Institutional Context
Summary
Central’s mission is to develop practitioners and researchers who shape the future of theatre and performance. Our ‘world-leading’ research (REF2021) expertise is based in external partnerships and supports change and development; as a result, our impact reaches beyond professional theatre industries to address challenges in the wider world, involving staff and students in this process. This is done across Central’s key focus areas:
Technique and Training (contemporary performance techniques, acting, voice and movement pedagogies, and histories); Performance Making (playwriting, directing, design, immersive and XR technologies, production, and construction); and Performance in Society (applied practices; queer, gender and political performance; critical race theory; theatre as a social institution; theatre arts in health settings, including dramatherapy; and theatre in transhistorical and transnational contexts).Institutional context
Introduction
By bridging the creative industries and the academy, Central serves as a Knowledge Exchange (KE) hub where diverse practices and ideas are explored and shared through collaboration with partners and publics, supporting and boosting the cultural economy. Staff teaching and working alongside industry professionals (and in many cases being industry professionals themselves) results in a high level of KE for a small specialist institution.
Knowledge Exchange Strategy
Central’s KE strategy (2023-2025) is focused on our long-term goal of strengthening impact through KE. By putting in place staffing, funding, incentives, and by encouraging students to participate in KE, it is embedded formally throughout the organisation.
Staffing
KE at Central is supported by three specialist staff:
Head of Knowledge Exchange
Impact Lead
Knowledge Exchange and Impact Manager
This represents a significant increase in support since 2022. The Impact Lead was initially seconded in 2019 and this role made permanent in 2021. An academic Head of Knowledge Exchange was appointed in May 2022 and a KE and Impact Manager in November 2022. The Impact lead is also the Head of Research Degrees thus linking KE and impact to every stage of an academic’s career.
Part of our funding is allocated to Impact Champions, members of academic staff who, as well as doing their own KE/impact projects, support and mentor colleagues through Central’s Departments of Performance, Producing, and Practice.
Funding
KE is supported by internal and external funding:
Research England KE funding, 2021/22 and 2022/23
Committed internal spend £140k/yr minimum
Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Impact Acceleration Account funding (£150k/yr for three years)
Research funding supporting KE around immersive and extended reality technologies (£2.1 million)
We combine funding individual projects with institutionally significant activity and have formally collaborated with at least 32 external partners since 2019.
Progression and development
Regular and ongoing KE training and development opportunities for staff include:
Policy development and lobbying
Research and KE sandpits to explore ideas
Conferences with external partners
Building networks with industry
Secondment opportunities
Consultancy for funding, project development, relationship building, and intellectual property
One-to-one support and mentoring for PhDs, ECRs, and senior colleagues has been made possible by the increase in specialist KE and impact staff.
All academic pathways at Central have KE embedded in their promotion and progression criteria ensuring that it is considered, alongside teaching, research, and scholarship as a key activity.
The prioritisation of research and development opportunities for our performance spaces evidences Central’s commitment to working with our local and industry communities.
Student enterprise
Student enterprise is embedded within the student experience to give all students professional development opportunities.
This has included:
An annual Engagement Prize
Masterclasses – past topics include co-creation and collaboration, the role of technology, IP in creative businesses, accessibility in creative work and community and social entrepreneurship.
Professional internships
For further information, please send queries to Knowledge.exchange@cssd.ac.uk
Local Growth and Regeneration
Summary of approach
Knowledge Exchange at Central is not restricted to our local borough in north London but rather operates in a wide range of ‘local’ spaces across the globe. Our approach to growth and regeneration is needs-based and expertise-led, embedding Central’s knowledge and practice within specific locations to deliver results for a broad range of partner organisations and publics. Working collaboratively, we identify key challenges and co-develop reciprocal performance-based strategies that engage local communities and organisations. We make beneficial use of opportunities to leverage our existing strengths and deliver impact at local, regional, and national levels. Our partnerships enable us to frame research policy priorities on open research, digital infrastructure, research integrity, sustainable change and social cohesion, levelling up and widening access. Central’s researchers collaborate with UK-wide (GuildHE, Conservatoires UK, JISC) and regional (London Higher, London Arts and Humanities Partnership) higher education bodies to influence sector-wide policies in this area.
Aspect 1: Strategy
Central’s Knowledge Engagement strategy focuses on nurturing an innovative theatre and performing arts culture that enriches and changes our world. Located in the London borough of Camden, the campus forms part of Swiss Cottage’s Theatre Square development that serves local communities with eight performance venues (six at Central, ranging from a 250-seat proscenium arch theatre to a variety of flexible studios and staging over 30 annual public productions).
In addition to physical proximity as a driver for engagement, Central targets local growth and regeneration through the location of its expertise in the widest sense. Academics embedded within their immediate local area, or with regional, national, and international connections are encouraged and supported to facilitate Knowledge Exchange where they are situated.
Key factors for identifying strategically relevant locations are:
Physical proximity
Areas of low engagement in Art and Culture
Regions with recognised social and economic challenges
International networks where we can build on established relationships
Engagement with local organisations, community and/or enterprise partners, government bodies, and NGOs
Approaches to Central by external organisations.
Aspect 2: Activity
Central’s research has built robust, longstanding, and extensive engagement through place-making practices in London boroughs (from Camden to Tower Hamlets), as well as Arts Council England (ACE) designated areas of low cultural engagement (from Bexley and Slough to Oldham). Our researchers are adapting a range of creative tools to develop a broad range of research programmes in collaboration with, for example, NHS England in the UK as well as NHS Wales and NHS Scotland, with secondary schools across South Yorkshire, with local theatres and community groups in Essex, and with National Trust properties and digital start-ups in Northamptonshire.
The following examples provide an overview of the types of institutional KE activities focused on local growth and regeneration delivered over the past three years and in line with the strategy outlined above.
1. New Beginning: Immersive AI and Biological Design, Hornchurch, Essex
Partners: Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch, Lusion, Superflux
Beginning in 2023, but building on a long-standing relationship, this is a digital research and development project, in collaboration with Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch (QTH). Activity focuses on the application of video projection technologies, AI generative and biological performance design which is rooted in research by Central researchers. It will result in a tour-ready digital production which will unlock box office and tax relief, increasing the cash investment for the project. This project is part of wider regeneration efforts and aims to situate QTH at the heart of these efforts by contributing to its financial stability and capacity for income-generation.
It will:
Support QTH to work with an independent technology specialist for the first time
Develop a new model of production via lab development, new delivery and implementation practices, and a new product for QTH and touring audiences
Enable mid-scale venues can lead digital innovation
Deliver skill-sharing between Central and QTH staff
Explore the role and function of generative AI technologies and biological performance design
2. Building new partnerships for arts engagement
Barrow-in-Furness, Weston-super-mare, Wigan, Preston, Crawley, Devon, Northampton, Brent (London)
Partners: Fevered Sleep,BarrowFull, Culture Weston, Old Courts, Derelict, Creative Crawley, Libraries Unlimited, Delepres Abbey, Brent Council.
Associate Artists, Fevered Sleep, whose Co-Artistic Director is also a Central researcher, led this project from 2018 to 2023. It partnered Fevered Sleep with arts organisations in areas of low cultural activity in order to build a new network. This expansive initiative delivered on the Government’s “Levelling Up For Culture” plan. Collaborating with local partners and participants in the creation process, the network facilitated the development of three projects:
This Grief Thing, a project encouraging people to think, talk and learn about grief
We Are Not Finished, a co-created performance by a group of young people about their fears and dreams in a world on the brink of chaos and collapse
The Sky is Filled with Thunder, a collaborative audio artwork created with and featuring the voices of children, encompassing their thoughts on home, migration, family history, hope, anger, fear, grief and joy.
Emerging from the network and taking their cues from the places in which Fevered Sleep were embedded, different iterations of each project were tailored to the needs of each area. Fevered Sleep disseminated the learning from these projects more widely in the sector through public talks and briefing reports.
3. Community Lifelines, Northern Ireland
Partners: Laurencetown, Lenaderg and Tullyish Community Association
This project launched in 2022 and is due to run until July 2023. It has social inclusion at its heart. Responding directly to a report by the Gilford Community Forum which found that ‘mental health and suicide were a concern for many’ and that ‘Gilford has been forgotten about by the council, with little or no investment in the area for many years’. The project team, led by Central researchers in Applied Theatre Practice are addressing the identification of the need for a ‘community space’ or ‘social hub’ for social connection and planning training and activity to facilitate opportunities to develop this.
They will:
Build on researcher expertise and experience creating, refining and training practitioners to deliver digital applied theatre projects for wellbeing
Work with the Laurencetown, Lenaderg and Tullylish Community Assocation to co-produce interventions which aim to improve social inclusion, access to community spaces both virtual or physical.
Offer research based on qualitative evidence to support the principles of the Department of Health, Northern Ireland to engage communities in responsive arts and health projects that traverse health and social care agendas to improve community wellbeing.
Aspect 3: Results
To maximise outcomes, results, and impacts and to respond to feedback from partners and collaborators, results-driven evaluation processes are built into projects across all stages. Collation and analysis of quantitative and qualitative data is used to articulate key findings and outcomes, which are shared with key stakeholders, including institutional, community, and individual collaborators. Internal monitoring of key performance indicators around KE and impact is based on this data and, through appropriate reporting structures, informs future strategic decision-making, including allocating support for external funding applications. Analysis by external partners also contribute to future development of projects and collaboration. The following are examples of the results some of our projects have had for researchers and partners.
1. Performance Lab, London
Performance Lab is Supported by a £1.37m grant from UK Research and Innovation, awarded in 2023. It brings together Central’s practice-led research and development capabilities in immersive and digital technologies in applied theatre and performance, immersive and participatory practices, sound and audio performance, and digital performer training. Performance Lab currently has ten formalised external intersectoral partnerships that span areas from professional theatre, heritage and museum sectors, to emerging technologies and medicine. Our research on VR impacts on audiences’ embodied subjectivity and how sensory immersion relates to the materiality as well as the imitative representation of a fictional world. We invite opportunities for research and development (R&D) to generate original creative approaches and new forms of immersive sound and XR for theatre and performance. Performance Lab’s facilities for stakeholder R&D provide opportunities to expand the reach of our current research projects on immersive and digital performance, which will deliver impact in the English regions with institutions with whom we have established connections, including Imperial War Museums, Manchester Jewish Museum, National Trust, Theatre Centre, and the Donmar Warehouse, as well as companies such as Darkfield, Extant, Fevered Sleep, Moving Data, ScanLab, and Auricle. The Lab’s new approaches develop technologies and connected performance strategies to further help these institutions engage new audiences. At the same time, such performance-led innovation has R&D implications for our technology industry partners, including Autograph Sound, the manufacturer d&b audiotechnik, and Move.ai.
2. Building new partnerships for arts engagement, Barrow-in-Furness, Weston-super-mare, Wigan, Preston, Crawley, Devon, Northampton, Brent (London)
Partners: Fevered Sleep, BarrowFull, Culture Weston, Old Courts, Derelict, Creative Crawley, Libraries Unlimited, Delepres Abbey, Brent Council.
For its duration between 2018 and 2023 the project has:
Developed deep, long term relationships with partners
Made a tangible impact on mental health, sense of belonging and creative skills development
Influenced practice in arts organisations and individual artists
Created bold, experimental and co-created work increasing access to the arts and confidence in participation
Produced Arts Council funding bids to support regional tours and the development of Grief Gathering activity.
Enabled further funding from the QR Strategic Priorities Fund to develop a relationship with The Good Grief Trust and a public contribution to National Grief Awareness Week 2022
Resulted in an invitation for Fevered Sleep’s Co-Artistic Director to advise on the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Bereavement Support
Collaborators on this project have the following to say about it:
"As a CPP we are tasked with increasing excellent arts and culture in our place as well as bringing things that are different to what our people may have experienced before. Fevered Sleep’s work represents both these things for us and our community advisors who help us to programme the work. This rationale shouldn’t be underestimated – this will introduce something contemporary, and although seen elsewhere before, radical for Barrow." Staff member, Barrow Full.
“I was reminded that even the smallest intervention or seed of possibility planted at a young age can potentially have huge positive consequences later on. ...The project has hugely influenced and developed my own practice and planted many ideas for the future. As the role encompassed many different 'hats', from project management and curation to delivery, it challenged and inspired me to work in new ways. … I've also developed new skills in editing and curation of the digital zine, and generally developed my links with each artist involved. … This is already leading to further collaborative relationships.” Lead Artist
3. Binaural Sound for Museums, Manchester, Berlin
Partners: Auricle, Manchester Jewish Museum, Exilmuseum Berlin
In 2022, a research team from Central collaborated with theatre and sound collective Auricle to develop a first iteration of a sound and video installation based on Ulrich Boschwitz’s novel The Passenger for a sharing at the Manchester Jewish Museum (MJM). Seed funding enabled the production of a pilot immersive installation and the collection of feedback from audiences and curators at the MJM and three external consultants on the affective potential of immersive sound for commemorative performances in the museum. This allowed us to scope the key practical challenges and conceptual questions to produce a spin-out product that can be presented in museums internationally. In 2023, this resulted in a joint initiative with the Berlin Exilmuseum, which will officially open with a largescale new building at the Anhalter Banhof in 2026, to coincide with the Tages des Exils Festival organised across Germany. Curators at the Exilmuseum have programmed a new iteration of The Passenger as part of an experimental set of events that have the strong potential to inform the permanent exhibition and engage international audiences in Berlin.
4. Visualising Data for Exhibitions, New York
Partners include a major US art museum and repertory dance company.
A large US museum is preparing an exhibition about the lead choreographer of an important American dance company and have commissioned Central researchers to develop datasets and visualisations for the exhibition and catalogue, using the methodology and software that they developed as part of an AHRC-funded project which began in 2021. The exhibit is scheduled to open in autumn 2024 and has resulted in the commercialisation of Central’s research to deliver crucial visualisations that will form the historical spine of the exhibition. This is being developed through a transformative set of exchanges with partners, including the museum curators and with the staff and creatives of the dance company.
5. Towards Democratic Technologies, Syria
Partners – Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria
Central researchers led two research workshops in Qamishlo, Rojava (Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria) in 2022/23. Based on expertise in cultural studies of technology, these aimed to imagine and develop prototypes of 'democratic technologies': everyday devices and applications that connect to local realities in terms of social life and (small scale) production, while focusing on sustainability, inclusivity and resilience. This established interdisciplinary methods in art and engineering education, building on community engagement, collaboration and co-operation. The third collaboration with the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria established an infrastructure for graduates to apply the skills and knowledge in ‘democratic technologies’ they acquire during their studies in appropriate entrepreneurial environments (e.g. co-operative businesses).
6. African Cave Art: Protecting the past, facilitating the future, Kenya
Partners – Trust for African Rock Art, National Museums of Kenya
Taking place from January 2023, this is a partnership of global leading organisations that was developed through a participatory process of discussion and collaboration between four key partners: Central, C&T, the world leading rock art experts the Trust for African Rock Art (TARA), and the National Museums of Kenya (NMK). Central researchers in Applied and Social Theatre worked together with the project team to identify 12 of the most crucial, at risk and diverse rock art sites across Kenya. Using 360-degree cameras, drones, binaural microphones, steady-cams, and other state of the art technology they digitally captured not only the rock art, but also the surrounding topography it is situated within. The footage is being used to create a mobile accessible, digitally interactive rock art safari, replete with professional curation, and educational resources which will be disseminated across 30 schools in city slums through workshops. The project material also forms the basis for a VR based installation at NMK’s Nairobi site.
Public & Community Engagement
Summary of approach
Knowledge Exchange through Public and Community Engagement is at the core of Central’s mission to inspire, educate, and train the performers, practitioners, and change-makers of tomorrow to shape the future of theatre and the performing arts. It is embedded across all research, scholarship, and commercial activity. We seek to maximise the social benefits of our work through industry-focused conservatoire training and an active research culture that prioritises interactions with a range of publics and communities, education institutions, public bodies, and charities. Building on a learning environment that fosters creativity, artistry, critical engagement, and radical innovation to bring practice and research into productive conversation, we are committed to building and maintaining strong partnerships and relationships to deliver public and community engagement.
Aspect 1: Strategy
Central is committed to diversifying the field it operates within and public and community engagement is the foundation of our funding, programming, and research commitments. By incorporating challenge-led research into our portfolio we are able to respond to the needs of both local and wider communities.
Identification of public and community groups and their respective needs is through:
collaborative dialogue
project- and participant-led activity
We focus on
supporting social cohesion
reducing marginalisation
developing the creative and cultural industries
increasing engagement
addressing challenges in the industry around under-representation
improving wellbeing
Aspect 2: Support
To deliver on the strategic aims outlined above, we provide a range of practical, financial, and structural support. Central has two academic pathways, Teaching and Research and Teaching and Scholarship. The Research and Knowledge Exchange team encourages colleagues contracted on both routes to facilitate engagement with a wide range of publics and communities, and contributions to KE are recognised in all promotion processes.
Funding support:
From 2021-23, Central received Knowledge Exchange funding from Research England, which has been used to directly support collaborative projects with external partners and for the commercialisation of our research. We are also in receipt of a three-year Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Impact Acceleration Award and have built in an Impact Champion Sabbatical to this funding, in addition to smaller awards, all of which have KE at their core. Funding bids must demonstrate mutual benefit between academic and external partners. We are currently in the process of reimagining consultancy in response to an external report on our systems and processes. Our aim is to encourage staff to bring their consultancy in-house for the benefit of our academic community and to ensure our systems are robust and supportive.
Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and practical support
The expansion of the Knowledge Exchange and Impact team enables us to provide one-to-one support for academics embarking on public and community engagement. We offer annual training on KE and contribute to faculty days. We also make use of consultants to inform our practice. Visiting professionals are regularly invited to give professional development sessions which maintain links with industry.
Student support
The Start-Up and Enterprise Scheme for students continues to make awards. In the past three years (2019-2022) it has supported c.65 student projects. Our Student Engagement in Knowledge Exchange initiative was part of a project funded by Research England and the Office for Students in 2020. Examples of projects which respond to the needs of some of the communities we work with include:
Geotone Community Interest Company (2021)
A low-cost augmented reality headset to lower access barriers to audio experiences for people with disabilities, the elderly, and people in remote locations.
Elenina (Sunshine Child) (2021)
Developing culturally responsive Drama Therapy through training to work with clients of colour alongside research, training, and workshops.
The Lovie Diaries (2021)
Creating accessible journals for performers and theatre makers with a mission to support neuro-diverse and working-class artists.
Aspect 3: Activity
The geographical reach of our public and community engagement spans the country and we have established links with institutions from a wide range of sectors from the NHS to heritage and culture and technology. Partner institutions over the past three years include Imperial War Museums, Manchester Jewish Museum, Holocaust Centre North, The Dome in Plymouth, National Trust, Theatre Centre, and the Donmar Warehouse, Positively UK, Public Health Wales, Barra Culture, Yorkshire Dance as well as companies such as Darkfield, Extant, Fevered Sleep, Moving Data, and Auricle. International partnerships include POLIN Museum and Teatr Powszechny (Warsaw), Teatro Kamikaze (Madrid), Jóvenes Clásicos (Málaga), Exilmuseum and Berliner Ensemble (Berlin), MeNO and CeSDAS (Palermo), ESMA Museum (Buenos Aires), The National Museums of Kenya (Nairobi), The Trust for African Rock Art (TARA), Stage Left (India), and Youth for Unity Voluntary Action (Mumbai). In total we have funded research and development with 32 different partners in the past two years. Many of these partners are longstanding collaborators with whom projects are on-going. KE funding in the last two years has enabled us to strategise longer term collaborations as well as respond to immediate economic, societal, and cultural challenges.
The following examples provide a cross-section of KE activities focused on public and community engagement in the delivery of Central’s institutional strategy.
1. Career Pathways for Global Majority Heritage Producers, London/UK
Partners: Tara Theatre
In partnership with Tara Theatre, this project is driven by the lack of sustainable pathways into employment and leadership roles for producers, challenges in recruitment of emerging producers, and a need to ensure that those from underrepresented backgrounds are supported and mentored during the employment crisis prompted by Covid and cuts to arts funding (National Producers’ Taskforce, 2021). It partners Central researchers with industry and aims to:
Use research into the politics of racialisation in British theatre, on and off stage, to create new ways of thinking in relation to career development and racialisation that influence creative practices and their audience reach;
Improve social equality and inclusion by improving access to employment among racially minoritised professionals in the performing arts;
Generate research-informed changes to cultural policy that will improve the representation of racially minoritised people in the sector.
2. Challenging Racialising Practices of Representation in the British Theatre, UK
Partner: Global Origins
A collaboration between Central researchers and Global Origins beginning in 2022, this network and platform for international and diasporic artists is dedicated to making spaces in institutions, curricula, and storytelling for artists who do not place their entire identity and sense of home within the UK. In developing recommendations for changes to practices and policies in the British Theatre sector that counteract racialising forms of representation, the project has:
Engaged the twin problems of how to take anti-racist activism in the theatre beyond a) quantitative diversity commitments that do not address qualitative issues relating to representations of racially minoritized people on British stages, and b) a narrow focus on processes of casting.
Produced concrete recommendations for changes to practices and policies are being disseminated through public and industry-focused events and meetings, and a report, whose scope and strategy is informed by participants in the process of co-research.
3. Creative arts and dementia care, Wales
Partner: Public Health Wales
A collaborative training programme, begun in 2021 to support Public Health Wales to upskill healthcare staff to implement cognitively stimulating creative arts activities in dementia care that are bespoke and person-centred. Researchers have worked across eight health boards in Wales to use creative practices developed at Central to deliver 18 workshops, including sessions on scaling projects, digital faciliatation, dementia friendly creative practice, managing uncertainty, and creating new partnerships and methodologies. Collaborating with healthcare staff, they also developed tech boxes for each health board to help them overcome barriers to implementing creative training by facilitating access to new technologies.
This project grew from a Research England funded project based at Imperial College Healthcare trust and has recently expanded to include work with a community group in Northern Ireland (March 2023). Initial feedback from workshop participants in Wales include:
‘[E]veryone was encouraged to participate and collaborate, bringing their own learning into the session’.
‘We are currently looking at the Jamboard and hoping to take it onto the ward in the next couple of weeks’.
‘I learnt how to engage with a group of patients, how to include a number of patients in an activity’.
‘I will use the information from the course to think of sustainable projects that can be delivered in my setting’.
4. Positively UK’s Archives, London
Partner: Positively UK
A 2021/22 project with Positively UK, a national HIV advocacy charity which aimed to address the lack of personal biographical narratives of the history of women living with HIV.
The project:
Built on a long-standing relationship between Central researcher and the charity.
Used Positively UK’s archives at London Metropolitan Archives and the Bishopsgate Library
Employed researcher-led creative archival workshops and performance-based activities to bring some of these histories to life, to creatively respond to the archives, and to record a series of podcasts based on the narratives found in the archives.
Combined knowledge of participatory theatre and arts practices with specialist knowledge on HIV from staff members at Positively UK.
It resulted in:
Activists being able to use the recorded and interpreted stories in outreach workshops and diversify existing narratives of what it means to live with HIV.
Positively UK bringing together and supporting extremely vulnerable women.
Ambitions to lobby government around health policies and work closely with HIV clinicians and medical researchers to influence their practice.
Aspect 4: Enhancing practice
Staff applying for KE and impact funding are offered preliminary mentorship with a member of the KE and Impact team to ensure that project planning aligns with the criteria for the fund they are applying for and to maximise chances of success. The Knowledge Exchange and Impact Manager coordinates quantitative and qualitative data collection and performance measurement of KE activity. All academic staff complete an annual survey detailing key achievements and activity. Recipients of internal funding are expected to evaluate their projects, detail outcomes, identify results, and outline next steps. These are used as the basis for conversations about follow-on funding and external funding bids. In many cases, evaluation is embedded within projects.
Central’s strategic investment and focus on developing Knowledge Exchange and public engagement is further recognised in the following grants and awards (https://www.cssd.ac.uk/content/knowledge-exchange-and-public-engagement):
British Academy Rising Star Engagement Awards, focused directly on KE capability in Early Career academics, for Dr Naomi Paxton (2019);
Selection of Dr Ella Parry-Davies as an AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker (2019), to increase public engagement in her research;
Dr Nicola Abraham’s KE with Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust received the National Dementia Care Award for Outstanding Arts & Creativity in Dementia Care (2019), as well as being a finalist for HSJ Mental Health Innovation for the Year and for the Culture, Health and Wellbeing Alliance: Collective Power Award 2020;
KE Fellow Dr Naomi Paxton secured a competitive Parliamentary Academic Fellowship, developing a network of academics and practitioners to inform research and practice on public engagement with government (2020-21).
Dr Nicola Abraham was shortlisted for a Guardian University Award for embedding AR into teaching to develop student use of this technology within their own practice in a range of community, clinical, and educational settings. (2020)
Dr Ella Parry-Davies shortlisted for a Times Higher award (2020)
Dr Kate Elswit – AHRC Fellowship for Visceral Histories, Visual Arguments: Dance-based approached to data (2022)
Performance Lab funding award from UKRI (2022-23)
Dr Clio Unger selected for the final stages of the AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker scheme (2023)
Aspect 5: Building on success
Central is strengthening approaches to knowledge exchange in the following ways:
Discussion and planning for evaluation at early stages of project development
Evaluation reports for all Knowledge Exchange and Impact projects
Synthesising learning from reports and disseminating guidance to staff through formal reports and mentorship
Follow-on funding, to support and extend already successful activity
Training and development for staff and students with external partners
Supporting opportunities for research and development with external partners
Regular reflection on and innovation of our Knowledge Exchange Strategy
The Head of Knowledge Exchange, the Academic Lead for Impact, and the Knowledge Exchange and Impact Manager provide initial support for projects ensuring that we widely disseminate knowledge and learning both from previous projects and from our networks in the sector. Staff are encouraged to embed evaluation in knowledge exchange and public engagement activity and this is requested as part of the process of conducting a project. Through our UK Research and Innovation Impact Acceleration Award (IAA) funding, we are involved in two networks with universities and higher education providers. One is focused on small institutions that are first-time recipients of IAA funding and the second a geographically based network for institutions in London. These two clusters enable us to share ideas and challenges with our peer group, as well as sharing policies, procedures, and examples of good practice. Data on curriculum-related KE is also gathered through internal monitoring systems, including course-level Annual Monitoring Reviews, which include review of public and community engagement objectives and outcomes. This data feeds into internal KPI tracking, assessment, and reporting, and contributes to decisions about organisational support and resource allocation. The Vice Principal for Research and Knowledge Exchange and Director of Learning and Inclusion produce an Annual Report for the Governing Body, which identifies key knowledge exchange outcomes over the previous academic year, including feedback from partners and stakeholders and this also feeds into the public benefit information in our annual accounts. We have developed a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) training and development offer, an online course which can be accessed anywhere in the world. Sharing expertise with the sector in this way enables a large number of people and organisations to access our knowledge and use it for their own means. Through the use of our facilities, Central is supporting research and development for cultural industry partners such as Digital Theatre Plus, ScanLab, White Light, and d&b audiotechnik. Going forward, Central will continue to build on its strengths in knowledge exchange and public engagement whilst learning through monitoring and evaluation measures already in place to identify and further develop areas for improvement.
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)