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Institutional Context
Summary
London Metropolitan University is one of London’s vital civic institutions, uniting with key organisations in our localities and wider capital, driving opportunity and prosperity for all. With two campuses and a business incubator, Accelerator, we have footprints in three council area. Partnering with these organisations is a major and distinct strand of our current strategic plan (2019/20-2024/25). Our KE activities cover the range of our science, social science and arts subjects, and we are particularly prominent in business, computing, social sciences and art/architecture. The London Met Lab: Empowering London, with 600 local partners, and the Accelerator, with up to 30 business start-ups, drive staff and student KE whilst also providing a space for other agencies to grow.
Institutional context
London Met Lab: Empowering London is a key driver of our current five-year strategy (2019/20-2024/25) which will ensure that we play an even bigger part in our city’s success. We will achieve this by engaging with partners and students to co-design solutions to the challenges facing London notably around Poverty and Deprivation; Health Improvement; Environment; Discrimination; Inclusive Economy; and Crime. We are committed to enabling students, graduates and staff to become agents of change and to make a positive contribution to society.
We consult with our communities to deliver on their needs. Our staff and students do this through involvement in local community initiatives, community development projects and volunteering. Our strategic development of knowledge exchange is closely allied to investigation of need; we seek to provide what our partners need/want. Accelerator was a specific response to regeneration issues in ‘Tech City’ in Hackney, and it continues to be a closely integrated part of the local economic landscape. Our Cyber Security Research Centre commercialises research expertise and business development to meet the needs in the fields of threat intelligence monitoring, user swipe behaviour, risk analysis and logical vulnerability, to cite just a few. Partners in these and other fields, as well recipients of related CPD and networking opportunities, who have provided significant funding, often on an ongoing basis, include Lloyd’s Bank, Callsign, Cisco and London Met Police.
We embed impact and knowledge exchange within our research culture and our academics work with external organisations such as the NHS, local authorities, housing associations and charities supporting them through a variety of consultancy and contract research commissions.
Accelerator and the business school in general support start-ups and SMEs through tailored business advice and offer professional courses and training for all business sizes on a range of business and management topics including marketing, procurement, cyber security, legal and professional practice issues. Programmes in partnership with external agencies, such as the British Council and the Small Business Charter
Our Holloway and Aldgate campuses welcome the public to our free lecture series and exhibitions throughout the year. Our students and academics contribute to the capital’s life beyond the academy through participation in a host of events and performances in cultural and other institutions. Our Special Collections host visitors from near and far who are interested in exploring the rich history of migration, craft and labour on display, as well those engaging with local history.
We have tailored expertise to the Industrial Strategy priorities of the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and have had some success.
KE is enshrined in the VC’s strategy and is marked by investment in a Director of London Engagement. We developed a promotion route for enterprise and integrated new training opportunities for students in order for them to benefit further from the facilitation provided by the Accelerator. In 2020, we invested in academic School Challenge Champions to align research, impact and KE, and will provide designated time for staff to pursue this work and to sit on external bodies.
For further information, please send queries to rpo@londonmet.ac.uk
Local Growth and Regeneration
Summary of approach
London Met has strong and enduring local connections in our national capital. We offer a variety of aids to growth and success among businesses, including start-ups and SMEs. Collaboration with several local boroughs, not for profit organisations and charities, sits alongside mature links with major industries sited in London. A partnership with London Met’s wide-ranging support network provides access to talent from range of practical academic subjects, events, expert training services, specialist facilities and knowledge exchange programmes.
Our civic network strengthens our mission: to tackle the inequalities facing London, improve people’s lives and deliver social justice. Through our Accelerator incubator we enable start-ups and local businesses to grow sustainably and to have a positive impact on the local economy.
Aspect 1: Strategy
The region we serve and engage with is articulated in the University’s Strategy for 2019/20-24/25 as our local area (defined as the boroughs of Islington, Hackney, Tower Hamlets, City of London and Waltham Forest) as well as London more widely.
Neighbouring one of the largest concentrations of wealth in the world, the City of London, the boroughs of Islington, Hackney and Tower Hamlets are in the top ten of sites of social mobility in England, but also have significant societal challenges including child poverty. We work with our local authorities and other key local organisations and across the capital to drive individual opportunity, socio-economic improvement and wider prosperity for all.
We identify strategic need by listening to our partners and evaluating our previous work, best practice and the data. On this basis, we formed a partnership with Hackney Council to collaborate on delivering a skills strategy to improve employment opportunities. In Islington, our VC sits on their London Living Wage action board. We are currently working with Islington Council to sign up to the Civic University Agreement with City, University of London including a shared Skills Recovery Strategy and Social mobility plan to benefit residents and businesses. We are cementing partnerships with Tower Hamlets Council and the Corporation of London, and in discussion with Tower Hamlets, to develop a series of community improvements; we also co-produce research with the community, for example on safer housing estates with Toynbee Hall and the Council. We have also been working with North London boroughs on attitudes to social distancing and how these might affect return to business.
London Met hosts the GLA’s Social Integration & Regeneration Learning Network for 23 London Boroughs which aims to bring together urban regeneration and social integration professionals, experts and academics to develop learning across London boroughs and to learn together. The network’s focus is on providing space, time and skilled facilitation.
We also run the Partners in Education scheme with over 20 London FE colleges (with over 100,000 FTE). Here we work together on strategies, providing advice, guidance and activities, research development, and reskilling.
The reach of our work is also global. Our Strategy is to strengthen our collaborative partnership network to enable more students to study with us, and over 5,500 do so in partner institutions across the UK, Europe, Russia, Asia and the Caribbean. The British Council also funded the internationalisation of our student enterprise competition, Big Idea Challenge, to Central Asia, the South Caucasus and Ukraine, and also to Egypt. In the latter, we are working with the Egyptian Federation of Egyptian Industries and the Ministry of Trade and Industry to advise them on establishing a start-up Innovation Hub. We are also a partner in the British Council Creative Spark Higher Education Enterprise programme, which support universities and partnerships internationally to develop enterprise skills and creative economy across seven Central Asian countries. In 2019 there were 480 entries from 800 teams and this year’s online ceremonies had approx. 80,000 views.
Aspect 2: Activity
Business support activities are currently focused in our incubator, Accelerator which is based in Shoreditch (Hackney) and in our Aldgate campus (Tower Hamlets). HEIF contributes to the staff costs supporting student enterprise and student start-ups, while the University separately invested more than £150,000 in 2018-19 completely transforming the entire 2,150 sq ft ground floor of our Shoreditch site to accommodate student and start-up networking events and graduate startup desk space.
Our Enterprise team continues to work in partnership with GetSet for Growth, a programme designed to help SMEs grow and become more profitable, funded by the Regional Growth Fund, J.P. Morgan and the ERDF. Our Shoreditch location provided event space for GetSet's London workshops as well as workshops targeted at start-ups from professional service firms and in return, our students, graduates, alumni and based start-ups had access to a range of experts on topics spanning growth, marketing, profitability, IP, cyber security and procurement. We also work with Capital Enterprise, who lobby and support small business through their programmes and network, and a number of London Met start-ups have directly benefited from their investment workshops. Each of the start-up founders based in Accelerator give two days per year supporting our students as guest speakers, judges, mentors, and as providers of projects and briefs for students to develop.
We also deliver annually student enterprise programmes and workshops:
Launchpad (intensive 12-week programme) around 30 students and graduates test, validate and launch innovative new businesses;
Foodie Founder (day-long workshop) 30 students and alumni aim to launch food and drinks businesses;
Fashion Founder (day-long workshop) seeks launches into fashion;
Start-up Sprint (with QMU, London) (intensive weekend) where 70 students and graduates work in teams to conceive, validate and pitch a new business;
Christmas Market which gives 40 talented student designer/makers the chance to sell their products at a busy East London street market;
Quickstart (four weeks) highly practical programme to support freelancer and lifestyle businesses.
The total external investment in our graduate start-ups over the past three years was £11.5M and the tech start-ups based in Accelerator also attracted significant venture capital over this period. For example, in the calendar year 2017 alone these start-ups and 2016-17 graduates received £14.7M inward investment, £21M total revenue and created 171 new jobs.
Our engagement with national government drivers, such as the Industrial Strategy, has been very strong for an institution of our size and profile. We were the only London university to receive funding from BEIS’s ‘Leading to Grow Programme’ when our Business School (GSBL) was part of a consortium awarded funding to support 50 microbusinesses in London to engage with technology to boost their productivity. The Leading to Grow Programme is offered at no cost to microbusinesses employing up to nine people, a traditionally overlooked sector of the market. GSBL also will be working with the Small Business Charter to deliver a fully-funded programme aimed at supporting small and medium-sized businesses to ‘survive and thrive’ post COVID-19.
Similarly, our Cyber Security Centre, is an innovation hub where businesses work in partnership with academic staff and students on finding business solutions. Centre researchers engaged in two DCMS and Innovate UK projects on predictive analytics and Beacon-based Authentication and have two more ongoing in hybrid AI and citizen data and blockchain technologies in health-care settings. (completed projects include Threat Intelligence Modelling, for Lloyds bank (£110K); Analysis of users’ swipe behaviour on mobile devices, for Callsign (£53K); and Research into Risk Analysis and Logical Vulnerability, funded by Innovate UK (£82K). Additionally, the Cyber Security Centre is also home to the CISCO Network Academy which offers accredited training in cyber security operations training and which also trains instructors. It is also the only regional Palo Alto Networks Academy.
Our Business School also has a partnership with the Corporation of London in the delivery of an Apprenticeship in Procurement where we are the provider of the professional Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply accredited diploma. We also run Graduate Teaching Apprenticeships for Hackney and Islington.
As a founding member of the Aldgate Partnership, we supported the application for an Aldgate Business Improvement District. The Aldgate Connect BID went live in April 2020 and creates a strong business voice to lobby on behalf of businesses, enhancing the physical environment, creating a safer, stronger and more appealing destination.
Our Cities research and consultancy unit on the Aldgate campus has been actively engaged in the Old Kent Road Opportunity Area since 2015. Working with local business and community organisations including Vital OKR and the Southwark Planning Network, Cities researchers have been collecting data to underpin the co-designing of solutions to the challenges facing this formerly industrial district of London as it undergoes a regeneration programme led by the London Borough of Southwark.
We have also supported London based businesses and SMEs in the delivery of Continuing Professional Development and Professional Accreditation for their staff including architects, lawyers, marketing, credit management and procurement professionals. Upholstery courses are accredited by the Association of Master Upholsterers and Soft Furnishers; and we have developed a short course in partnership with Lewisham Homes that gives them a voice in improving housing services. The Refugee Assessment and Guidance Unit (RAGU) at London Metropolitan University provides specialist careers advice and guidance as well as employability training for all refugee health professionals. This programme is part of the NHS-funded Building Bridges Programme.
We have a dedicated team delivering work-based learning programmes. Over the past three years the team has enabled 6,000 of our students to avail of work placements in local businesses and organisations or to engage in live projects.
HEIF funding supported a number of networking events for businesses to meet staff and students with a view to providing work placements and live project opportunities for students as well as engaging our staff in consultancy and contract research. These events have included private views and business breakfasts, VivaTech and Brain Meet Ups and an annual Enterprise and Networking day for the cyber security industry.
We also support local young people in accessing educational activities in partnership with other organisations. These include STEM masterclasses in collaboration with the Royal Institution; National Saturday Clubs in Art & Design and Writing & Talking for the Sorrell Foundation; workshops with the Tower Hamlets Artist Teacher Network; and specific activities working with looked-after and estranged students; refugees; and young people with disabilities.
The University also participated in two EU funded knowledge exchange partnerships: Hub4Growth and IMEP that finished in 2018. These involved reciprocal work on institutional development relating to employability, enterprise and academic improvement. Partner institutions were located in seven countries.
Aspect 3: Results
Partners funding collaborations, courses, services, advices, etc. (e.g. tech companies, banks) require reporting, and their feedback shapes modified and new offerings.
We survey the start-ups in our incubator to capture the total inward investment raised annually, their total revenue, and the jobs they have created. In 2019 the figures were £10.4M investment, 25M revenue, 84 jobs created. This information also was reported by the University in our HEIF Annual Monitoring Statement, along with data on our own graduate start-ups which is included in our HE-BCIS return. The start-up hub reports into the University’s Research and Knowledge Exchange Committee.
The successes of our Student Enterprise programmes are shared publicly through the Accelerator website and through online media. This year’s Big Idea Challenge award ceremony moved online owing to Coronavirus. The awards were watched live by more than 600 people on the night, and the event has since received over 6,400 views on YouTube. The winners of the Big Idea Challenge each year are automatically given a place on our Launchpad programme each year.
News about student enterprise and start-ups is shared with an external mailing list of over 2,000 through regular newsletters as well as via staff and student intranets and monthly newsletters. The London Met Lab also regularly updates over 400 separate institutions.
We report annually to the accrediting institutions for our Professional Courses and our portfolios are regularly reviewed by the institutions. We have been a Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply Centre of Excellence for 22 years.
We collect feedback from students on our short courses which are fed back to the course teams and quoted on our website. Data on our short courses is included in our HE-BCI return each year. Cisco compile and analyse student feedback from their accredited programmes using an Oracle database which provides various parameters, including trends in performance and comparisons with other academies, which we then access on an "Academy Success Dashboard" which is an Oracle Analytics Interactive Dashboard.
We engage in regular and repeated dialogue with London councils, commercial outlets, cultural institutions and local organisations, as well as those further afield. We present our knowledge and research at partner-organised events. Here we showcase the work which we believe suits our audiences. Strong relationships are developed from the targeting of excellent work at suitable partners with complementary needs.
For further information, please send queries to simon@accelerator-london.com
Public & Community Engagement
Summary of approach
London Met has been rooted in the local community since 1848 when one of its original institutions provided of evening classes. Currently working with over 600 local community partners including, but not limited to, local authorities, NHS Trusts, sports clubs, third sector organisations and small businesses we continue to offer a wide range of free engagement and support in our local areas. Activities include clinics, educational outreach programmes, knowledge exchange and research with relevant organisations, public lectures, exhibitions, performances and training and support for businesses.
A recent strategic innovation, and fundamental to our strategy going forward, is to invite Londoners to engage with us in addressing the major challenges London is currently facing through the London Met Lab: Empowering London
Aspect 1: Strategy
Led by the Vice Chancellor, ‘Giving back to the City’ is a key strand of the University’s strategy for 2020-25 and the London Met Lab: Empowering London, that launched in Autumn 2020, is the public facing representation of this whereby local communities partner with the university in tackling major challenges facing London. Which partners we work with are defined by our geography. We identified local government bodies by proximity, through the exploration of mutual benefit, by investigating their needs, and focusing on our strengths. Whilst we have had many relationships over the years and have driven numerous programmes, we have consulted widely and have analysed data and are currently working with 23 London Local Authorities, especially those where our campuses and incubator are based: Islington, Hackney and Tower Hamlets.
Or strategic thematic foci are Crime; Poverty and Deprivation; Social Wealth; Discrimination; Health Improvement; and the Environment.
Our co-designed goals are:
embrace the strategic priorities of our London partners and the concerns of our local communities to support the city’s economy and address the social issues it faces
provide opportunities for our staff and students to give back to our city and contribute to its success
provide the capital with values-driven graduates who will support London’s transformation in line with our mission.
Driving these initiatives is a newly-appointed Director of London Engagement, located within the Vice Chancellor's Office, and 40 Challenge Champions, who are academics and professional service staff, identified for their expertise. This work is included in their workload allocations as well as in the portfolios of Pro-Vice Chancellors, an Impact Manager, Heads of Departments, a Student Union Sabbatical Officer and the Research and Postgraduate Office. In the new Course Improvement Plan (CEP), course leaders must identify how this important strand of the strategy is reflected. Reports are sent quarterly to the Board of Governors, with bi-annual presentations.
As well as University investment in this work, funding has been obtained for various individual projects. The Upward Bound project for young people in Islington has received over £2Million from the Dame Alice Owen Foundation and, following a research report analysing the programme’s value, conducted by the Office of our PVC Research and KE, will continue to receive funding.
The public are invited to contact us through a dedicated email or via current contacts, we then speak to them about their needs, the challenges they are facing and how we work in partnership to tackle these problems.
Aspect 2: Support
Our students engage with local communities bringing fresh insights and enthusiasm overseen by experienced academics. Students engaging in community based knowledge exchange activity are awarded academic credit through a range of fully embedded subject specific modules as well as our new Empowering London module which allows all Level 5 & 6 students to work intensively with a community project or organisation on a challenge they are faced with. Student engagement in KE is overseen by our Head of Work-Based Learning, Policy and Practice and her team, by Placement Officers and by Live Projects Co-ordinators. We are currently working with Citizens UK on implementing training for working with communities for staff and students. In 2020, we will introduce a category in our staff awards for outstanding contributions to KE.
We invite academic Schools to submit bids bi-annually for a Transformation fund which utilises our HEIF allocation. The fund emphasises the relationship between research and knowledge exchange and is intended to push a body of research work out into the world via commercial, governmental, charitable and cultural agencies. Alongside this, our staff continue working in the community, providing research training and advice and guidance on topics of our expertise, from public health to homelessness.
Many Staff across the university are formally involved in public/community advisory or governance roles. Sitting on numerous boards and steering groups, for example Skills strategy boards for Local Authorities, Educational Boards of Governors, Town Centre management groups, disability forums, and much more. We also lead on the Social Integration and Regeneration Learning Network for 23 London boroughs.
London Met Lab brokers partnerships with local government, charities, social enterprises and small businesses. The dedicated web pages of the Lab provide information to the public on what we have been doing, partners and staff involved and a simple way to get in contact. In the future the public will also be able to book on to our growing suite of support clinics (outlined under ‘local growth’).
Aspect 3: Activity
Over the last 3 years we have annually run numerous activities with and for the public and community, from free lectures and gallery installations to short courses. A strong flavour of our activity can be found below and on our dedicated website.
An outstanding example is the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit’s (CWASU) community engagement, consultancy and contract research work. Projects in the past three years included Big Lottery funded work on Women and Girls Initiative (WGI), in partnership with The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations and DMSS Research, to deliver evaluation and learning support to the 63 projects funded by the Big Lottery Fund to support and empower women and girls facing violence, abuse, exploitation and mental health issues; an external evaluation service to Rape Crisis England & Wales' (RCEW) Weaving the Web project which developed of an online platform for women and girl survivors of sexual violence; ongoing collaboration with Barnardo’s on their Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse and Child Sexual Exploitation; and the delivery of a Manual for the Speak Up/Out programme of lesson plans and resources intended to raise awareness of sexual harassment and sexism for young people and schools staff. CWASU also runs a number of short courses, delivers bespoke training and is developing a Domestic Violence clinic.
In 2018/19 Criminology lecturers teamed up with the Evening Standard for a cannabis project to undertake an investigation into how cannabis dealers in London feel towards legalisation of the drug. The Rollin' With The Punches Mental Health Programme (rebranded from BrainBox,which uses boxing training to teach coping skills for sufferers of mental illness, and which won the staff category in the Big Idea Challenge in 2018), was awarded £103K together with partner Fight4Change by the London Together Fund, which will allow us to work with 5 further cohorts, providing more intensive mental health support.
Community need in relation to professional practice underpins our three long-standing clinics, founded over 10 years ago, in Law, Sports Injury and Architecture and Design, where students provide pro bono advice and low-cost services under the supervision of experienced academics. To enhance what this model brings to both students and the community we are expanding our capacity to six clinics (2021) and 18 by 2023. Additionally, our Law clinic will add to its consumer law portfolio with guidance on housing, employment and education, while our Sports Therapy students will work with the NHS to reduce waiting lists.
Our engagement of students is significant, including Journalism students publicising the work of local charities. An architecture student made the semi-final of the Mayor’s entrepreneurial competition for his Climate Crisis Hub and students have undertaken a translation project for sexual health campaign Long Time No Syphilis. A wide range of public improvement projects, and play structures and street furniture, including items for a new free and permanent exhibition showcasing stories of social action, launched at Toynbee Hall in 2018, have been produced. Staff and students also engage in events and performances beyond the academy, for example with Tate Exchange, London Festival of Architecture and more. For the second year in a row Theatre Arts students participated in a public performance, Pecking Order, over a week before Christmas 2019 which resulted in the highest percentage of Tate Modern visitors to a Tate Exchange event. The total number of visitors was 3,267 which represented 4.56% of the visitors to Tate Modern and 18.67% to the Blavatnik Building.
The Lost Trades of Islington exhibition was the culmination of a collaboration between staff and students from our Schools of Social Professions and Computing & Digital Media and Age UK and Islington Heritage Service. Based on oral history interviews conducted by London Met students and older volunteers living in Islington the exhibition celebrated Islington’s industrial past and we have recently launched a Centre for Life writing and Oral History
The University hosts a number of free public lectures, exhibitions and performances, including a Saturday morning lecture series in partnership with the London Society, a photographic exhibition celebrating the history of the East End based Brady Clubs, and an exhibition series featuring emerging Belgian architectural practices in partnership with Wallonie Bruxelles Architectures. Our Design for Cultural Commons public programme, with a mailing list of 300, had an average of 60 attendees at each lecture. We have also shared our facilities with organisations such as the British Council, Open City, and the Queen’s Young Leaders programme to enable them to host events and exhibitions in a central London location.
We host over 3000 visitors annually to our Archives and Special Collections based in Aldgate, where each distinct archive has an online presence. TUC history online, which was developed with us, alone has around 80,000 visits each year. We also fund an archivist for our Special Collections and co-fund, with the Trade Union Congress (TUC), a librarian.
We are also working toward Civic University Agreements with the London boroughs where we have a physical presence i.e. Islington, Hackney and Tower Hamlets as well as continuing to work with boroughs across London.
Aspect 4: Results and learning
Historically, the evaluation of projects has depended on the type of project and partner’s/funder’s requirements. Due to the need to distil the results of such delivery and to have a clearer overview of the benefit we provide, we intend to ensure that, going forward, all activities will be evaluated, and their impact assessed using tools consistently and applying theory of change under specific frameworks.
Many partners have developed sustained their associations with us on the basis of successful delivery. CWASU is a strong example where evidence-based delivery is seen in the fact it publishes multiple reports annually and gains repeat investment and additional word-of-mouth contracting annually.
In general, evaluative feedback is gathered from the public, businesses, partners, as well as individual students on all activities. This feedback is shared with relevant staff, course teams and partners on a regular basis and activities are reviewed using this data.
Testimonials from beneficiaries of our community engagement projects are also regularly quoted on our website.
Aspect 5: Acting on results
Knowledge Exchange is one of the bedrocks of our University Strategy, developed with wide consultation internally and externally, via focus groups, discussions, formal input etc. The Strategy KPIs are delivered and monitored through an annual planning and implementation cycle.
We have internal committees that share results of KE work alongside developments in research. These exist at both School and University levels. We also report successes in regular newsletters to staff and students, emails to partners and pieces in the local press and social media. Opportunities, such as the Big Idea challenge are repeatedly emphasised internally and beyond, home and abroad, and with sponsors. We also share findings from our research with relevant networks and partners, holding open meetings and inviting them to feedback on our findings.
We act on the feedback from partners and have developed new offerings for the likes of Lloyd’s and Cisco (for whom we are a Super-Regional Academy). Similarly, the British Council has commissioned further specific programmes, with Uzbekistan and Egypt based on our work in London.
We are also developing a new layer of evaluation for all KE activities in line with the introduction of KEF and will seek to make outcomes more widely known laterally across and between partners, rather than linearly, where our systems are fully articled, from us to partnership, commissioners, or business market points.
For further information, please send queries to d.macraild@londonmet.ac.uk