (InTUNE)’ establishing that the five North-East universities contribute around £2.2billion per year to the economy.
For further information, please send queries to engage@newcastle.ac.uk
Local Growth and Regeneration
Summary of approach
Newcastle University was founded by the pioneers of the Industrial Revolution in the North East of England. We exist to benefit society through our research and teaching. Our core values of social and environmental justice run through everything we do. Our engagement activities are wide-ranging, working closely with business, public sector, education and communities to address challenges locally, nationally and globally.
We help create the conditions inclusive and sustainable economic growth, creating start-ups, spin-outs and enabling organisations of all sizes from different sectors to innovate.
We have always had an impact through the provision of skills and jobs, but in recent years we have worked with our partners more intentionally to make a difference, economically, socially, environmentally and culturally.
Aspect 1: Strategy
Newcastle University has a very specific effect on our region. Our city centre campus is situated at the heart of Newcastle upon Tyne. The University is the third largest employer in the City and has strong relationships with regional businesses, the voluntary sector and community organisations. We are an anchor institution and play a vital role in the region’s innovation infrastructure.
Newcastle itself has a population of around 300,000 (2021 Census) and is part the proposed North East Mayoral Combined Authority with a population of more than two million people, reaching to the Scottish borders through rural Northumberland to Cumbria in the west and Tees Valley to the south.
North-East England was defined for most of the 19th and 20th centuries by heavy industry. The decline of these industries has cast a long shadow over the region, leaving a legacy of engrained socio-economic challenges.
We work closely with our partners, including Local Enterprise Partnership and Mayoral Combined Authority, Local Authorities and NHS to understand the needs and opportunities of the area. Economically, despite significant growth in some sectors (notably the digital and creative sectors, life sciences and high value manufacturing), there remains a low level of research and development in our region; and consequently a low level of innovation and business growth. The North-East has the lowest level of Small to Medium Enterprises per head of population in the UK (331.8/10,000), less than half of that in London (UK Business Counts, ONS via Nomis, 2021).
The North-East has historically had one of the lowest per capita spends on R&D across the UK (second only to Wales). Recent (last decade) trends have seen a narrowing of the gap on some metrics: for instance rates of business expenditure on R&D and employment in R&D per head and R&D expenditure as a percentage of GVA have risen. Nonetheless, the region’s R&D and innovation activity remains heavily-reliant on the Higher Education sector (Sources: House of Commons Library, ONS). Newcastle University accounts for over 60% of the overall HEI regional research spend.
The University is, therefore, a large driver of the economy in the region and we take this responsibility very seriously. In addition to the core educational role of any university, providing talent for regional employers, we have developed a strategy designed to:
provide links between research and educational strengths and companies and organisations in our region;
support the creation and development of high-growth businesses;
work with partners on inward investment;
Inform policies aimed at supporting sustainable and inclusive economic growth.
In particular, we have identified a role for the University in some key growth sectors. These are:
Health and ageing - Newcastle Hospitals is the second largest NHS Foundation Trust in the UK, with more supra-national services than anywhere else;
Energy, including battery technology, energy systems and sustainable mobility;
Creative and digital sectors - Newcastle is the fourth biggest city in this sector, with the largest contribution to the gaming sector anywhere outside London (Ukie 2020).
Data – we are home to the National Innovation Centre for Data
Aspect 2: Activity
Our Vision encompasses four overarching strategies: Education for Life, Research for Discovery and Impact, Engagement and Place, and Global. The following schematic demonstrates how our Strategy has been designed to ensure that the place in which we work wraps around everything we do:
To deliver our Strategy, we have strengthened our senior management over the past three years with the appointment of a Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Engagement and Place, and four other Deans, who work in a cross-cutting way across the whole University: the Deans of Innovation and Business, of Lifelong Learning and Professional Practice, and of Culture and the Creative Arts, as well as specialist Deans for Business Innovation & Skills/Engagement in each Faculty. Further appointments have been made in our Professional Services, in our Business Development and Enterprise, Engagement and Place, and Careers Service teams. Many of these colleagues are deeply embedded in civic society in our city and region, often sitting as Higher Education representatives on civic, cultural and industry bodies.
Our Engagement and Place strategy encompasses projects, activities and programmes in our region, which together exemplify our sustained commitment to local growth and regeneration. A range of our most recent activities are presented here, organised in four thematic groups:
1. Driving regional innovation and growth:
We have pioneered, via a major ERDF award, the ‘Arrow’ programme enabling over 150 businesses to develop new and improved products, services and processes, by capitalising on the University’s expertise and assets. We are developing further cross-institutional innovation programmes, including Arrow 2.0.
We led the development of the Regional Universities Business & Engagement group in the North East. In February 2023, we produced a report, Innovating Together - Universities in the North-East (InTUNE), highlighting the combined effect of all the region’s universities; supporting more than 34,000 jobs and contributing £2.2bn to the economy.
We have established, with major Government investment, three National Innovation Centres (NICs) – in Ageing (NICA), Data (NICD) and Rural Enterprise (NICRE). Designed to drive innovation, provide intelligence and consultancy, and transfer skills, each of our NICs play a national and international role in their respective domains, but also have a beneficial effect on their home region.
We are the national lead for Innovate UK’s Driving the Electric Revolution Centres programme, which aims to put the UK at the heart of the global electro-mobility market by establishing a power electronics, machines and drives supply chain across the UK. The North-East is currently the largest producer of electric cars in the UK.
Linked to the net zero mobility agenda, we have led on a number of initiatives relating to the production of batteries for electric vehicles, including establishing the North East Battery Alliance and attracting the UK’s Faraday Institute to open its first regional office in the University in 2022.
We secured funding from Innovate UK to set up the Institute of Electrification and Sustainable Advanced Manufacturing' (IESAM) which brings together a consortium of key FE and HE providers across the North-East and will be first to address industry needs by developing a flexible, high-quality Power Electronics, Machines and Drives (PEMD) training pipeline in the region.
Our Careers Service continues to support local businesses with talent acquisition through two major programmes: NCL Internships, and a 12-month Placement Year Module. The Careers Service has utilised HEIF funding to create the new post of Employer Partnerships Adviser to focus on placement creation with regional SMEs and other targeted partners. The aim is to implement a recruitment support offer for SMEs and support students looking to create their own placements, particularly with VCSE organisations.
2. Creating new businesses:
Northern Accelerator - a collaboration between all four North-East universities (2021) has begun to address gaps in the regional infrastructure. With initial investment from ERDF to Newcastle and Durham and then further support from the Connecting Capability Fund (encompassing Northumbria, Sunderland and Teesside and, most recently, York), the scheme is addressing both the lack of experienced management teams with the ability to take on and manage new innovative businesses and the investment shortfall in the region.
Our START UP programme provides a range of support for students and graduates for the development and growth of start-ups. START UP Founderships, for example, is a 6-month funded pre-accelerator initiative supporting graduate entrepreneurs with innovative, scalable business ideas to get ready for market entry, first investment and/or participation in business accelerators.
We are working with Conception X, a national organisation supporting entrepreneurship amongst STEM PhD students, on a Northern Deep Tech hub to support the creation of 5 new ‘deep tech’ businesses.
We are supporting the City’s Culture and Creative Zone (CCZ) ensuring the supply of more highly skilled freelancer talent to support the needs of businesses in the region. START UP X Creative Mentoring is a cross-cutting interdisciplinary programme, integrated with the sector itself, which introduces students to creative and cultural freelancers to develop the networks through which they can grow and sustain their practice and relationship to the region.
3. Inward investment:
We work with partners including the City Council, Invest Newcastle and the Department for Business & Trade on positioning the region as a growing centre of innovation. The recent HEPI/NCUB report The role of universities in driving overseas investment into UK Research and Development highlights Newcastle as a case study. In 2022 the North East was ranked the best performing region per capita in the UK for Foreign Direct Investment.
Newcastle Helix - a landmark 24-acre development in the centre of Newcastle – has been developed jointly by the University, Legal and General and the City Council. The site is now home to a suite of buildings providing space for businesses, public sector, education and research facilities. The University provides marketing support, including dedicated resource, to support Invest Newcastle in their work promoting Newcastle Helix as a fast-growing innovation hub: we host an average of at least one inward investment visit per month.
We are now working on next major physical development in the city: the Campus for Ageing and Vitality, a 29-acre innovation district which we are jointly developing with Gener8 Kajima. It will build, trial and evaluate innovative solutions for living, leisure, learning and employment for ageing populations.
Working with North Star Ventures and other regional partners, we participated in a ‘Knowledge North East’ event hosted by Aviva in the City of London in November 2022, where we collectively pitched over £30bn of investable propositions in the region. The University itself has now produced an Investment Prospectus, designed to attract funding for the city and region.
4. Policy input:
We provide Board level input to the North-East Local Economic Partnership and participate in numerous working groups. We have been heavily involved in consultations and discussions about the creation of the new North East Mayoral Combined Authority
Strong relationships at City and regional levels were further embedded during the pandemic with joint working at CEO/VC level with Local Government, NHS, voluntary sector and business partners to address the immediate challenges of Covid-19 and the longer-term economic and social recovery.
Our Policy Academy catalyses the impact of our research, bringing together academic and professional services staff to engage with policymakers and build networks.
Our ‘Collaborative Newcastle Universities Agreement’ with Northumbria University has specifically focused on the role of the city’s two universities and has made a number of contributions to city-wide planning and policy, including the establishment of the Research England-funded ‘Insights North East’ project to connect research to policy making.
Creative Fuse, a partnership between five NE universities, sees academics working alongside industry, cultural organisations, charities and the public sector, to explore how creative, digital and IT firms can have a sustainable future in the region adding value to the region’s broader employment base.
At a national level, our academics provide detailed policy advice to government. To take one example, Professor Phil Blythe was Chief Scientific Adviser to the Department for Transport from 2015 to 2021.
Aspect 3: Results
We have delivered major impacts for the region in past three years in all four areas of activity:
1. Driving regional innovation:
Our funded Knowledge Exchange work typically has a regional element. For example, of 51 Knowledge Transfer Partnership we have had funded by Innovate UK since 2016, 35 have been with regional partners.
An independent evaluation published in December 2022 reported that our Arrow project is forecast to deliver 116.5 FTE new jobs and £20.1m in gross additional GVA, with a return on investment of £3.84 for every £1 of public funding invested.
Our NICs have worked with regional companies on initiatives with direct economic and social benefit. For example, NICA, in collaboration with the North of Tyne Combined Authority, is delivering the Internet of Caring Things which works with regional companies to enable the broader development of IoT advances to benefit an ageing population. NICD has worked with regionally-based organisations, ranging from a project with Connected Energy, a small SME looking at technology systems for grid decarbonisation to Procter & Gamble, which has a major research base in North Tyneside, to capture and process consumer insights.
Our work on clean energy and mobility encompasses both regional and national partners. For example, we are working on two Innovate UK ‘Clean Maritime’ projects: one in collaboration with the Port of Tyne Authority and Siemens, and another working with Tyneside Transport Services and a local SME to decarbonise the Shields ferry (an important local river crossing). Our NE Battery Alliance will be hosting the national Faraday Institution Conference in 2024.
2. High-growth businesses:
Northern Accelerator has delivered a step change in our spin-out activity: from an average of 1 per year in the three years to 2016 to an average of 4 per year in the three years to 2022 (HEBCIS).
An example of our recent spin-outs combining good quality skilled jobs with green technologies is Advanced Electric Machines, which uses patented technology developed at the University, delivering motors for electric vehicles without the requirement for rare earth metals.
At the end of July 2022, START UP was supporting 193 actively trading student and graduate start-ups and social enterprises, with a combined turnover of £154m, employing over 1100 FTE staff and attracting £18.5m in total external investment. Based on the 20/21 published HE-BCI data, student and graduate start-up activity Newcastle University ranked 5th in the country by start-up turnover and external investment, and 11th the country on number of active social enterprises.
3. Inward investment:
Development on the Helix site has progressed rapidly. The Biosphere, a major life sciences incubator, is now full and plans are being made, in conjunction with the City Council, to build further facilities for life science start-ups, many of which are University spin-outs.
The Catalyst building on Helix is occupied by the three National Innovation Centres and is hosting innovative data-driven businesses such as Red Hat and Changing Health. It is also now fully occupied. Linked to our National Innovation Centre for Ageing, we have secured High Potential Opportunity status by Department for Business and Trade.
We have also begun to attract new investments in the defence and security sector to the Helix site, from both the public and private sources. Examples include a new Dstl site in Newcastle, and the firm Leonardo bringing over 200 jobs to Newcastle.
4. Policy:
We secured funding and launched our new £5.5m Insights North East project, delivered in collaboration with regional partners including the NHS, North of Tyne Combined Authority and Newcastle City Council, to develop new ways of connecting and interrogating the knowledge base so that regional policymakers can better address the needs of local communities.
Our partnerships in the cultural and creative sector have given us the insights to work closely with the North of Tyne Combined Authority on new Culture and Creative Zones.
Our National Innovation Centre for Rural Enterprise has produced a wide range of publications including informing national policy on support for agriculture businesses post-BREXIT.
Public & Community Engagement
Summary of approach
Newcastle University exists to benefit society through our research, teaching and the way we operate. As one of the four core strategies underpinning our Vision, ‘Engagement and Place’ is central to our work and our core values of social and environmental justice.
Engagement describes how the benefits of our teaching and research go beyond the University, delivering mutual benefit for both the University and our communities/partners. These exchanges take many forms and require a long-term view.
In line with our institutional values, our engagement activities:
are embedded in and representative of our research and education excellence
are creative and innovative in working for the public good
provide ideas and solutions that have economic and social impact
Aspect 1: Strategy
Our Engagement and Place Strategy is closely aligned with our other three core strategies of Research, Education and Global that underpin our Vision. Extensive consultation was undertaken to develop this strategy involving workshops with partners in the private, public, cultural and voluntary and community sectors to understand their needs and how the University could respond.
We exist to benefit society. We do this through our research, education and the way we operate. Our Engagement & Place Strategy outlines 6 key themes:
Inclusive & Sustainable Economic Growth
Health, Well-being and Social Justice
Cultural Richness
Inclusive Education & Lifelong Learning
Global to Local Connections
Evidence-based Policy Making
Building on a wealth of excellent engagement practice our strategy identifies two transformative initiatives designed to create a step change in how our research and education deliver benefit outside of the University. These are:
To embed social justice
To embed public engagement
Taking a place-based approach we strive to understand need, co-create mutually beneficial solutions and importantly evaluate and share our learning. As a University based in the city centre we have close working relationships with local anchor institutions, key commercial partners and community organisations and we seek to draw learning from these collaborations that can be utilised in a national and global context.
Engagement & Place Priorities:
Through our strengths in research and innovation we will support sustainable and inclusive economic growth;
Through our approach to inclusive education and Lifelong Learning, we will support social mobility and the higher level skills needed for the future economy;
Our research and education will support evidence-based policy making and impact working with partners locally, nationally and internationally;
To enable this, we will continue to foster a supportive culture for engagement for our colleagues and students, providing the relevant support and recognition.
The Strategy is owned by the University Engagement and Place Committee (UEPC), the membership of which includes representatives from each of our three faculties and leads for each of the six themes described in the strategy. UEPC is a committee of Senate and the Engagement and Place portfolio is led at Executive Board level by our Pro-Vice-Chancellor (PVC), Engagement and Place.
Delivery of our strategy is supported by strategic University funding, alongside external support from the Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) and our Quality-Related Research Policy Support Fund (QR PSF) allocation. Following the development of our submissions to both the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) Engage Watermark and Knowledge Exchange Concordat in 2021, we established a Knowledge Exchange and Policy Oversight Committee (KEPOC) which provides oversight of our HEIF and QR PSF and IAA budgets. KEPOC is chaired by our PVC Engagement & Place working closely with our PVC Research and Innovation to ensure a strategic approach to resource allocation, reduce duplication and ensure value for money.
Over the last three years we have worked to embed EDI considerations across our work. Examples of this include our accreditation from the Race Equality Charter, University of Sanctuary and our Sanctuary Scholarships.
Aspect 2: Support
Since the Award of our Gold Engage Watermark from the NCCPE (2021), we have developed the practical support provided to colleagues and students to strengthen their engagement work.
With increased capacity in our central engagement team we have been able to increase our internal communication channels that share opportunities, news and events. We have carried out data collection across our three faculties in relation to the types of engagement activities that colleagues are involved in and used this to develop our internal webpages to provide colleagues with resources and information on how to develop their engagement journey.
Our Engage & Learn Forum is open to all colleagues and encourages colleagues to grow their internal engagement network, increase cross-disciplinary working, share best practice and encourage continual improvement.
Our annual programme of engagement training includes; an introduction to engagement, evaluation of engagement, engaging with schools, co-production and sessions tailored to working with specific sectors. Engagement Leads in our faculties run specific working with colleagues in our EDI Team to develop sessions that look specifically at EDI in engagement practice.
The engagement team attend all Welcome events in order to introduce our support programme to new starters.
Over the last three years we have developed our Engagement and Place Fund, which now has two tiers. The first tier is up to £500, aimed at colleagues that are starting their engagement journey. The second tier is up to £2,500 and is to support colleagues who wish to expand existing activity. We also offer funding through our Social Justice Advisory Group to develop successful relationships between the University and VCSE sector.
To strengthen reward and recognition for engagement, in 2021 we updated our academic promotions guidance to link to E&P and held our first Engagement & Place Awards. The awards recognise the many innovative collaborations between the University and its external partners/communities. The categories reflect the six themes of our strategy with the addition of an award for early career researchers and a Vice-Chancellor and President’s award. A panel of internal and external colleagues assess nominations using the following criteria:
A strong relationship between the high-quality engagement and high-quality research or teaching;
creative and innovative approaches to engagement or outreach;
The benefits of the engagement should be clearly evidenced with respect to both the research or teaching and the external organisation or community;
The long-term impacts or ambition of the project should be clearly articulated.
In addition, our student-focused Pride of Newcastle University Awards feature a specific category for ‘Outstanding Contribution to the Community’.
Within out three faculties, engagement is supported through engagement showcases, engagement socials where researchers can practice engagement techniques, drop-ins, digital toolkits and training. Our Outreach Teams provide support through training around collaborating with schools and local groups.
Our website sets out the range of services we offer, from schools’ outreach to patient engagement, and support for businesses to our public lectures series. Case studies demonstrate how partners and communities can collaborate with us. We have a single point of contact for enquiries, allowing quick referral to the most relevant colleagues across the institution.
Aspect 3: Activity
In line with our strategic priorities we have designed key performance indicators against our core programmes which are summarised in the following diagram:
Inclusive Economic Growth:
We are developing our two strategic sites in the city: Newcastle Helix and the Campus for Ageing and Vitality and working with partners on a range of initiatives to grow the economy, covered in more detail in our Local Growth and Regeneration narrative.
In July 2021 we launched the Collaborative Newcastle Universities Agreement, our civic university agreement with Northumbria University.
Our National Innovation Centre for Ageing is home to VOICE a unique global network of citizens who contribute experience, ideas and insights to research and innovation.
Building on the work that underpinned us becoming a Real Living Wage employer, we have developed our strategic relationships Tyne & Wear Citizens embedding a Community Organiser within the University.
Our University museum and gallery, the Great North Museum: Hancock and The Hatton along with the newly established Farrell Centre, provide a front door to our research and education.
We utilise our expertise in Sport, Active Wellbeing and Health to create collaborations between local and regional businesses, organisations and community groups, including Newcastle United Football Foundation.
Lifelong Learning and Skills
We secured funding for our Institute of Electrification and Sustainable Advanced Manufacturing (IESAM) which will address industry needs by developing a flexible, high-quality training pipeline in the North East.
We have increased delivery of Degree Apprenticeships in key sectors such as data analytics and cyber security working with over 100 employers.
Our Lifelong Learning and Apprenticeship Hub (LLAH) is a newly formed hub to develop CPD, Lifelong Learning and Apprenticeship provision across the University.
Policy Impact
Our Social Justice Advisory Group includes fifteen community organisations, that work across nine themes and provides a space for academics and practitioners to explore how our research can address societal challenges.
We continue to develop our strategic place-based collaboration with Pittsburgh University, launching plans for a global place-based network.
We have established Insights North East, connecting academic research and policy makers and the National Policy and Evidence Centre for Creative Industries.
Building on our hugely successful Insights Public Lectures Programme we have developed our Newcastle Debates programme and our From Newcastle podcast.
Underpinning these strategic programmes is our transformative initiative to embed engagement. Our Engagement & Place Awards showcase the excellent engagement practice from across our institution. The following videos of the 2022 Awards winners demonstrate our wide ranging engagement activity:
Established Career Academic Awards
Vice-Chancellor and President Award
A wealth of engagement activity is delivered at a Faculty and School level. For example:
We host Soapbox Science celebrating women working in STEM and engaging members of the public.
Our Street Law project involves students acting as ‘Street Law Ambassadors’ providing young people with information about their rights.
Our STEM Outreach Team offer a range of classroom workshops and on campus events.
Our Street Scientists, are science buskers, bringing science to life for the public through interactive demonstrations.
The Student Union’s Go Volunteer programme, the ncl+ Award scheme and our placements policy provide many opportunities for student engagement.
Aspect 4: Enhancing practice
Over the last three years we have taken an institutional approach to evaluation. Undergoing the NCCPE Watermark Accreditation provided us with a thorough evaluation of our approach to public and helped to idneitfiy areas for development. This detailed process involved consultation with and data collection from colleagues, students and partners. We achieved a Gold Watermark but recognise that this was awarded not just on the basis of our current practice but also the commitment we have made to address the areas highlighted for development. The Watermark shows that we have made significant progress in recent years with strong leadership, robust governance and excellent relationships with our partners.
In parallel to the Watermark we carried out an information gathering exercise as part of the Knowledge Exchange Concordat (KEC). Reassuringly this process highlighted similar strengths and development areas as the Watermark. The KEC examiners felt we had created a mature and well-presented action plan that reflected depth and diversity of Knowledge Exchange activity across the institution.
To maximise the benefit of these complementary pieces of work in 2022 we combined the resulting action plans to create a single Knowledge Exchange and Engagement Action Plan. This will ensure an integrated and strategic approach and will serve as an enabling tool to improve internal structures.
In addition to undertaking institutional wide evaluation, we continue to build evaluation of engagement into individual projects. Through regular training we encourage colleagues to think about evaluation early on in the planning of their activity, for this we draw on both internal expertise and specialist external resources. We carry out evaluation of our support programme and use the lessons learned to inform our future planning and practice.
In relation to our strategic programmes as outlined in Aspect 3, the following are just some examples of the outcomes of these activities:
Collaborative Newcastle Universities Agreement – In January 2023 we held a joint meeting of the Executive Boards of both Newcastle and Northumbria universities to reaffirm our commitment to our civic university agreement.
The Campus for Ageing and Vitality, this flagship development will enable us to help people live longer and healthier lives through our global leadership in ageing research. Community engagement in this project is vital. We now have a community engagement strategy and action plan for the site which is based on four key concepts;
Create a structure for co-production
Making the site relevant for communities
Sharing control
Keeping promises
In October we hosted a collaborative global place-based conference with Pittsburgh University and we are currently developing student mobility opportunities based on engagement and collaboration.
With its origins as the evidence base for our civic university agreement Insights North East, demonstrates how anchor institutions can collaborate to maximise the potential for university research to inform place-based policy making.
Aspect 5: Building on success
We report annually against our Engagement and Place Key Performance Indicators, this is shared and reviewed by our University Executive Board, Senate and Council. Our Integrated Annual Report provides a summary of our external reporting performance against our Engagement & Place Strategy.
We hold our Engagement & Place Awards and Celebration Event annually. To evaluate the event we captured testimonials of some of the attendees. Last year’s event launched our ‘People, Planet and Prosperity’ impact report to highlight progress against our strategic objectives for Engagement and Place over the previous year. This is now established as an annual publication with the next edition to be launched at our Engagement and Place event in May 2023.
Our ongoing work towards the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs) was recognised in the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings 2022. We were ranked first nationally and eighth in the world. Specifically in relation to our Engagement & Place work, as part of our Collaborative Newcastle Universities Agreement in 2021 we developed a bespoke dataset and analysis of city trends, aligned to the UNSDGs, in order to establish an evidence base for the Newcastle Future Needs Assessment.
Our Knowledge Exchange and Engagement Action Plan identifies projects to address the following seven developmental areas in which we can build on our previous success:
The challenges posed by the breadth of our definition of engagement in relation to identifying priorities and allocating relevant resources.
Embedding the value of engagement consistently within our culture particularly relating to reward and recognition.
Increasing students’ Knowledge Exchange opportunities
Ethical guidance on partnerships
Infrastructure and capacity to support long-term strategic relationships across all sectors
Bring together the various strands of enterprise and entrepreneurship training and support across the Faculties and services.
Improve the visibility of our work and position Newcastle University as a leader in knowledge exchange and engagement.
The following are just three examples of the work we are undertaking in direct response to these priorities:
Embedding Engagement – In the summer of 2024 we will deliver our first Public Engagement Festival. This annual event aimed at local families and adults in Newcastle will develop meaningful connections between local people and the university, shift public understanding of what the University does and develop student and colleague public engagement skills and confidence. We have increased resource within the central engagement team which now comprises the Head of Engagement, Project Managers and a Coordinator.
Strategic Narrative – We are developing our institutional strategic narrative specifically looking at typologies of engagement. Mirroring the six themes within our Engagement & Place Strategy, this work is taking a modular approach to how we can strengthen our relationships across our partner network.
Ethical Partnerships Framework – We have designed and implemented a framework to assist in providing assurance from an ethical perspective when colleagues are engaging in partnership activities. This framework has been designed to limit bureaucracy but provide support to colleagues when developing new partnerships across the commercial, public and community sectors.
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)