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Institutional Context
Summary
The University strategy 2016 – 2021 is underpinned by our vision: ‘By pioneering exceptional industry partnerships, we will lead the way in real world experiences preparing students for life.’ This will be realised through a continued focus on Industry Collaboration, which links all aspects of the University’s activity, whether teaching and learning, research or enterprise, with the external environment at a macro and micro level.
The strategy is focused across three investment priorities: Robotics, Smart Living and Digital. This builds on our areas of expertise and excellence, while enhancing opportunities for our academics and students to engage with - and bring tangible benefits to - the University, industry partners and the regional economy.
Institutional context
With a strategy singularly focused on Industry Collaboration in all aspects of its business, the University of Salford is uniquely positioned within the sector in its proven ability to engage with industry.
In prioritising the core areas of Robotics, Smart Living and Digital we are able to coalesce our research, academic expertise and investment across our broad knowledge base, creating significant traction and progress within Robotics, Energy, Construction, Health and Arts, and with direct correlation to the wider Local Enterprise Partnership and devolved local authority strategies.
These priorities underpin our knowledge exchange (KE) activity, enhancing our research focus and subsequent input into teaching excellence, and through this delivering sustainable growth and impact, contributing to key regional projects and expanding the opportunities for contract research, skills interventions and industry partnerships. This directly supports and complements our student enterprise, business start-up and employability strategies, delivering entrepreneurial and real-world opportunities for our students through our business incubator support programme “Launch”, and our industry-embedded curriculum, which serves as an ever-growing foundation to build industry engagement and continually reinvest in our staff and student talent.
Our industry-framed Academic Career Framework focuses on utilising KE activity to create academic pathways to success. The framework provides professional recognition of our entrepreneurial environment for our partners and academics, establishing relevance and rigour but which, importantly, is construed to capture those areas of the GMCA Local Industrial Strategy, the Third Sector and the NHS that complement our own areas of focus: healthy ageing, advanced manufacturing, the digital and creative economies and clean growth.
Salford has a successful record of working with industry; we were ranked 5th for SME engagement in the Witty review and we have been at the forefront of KTP since its inception, managing 160+ KTPs. The University has a reputation for applied real-world research with measurable impact on job and wealth generation. We work annually with 1,200 SMEs and 12,000 delegates through our sector-leading CPD offer. The University’s KE strategy has been translated through the KEF perspectives and will inform ongoing HEIF investment to support our future Industry Collaboration objectives and develop a KE culture across the University, by generating income, attracting match funding from industry partners and enabling academic engagement to be scaled up.
The key outputs of this will be to utilise our funds to grow further our academic engagement and links with industry by creating appropriate mechanisms to allow our academics to access match funds to stimulate potential partnerships and maintain and enhance the quality of business support, public and community engagement and KE activities.
The development of our KE strategy will provide the University with a new lens to challenge, reassess and reposition our engagement with industry and the community, positioning us as bold, distinctive and ambitious in relation to the higher education sector in our offer and practice and driving external and business partnerships even further, through an industry-led curriculum which prepares our students for work and life.
For further information, please send queries to R.L.Woolley@salford.ac.uk
Local Growth and Regeneration
Summary of approach
At the University of Salford, mutually beneficial industrial partnerships are at the heart of everything we do.
Salford is where leading researchers, practitioners and professionals collaborate on multi-disciplinary projects and where students work with staff and industry partners on work-based learning opportunities, applying their learning and skills in real-world environments.
We embrace the opportunities arising from devolution into the Northern Powerhouse and Greater Manchester.
Our investment priorities of Robotics, Smart Living and Digital are aligned with the Greater Manchester Local Industry Strategy, and we seek to build critical mass around our key disciplinary strengths such as acoustics, prosthetics. orthotics, robotics, sustainability and the built environment to ensure we can deliver value-added results for SMEs and larger businesses locally and regionally.
Aspect 1: Strategy
The University of Salford is based in the City of Salford and has its origins in the demands for new industrial skills created by the Industrial Revolution. The institutes created to meet those needs grew throughout the 20th Century leading to the University’s creation in 1967. This legacy continues today in Salford’s singular strategy focused on Industry Collaboration in all aspects of our business.
The City Salford is part of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA), made up of 10 local authorities who work together on city-region issues such as sustainability, economic growth, innovation and regeneration. The University is located in the heart of this region, sharing an immediate city centre border with Manchester and playing host to major investments such as MediaCityUK. As a University we work at both levels, recognising our role as a major stakeholder in the wider region, as well as our importance as an anchor institution for the City of Salford, which, while growing rapidly, has regeneration challenges and areas of deprivation.
Overall, the GMCA is driven by the Greater Manchester Strategy which addresses economic, environmental and social issues in a wider-reaching sustainability plan. The Local Industrial Strategy (LIS) focuses specifically on economic development but with a view to the social and environmental impact of this. From the University’s perspective, this speaks to areas of capability where we are recognised as a key partner:
GMCA is looking to establish its role as, “a world-leading region for innovative firms ….in manufacturing, facilitating the design of new products and processes. It will support other national centres to build the UK’s leadership in tomorrow’s technologies…. [supported by] ….specialisms in robotics, artificial intelligence and automation at the University of Salford.” This growth is supported by the Greater Manchester (GM) Innovation Eco-System, a wide-ranging strategy to create a world-leading research base
Manchester has a commitment to become an Energy Transition Region and a zero-carbon city by 2038. This means not only decarbonisation, but also the associated clean growth and additional jobs. “Greater Manchester’s commitment to becoming a carbon neutral city-region…” is supported by Salford’s expertise and facilities in, “…smart meters and [the] Energy House”
GM’s “…..broadcasting sector is internationally recognised, and sits at the heart of a wider content creation and media sector, underpinned by technological innovation…. [with] … strengths in creativity including the University of Salford’s MediaCityUK campus”
Health innovation, in support of the devolved Health and Social Care budget is identified as a key element of the LIS. The University works closely with the GM Health and Social Care Partnership, in particular around health and healthcare innovation as an active participant in Health Innovation Manchester looking to drive, “research and innovation into daily practice.”
The University is a fully engaged partner within the city-region, connecting our core strategic strengths with city-region priorities to drive the strategy of collaboration in GMCA-facilitated partnerships that include business, universities and other local stakeholders, such as the NHS. This is echoed in our commitment to our immediate location and, in partnership with Salford City Council, we have developed the Salford Crescent Masterplan which will create a new GBP2.5bn creative and innovative hub within GM.
This deep level of engagement ensures that the University both responds to the strategy for the city and takes an active role in shaping it. It aims to be an active participant and has been involved in and led some recent initiatives to deliver the city-region’s priorities.
GM Innovation Eco-System: a major initiative to improve the research base within GM, with Salford identified as having specific strengths in core areas as well as strong industry engagement.
Energy Innovation Agency: which has developed to link the energy innovation research base to industry, including Salford’s high-profile energy and buildings work.
Green City Partnership: The University has multiple points of engagement throughout the 5-year environment plan, looking at issues such as air quality, transport, and nature-based solutions.
University academics and professional staff are engaged at all levels with city region organisations. Our membership of local groups and local authority boards means that there is a constant dialogue between the University and the wider city-region at all levels, connecting the knowledge base to the immediate and future issues for the city.
Aspect 2: Activity
Salford’s strategy identifies three themes of Robotics, Smart Living and Digital to encompass a series of activities reflecting the city-region’s strategic priorities.
Robotics: Manufacturing and Automation
Salford has significant strength in robotics and IA focusing on autonomous vehicles and manufacturing. Our investments in autonomous vehicles, including GBP300,000 through our HEIF programme, has seen engagement with Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) exploring how autonomous vehicles can be practically deployed. Our work in manufacturing has led to a commitment to develop the Robotics Innovation Centre, a GBP13m investment in research and innovation facilities funded by the ERDF.
Smart Living: Built and Urban Environment
Building on the success of the Salford Energy House, Salford has created the Energy House Laboratories, a nationally leading centre of excellence strongly embedded in the city region. EnergyHouse2.0 is currently under development and is identified in the GMCA Sustainable Urban Development Strategy and LIS. Through this activity Salford has a presence on key city-region groups such as the Green City Partnership, Low Carbon Buildings Group, Energy Innovation Group and Low Carbon Asset Managers Group.
The University helps deliver the city region’s environmental strategy through work such as AquaUoS. Established through HEIF investment in 2018, it offers support for civil engineers, developers and local authorities by providing understanding of rivers and their associated landscapes, sustainable river basin management, flood risk mitigation and river restoration. The AquaUoS team is multidisciplinary to drive innovation and improve sustainability on environmental projects and has grown substantially in the past 2 years. Data visualisation groups within the University are used to support communication of flooding and resilience strategies with partners such as insurance companies, local authorities and the Environment Agency.
The Centre for Applied Archaeology undertakes most of its projects in the North-West and GM through the GM Archaeological Advisory Service and works to embed heritage within GM’s master planning framework. Having heritage within these debates at the early stage of any proposals hugely influences the final outcomes for growth and regeneration of the area, with significant benefit to the lives of people within GM.
Smart Living: Health
Our Salford Social Prescribing Hub has created a new digital tool for healthcare professionals to identify ways to support people’s health and wellbeing in the community. Working with industry partner Elemental, the UK’s largest digital social prescribing provider, Salford has developed an assessment and planning tool to support the social prescribing process and improve patient outcomes. The digital tool helps healthcare professionals to identify which local non-clinical services (e.g. volunteering, arts activities, gardening, cookery, healthy eating, and a range of sports) are going to be most meaningful and useful to the person, and to work with them to decide on the best plan of support. This will be first used by the Wellbeing Matters programme in Salford and integrated into its Elemental dashboard.
Prosthetics and Orthotics is an area of research excellence at Salford which secured an EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in 2019. Industrial collaboration is at the heart of the CDT and the wider team’s activities. The team are active innovators, with regular patent filings, and look to collaborate with innovative companies to develop these patents into products on the market. We are working with COVVI, a rapidly growing upper-limb prosthetics company, to further develop a novel electrode housing which markedly reduces socket movement. Additionally, the team have provided advice to the GM Health and Social Care Partnership on walking aids and provided patient guidance for the NHS on managing arthritis.
Digital:
Salford’s investment in the MediaCityUK Campus includes a range of activities in support of local industry. MediaCityUK is the hub of the digital and media innovation ecosystem within GM from which over 250 media and digital businesses operate. Our work in video encoding standards, such as MPEG, provides links with industry-facing working groups, while the award-winning work in acoustics has created the spin-out, Salsa Sound, leading to work with national broadcasters based at MediaCityUK, particularly in sports broadcast.
The GM Cyber Foundry is a collaboration between Salford, Manchester, Lancaster and MMU Universities to help businesses assess and develop cyber-strategies and utilise cyber-technologies to innovate and support growth. Launched in May 2019, the programme is part-funded by ERDF and aims to support 150 GM SMEs, with Salford contracted to support 50. The consortium has been successful in securing funding to support the new GM AI Foundry (based upon the Cyber Foundry model) which will work with 170 SMEs across GM to develop new products and services by applying AI to their business and is due to be launched soon.
Aspect 3: Results
Achieving and acting on results
Describe the outcomes and/or impacts of your activity. How do you communicate and act on the results?
Salford’s work in GM is extensive, involving numerous individual projects with regional businesses. We undertake the largest number of consultancy and facility projects with SMEs of any university in the GM area (source: HEBCI). During the past three years (2016/17 to 2018/19) Salford completed 4,900 consultancy and facilities projects and approximately 70% were with SMEs.
Through Salford Professional Development (SPD), a wholly-owned independent company created to deliver events and training on behalf of the University, Salford works with over 12,000 delegates annually. SPD has contributed more than GBP12m income to the University’s HEBCI return in the same 3-year period.
Through the GM Cyber Foundry, Salford has already worked with 33 SMEs and is well underway to deliver further targeted support, with intensive technical assistance from cyber security experts, to 15 SMEs.
In 2018 Salford secured GBP8m of ERDF funding in support of the GBP16m Energy House 2.0 facility, currently under construction and referenced in the Local Industrial Strategy. Exploring related issues such as air quality and nature-based solutions has led to a GBP1.3m investment in green building retrofit through the GMCA-led IGNITION project and has created the Salford-led Retrofit Accelerator aiming to reduce the heat demand from existing homes in GM, and links to work around urban agriculture and food poverty.
AquaUoS has undertaken over 100 projects since its creation and has established a collaborative partnership working with DEFRA and the Environment Agency. The market for AquaUoS is national, with a primary customer base of local authorities, utilities companies and charitable trusts. Feeding back into the University, they have embedded their work into undergraduate and postgraduate teaching modules.
The Acoustics team undertakes approximately GBP500,000 of commercial work annually with a regional, national and, in some instances, global market for their consultancy and facilities projects. In the automotive industry, their work has led to the development of an ISO standard on structure-borne sound which is now used by multinational corporations. In civil engineering and construction, the sound insulation modelling tools are used for product development and developed the method of assessment of low frequency noise cited in BS4142, which is used for planning applications. In media, the international measurement standard ISO 17497-2, which covers sound diffuser design, is used for performance spaces across the world including The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, Apple, Google and Facebook.
Salford Archaeology was commissioned by GMCA to provide heritage advice for the Greater Manchester Spatial Framework, the key regeneration strategy for the next decade. They led the regional update of the North West Regional Research Framework for the Historic Environment, engaging with over 350 regional industry professionals, public stakeholders and academics to provide an updated archaeological resource framework for the next decade. All commercial archaeological activity within the North-west must consult and reference this. Through the Association of Local Government Archaeology Officers the team published a survey of the benefit of archaeology in the planning system.
In health, a key project used social media to change practice in chronic kidney disease and maternity care provision. The team mined data from social media used to inform kidney disease pain management in workshops for 200 people through the Greater Manchester Kidney Information network and have developed a franchise model for delivery in other geographic areas (Merseyside).
For further information, please send queries to R.L.Woolley@salford.ac.uk
Public & Community Engagement
Summary of approach
At the University of Salford, our mission is to unite colleagues, students, industry and communities through shared knowledge, learning and innovation. We achieve this through our single strategic priority around Industry Collaboration. This cuts across all University activity, including teaching and learning, research and enterprise, as well as communications and engagement.
From contributing to the local industrial strategy or working with partners in the health and care sector to train the workforce of the future, this strategy is not place-blind. This does not mean that we do not pursue global excellence, rather we seek to ensure that this excellence is shared with our city and our city-region through our conscious civic role in Salford and across Greater Manchester.
Aspect 1: Strategy
Through our Industry Collaboration strategy we work with partners to deliver mutual benefit. We define ‘industry’ in a broad sense, to encompass business partnerships, public sector relationships and links with community groups and third sector organisations.
A key plank of this strategy is to build partnerships across our city and our city-region to share knowledge, inform local decision-making and contribute to economic growth in our communities. This includes pursuing a strategy that supports engagement with Salford City Council and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA).
There is significant strategic alignment between the leadership teams of the University and our public sector partners to work towards shared goals. The Vice-Chancellor and her team meet regularly with the City Mayor of Salford, we are represented across a range of civic leadership forums, including the Salford Culture and Place Partnership, Digital Salford and Salford City Leaders, and we bring the two organisations together at joint summits to share knowledge and agree collaborative goals.
A major demonstration of this strategic commitment to place is the ambitious 10-15 year development strategy on which we have partnered with Salford City Council. Salford Crescent Masterplan is a GBP2.5bn regeneration scheme that will create a new city district in Salford, drive growth through investment in innovation and skills, and provide a new cultural offer for the local community. Community engagement and social value runs through this development plan as the aim of the project is, at its core, to transform the lives of those that live and work in Salford.
With partners in Greater Manchester, our commitment to our civic role is translated through our involvement in the development and delivery of the Greater Manchester Local Industrial Strategy and the ambition to create a collaborative Greater Manchester innovation ecosystem.
Although we are actively engaged in knowledge exchange in our community through many routes, the University does not have a standalone P&CE strategy. Approaches to engagement are therefore interpreted in a variety of ways and key example activities are discussed in this statement.
Aspect 2: Support
Support for our P&CE activities is underpinned by a variety of different mechanisms:
Internal funding and resourcing
Public engagement and outreach is included in academic workload planning, recruitment, selection and promotion criteria. Further work to embed and support this activity is ongoing through our professional development frameworks – Salford Behaviours and the Salford Academic.
Since 2017 School academic Research Impact Coordinators have been appointed and given workload to develop public engagement activities as part of their wider impact roles.
A Research Impact Fund provides funding up to GBP4,000 to support researchers actively demonstrating a commitment to public engagement and widening participation with a view to generating real-world impact
External and match funding is provided to the University as a partner in the ESRC Festival of Social Science, as lead educational partner for Manchester Science Festival and for the University’s annual Festival of Research (FoR).
Communication and media
The University’s Press Office is responsible for publishing stories internally and externally to showcase good news stories around public engagement and outreach
Our FoR website acts as a central hub for promotion of our research activity, festival involvement and engagement with local communities
Our Communications team offers media training for academics to assist researchers with developing their public engagement and outreach activities
Our External Relations team has a dedicated Public Affairs Manager working to promote the University externally.
Internal training and support
Since 2018/19, the University has established impact action plans with key researchers in part to support academics with public engagement as a mechanism for generating measurable impact
A researcher development training programme is provided for all levels of researchers from PGRs to senior research leaders and embeds core elements such as developing impact, communicating research to the public and engaging with relevant communities
The Doctoral School provides 10-12 PhD students annually with the opportunity to work with The Brilliant Club widening participation training scheme to communicate their research to local schools.
Recognition
We celebrate our achievements through the annual Vice-Chancellor’s Awards, which include:
Our Research Excellence Award to demonstrate impact and engagement beyond academia
The Harold Riley Award for Community Engagement, which champions best practice within the local community
Our Social and Economic Impact Award, which was awarded to Salford Anti-Poverty Taskforce in 2020.
Aspect 3: Activity
Below are examples of how our strategy of place-focused collaboration for the benefit of communities and the economy is delivered through activity on the ground.
Greater Manchester Local Industrial Strategy
The University was extensively engaged with the development of the Greater Manchester Local Industrial Strategy (LIS). Our approach to this engagement was twofold: we worked with GMCA, author of the LIS, where activity ranged from strategic-level engagement between the University’s and GMCA’s leadership team, and individual engagement by academics and professional staff at policy workshops. In addition, we worked with local partners in Salford to develop a city-specific prospectus that outlined Salford’s contribution to industrial development in the context of the LIS.
The Vice-Chancellor’s team meets regularly with the GMCA senior leadership team to assess progress on specific projects and the University is represented across relevant delivery boards, including the Innovation Board of the Local Enterprise Partnership and the Graphene Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Alliance, which was set up as a result of the LIS.
Digital Salford
We are a member of Digital Salford, a partnership made up of public and private sector organisations tasked with driving forward the digital strategy in Salford. The partnership has recently published the Tech Talent Pipeline Prospectus. This is a shared commitment from the partners of Digital Salford to take action to demonstrably improve the skills development and employment pipelines into digital roles in Salford for Salford people. The University’s role includes raising aspiration amongst the community and engagement with local schools and colleges. We are also working with partners to attract funding for new initiatives to grow the skills offer in the city and one such initiative is the recently announced GBP3m Fast Track Digital Workforce Fund.
Health Innovation Manchester
The University is a partner in the Health Innovation Manchester initiative; an academic health and science system at the forefront of transforming the health and wellbeing of Greater Manchester’s 2.8 million citizens. As one of the largest trainers of NHS staff in the country, we bring a unique combination of workforce training and development expertise, alongside leading research capability to the partnership.
The collaboration in the health system has been particularly evident during the COVID-19 crisis. From donating PPE and testing kit to providing resilience training to key workers on the front line, the University is committed to making an impact on health and care in Salford and across Greater Manchester. As part of the Salford Crescent Masterplan, we have ambitious plans to develop a health campus, which will be outward facing and open to the community: part living lab, part local service.
Arts and Culture
The University is a major cultural institution within the city and through our arts and cultural programme, we undertake significant public engagement and are a key partner in the Salford Cultural and Place Partnership. The University’s Art Collection team works with partners to support culture and creative industries in Salford, Greater Manchester and beyond. In particular, we work closely with Salford Museum and Gallery to deliver exhibitions and cultural engagement. Most recently, the Art Collection team worked with artists and those working in the creative sector in Salford to assist with access to support during COVID-19.
The New Adelphi Theatre is a significant cultural asset on campus, designed to deliver on our Industry Collaboration strategy. The Theatre, housed in the University’s flagship GBP55m arts and media building, has a mission to deepen relationships between staff, students, artists and audiences, building its own audiences with the local community and wider cultural community. The Theatre hosts a range of shows and performances, and is available for hire to community groups, charities and commercial organisations. Audience attendance for the 2019/20 autumn/winter programme was 3,477.
SILKS Law Clinic
In 2019 we launched a pro bono law clinic in collaboration with two local law firms. SILKS (Salford Information and Legal Knowledge Scheme) provides local people in Salford with free legal advice that they might not otherwise have access to.
Since its inception, SILKS has built a network of partners who advertise the clinic’s services and has established core referral partners (e.g. Citizens Advice Salford and Support Through Court at Manchester Civil Justice Centre) to reach individuals most at need. SILKS has assisted around 5-10 individuals per month prior to COVID-19 and trialled online support during 2020.
Salford’s Festival of Research
Alongside this engagement with formal partners, the University’s annual FoR is our mechanism for engaging with the wider community and general public. The FoR was established in 2018 to provide a platform to connect with the local community, involving them in our research and helping us to generate real-world impact. The Festival includes events such as Café Research – held at locations across Manchester and on campus, including the Salford Museum and Hard Rock Café. Working closely with Salford City Council we have co-created festivals with more than 70 of our industry and community partners. The FoR makes our research accessible to all and includes a programme of activity designed specifically for local schools.
Aspect 4: Results and learning
Evaluation of activities is undertaken within the area of the University responsible for the engagement. An example of our reach and evaluation of our activities is within the FoR planning process.
In July 2019, through our partnerships with Salford City Council and Salford Community Leisure, we welcomed over 1000 visitors to our campus to participate in 37 engagement activities; providing talks, workshops and shows on the theme of ‘Fake News’. Our most popular event was ‘Research in the Park’ with over 250 attendees.
Co-production with local organisations and businesses is a foundational principle of this activity leading to the direct involvement of 76 external organisations. These ranged from global brands such as The Hardrock Cafe and BBC Philharmonic to emerging SMEs such as Placer and 7 Brothers Brewery and new start-ups. Over 130 school pupils and teachers attended a specific event for local schools. Feedback via survey captured attendees perspectives (response rate of 13%) and has informed future programming. Almost half (42%) of responses were from University attendees or the local council (and related organisations), therefore, we are improving our mechanisms for collecting feedback from the public and local community to ensure their experiences are shaping our activities.
We also use the Festival activities to ensure our research has impact. Our research impact framework is well-structured and consistently applied to ensure that engagement events feeding into our research activities result in measurable benefits to the participants. At events taking place through FoR or within other venues (e.g. ESRC Festival) we gather and review testimonials, detailed participant feedback and social media analytics.
Aspect 5: Acting on results
We undertake a high-level audit and review of the University’s economic and social impact on a regular basis. Our most recent analysis from 2018 (and previous work in 2016) was externally commissioned and produced our Social and Economic Impact Report – Salford Untold. This captures our key impacts and highlights our contributions, especially to the Salford and Greater Manchester communities, and is used to communicate these successes both internally and externally. It allows us to clearly articulate the University’s value within the region and further develop our Industry Collaboration strategy.
Governance mechanisms are already in place requiring activities around the FoR and research impact (for example, data on audience numbers, qualitative evidence of benefits to the wider community) to be reported and reviewed internally so that a budget can be allocated accordingly and future engagement activities designed in alignment to the University’s research and knowledge exchange priorities. Reports are received by Research and Enterprise Committee, which is a sub-committee of University Senate. As part of our initial work to reflect on our coordination of P&CE, a review of activities using the NCCPE Edge tool has been carried out so that this can inform the design of our future public engagement strategy.
For further information, please send queries to R.L.Woolley@salford.ac.uk