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Institutional Context
Summary
The University of Westminster was established over 180 years ago as London’s first Polytechnic and built a reputation as an institution committed to educating the working people of London. Today, we continue to build on this reputation and history and, with campuses in central London and Harrow, we serve one of the most diverse populations of students and communities in the UK. Our student population exceeds 19,000 across undergraduate, postgraduate, and professional courses. Our three Colleges – the College of Design, Creative and Digital Industries; the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; and the Westminster Business School - provide a distinctive academic structure that emphasises Westminster’s strengths in pushing disciplinary boundaries and creating new academic allegiances.
Institutional context
The University’s purpose and values are articulated in ‘Being Westminster: Our Strategy 2018-2023’ and build on the institution’s long standing mission since 1838 to reduce inequality and promote inclusion in London. Our purpose is to transform the lives of the students and communities we serve, and to deliver positive impact for business, industry and society. We do this by providing applied and practical teaching, experiences which enhance the employability of our students, and research and knowledge exchange activities that help deliver a more sustainable future for all. Our values support our purpose. We are progressive, compassionate, and responsible. Our values, ways of working, and our contribution to social change was recognised in September 2020 with the award of the Social Enterprise Gold Mark.
Our core student base continues to focus predominantly on Greater London, but we have grown to become an internationally-recognised University with students from 165 countries. We pride ourselves in the considerable diversity of our student population. Amongst our London domiciled students, 59.9% are the first in their family to go to University; 70.4% are from BAME communities; 62.2% come from geographical areas in the lower two quartiles of the Index of Multiple Deprivation; and 48% live in areas poorly served by public transport. Our Campus at Harrow is located within one of the most ethnically diverse areas of England.
Our Knowledge Exchange agenda aims to deliver impact for business, industry and wider society through an active programme focused on applied research and consultancy for businesses, social enterprises, and the public sector; skills and professional development training (for employers and for individuals); student enterprise (training and incubation); and local growth and regeneration. The programme is accompanied by a rich and vibrant calendar of public and community engagement activities – including public lectures, festivals, and exhibitions – that reflect our very ethos as an institution to inform, share, and converse with the public about our work and its impact.
Our campus locations and the economic and social context of our students and colleagues drive our priorities in knowledge exchange, with a focus and commitment spanning four key strategic areas: Health Innovation and Wellbeing; Diversity and Inclusion; Sustainable Cities and Urban Environment; and Arts, Communications and Culture. Each of these areas of interest shares a common focus on digital technologies.
Knowledge exchange is central to our purpose. It promotes collaboration and inclusion. It enables us to serve our various communities with insights and learning. Engagement with business, industry, and societal challenges enriches experiences and learning for our academics and brings professional practice and insights into our teaching. Given our focus on producing work-ready graduates, knowledge exchange delivers internships, placements, and projects for students, which in turn deliver enhanced graduate outcomes. Our knowledge exchange activities also help develop the quality of the workforce, and the skills, productivity, and prospects of our partners’ employees.
For further information, please send queries to Research-Knowledge-Exchange-Office@westminster.ac.uk
Local Growth and Regeneration
Summary of approach
The University of Westminster has campuses in central London and Harrow and serves one of the most diverse populations of students and communities in the UK. Our approach to local growth and regeneration reflects our core mission to provide opportunities that will help to transform the lives of those living in these diverse communities. Our local focus is centred on supporting areas around Harrow. Our regional focus is informed by the needs of students and communities further afield across London. Through work with local migrant communities, projects to improve transport and health services, enterprise incubation, and professional development for the London workforce, we aim to build an Inclusive London: focusing on activities that realise social and economic inclusion.
Aspect 1: Strategy
The University of Westminster’s approach to local growth and regeneration is grounded in our core mission of “providing opportunities so that people from every background can realise their true potential, contributing to a richer, happier society”. We define two geographical areas of strategic importance: the local area surrounding the University’s Harrow Campus, and the entire Greater London region as informed by the experiences and needs of our students, who are members of diverse communities that extend across London.
The local area surrounding the Harrow campus borders the London Boroughs of Brent and Harrow. Across both boroughs there are many diverse communities, and the Borough of Brent is the most ethnically diverse in England. The University Campus is within the Brent Growth Area of Northwick Park and its local area includes the Harrow Business Improvement District.
The University’s Central London Campuses are located within the City of Westminster, alongside some 14,385 businesses from a range of sectors, including creative, media and technology companies and the financial services sector. Amongst our London domiciled students 70.4% are BAME; 62.2% come from geographical areas in the lower two quartiles of the Index of Multiple Deprivation; and 48% live in areas poorly served by public transport. Working to ensure that these diverse communities across the Greater London region have access to the city’s social and economic resources is core to our institution’s mission.
Our activities promote social inclusion, reduce inequalities, and combat discrimination, thus responding to the key challenges identified in the Mayor’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy as needing to be overcome to ensure the future growth and regeneration of a city that works for all Londoners; local Borough-specific challenges as specified in the Brent Inclusive Growth Strategy 2019-2040 and the Harrow Council Regeneration Strategy 2016-2026; and the framework for sustainable growth and development across the London region provided by The London Plan.
Direct engagement with our local and regional stakeholders has identified specific challenges in housing, skills, transport, health, well-being, and sustainable urban living. For example, BAME individuals are more likely to be living in overcrowded housing; many communities face barriers to acquiring skills and accessing skilled jobs; Londoners from lower socio-economic backgrounds, women, and BAME groups are all under-represented in STEM and creative professions; and, together with older people, these groups suffer significant health inequalities, often compounded by the barriers they face to accessing safe, accessible, and environmentally sustainable transport.
In order to provide solutions to the above we engage with a range of external partners. These include Transport for London, the Greater London Authority, Local/Borough Councils and a range of business organisations, such as Westminster Business Council, London First, the Baker Street Quarter and the New West End Company. Further, our work with Schools, Further Education Colleges, and other Higher Education Providers across London, as part of the London Higher network, is a key part of our engagement to ensure access for London’s diverse communities.
To focus our institutional resources on meeting the above challenges we have developed the Being Westminster Strategy 2018-23 and underpinning Research and Knowledge Exchange Strategies.
Four Communities have been created to facilitate cross-disciplinary research across Health, Innovation and Wellbeing; Sustainable Cities and the Urban Environment; Arts, Communication and Culture; and Diversity and Inclusion. These align to key areas of the UK Industrial Strategy and reflect the needs of our local and regional stakeholders as outlined above.
To remove the barriers that London’s diverse communities face when accessing the social and economic opportunities that drive future economic growth, another key aspect of our strategy is to support entrepreneurship and enterprise amongst the next generation of Londoners. Our commitment to Student Enterprise, as well as Social Enterprise, is reflected in our securing of the Social Enterprise Gold Mark (2020), our Creative Enterprise Centre, and our award-winning professional development courses; all of which drive growth and regeneration in the geographical areas where we have a strategic focus.
Aspect 2: Activity
Local Area Surrounding the University’s Harrow Campus:
Much of our activity supporting growth and regeneration in this local area is organised around two large partnership programmes. We are working with Brent Council and local landowners to develop a regeneration masterplan that meets local needs, and, in partnership with Harrow Council, we work to support businesses in the Harrow Business Improvement District. Funding has been secured from the Greater London Authority (GLA) and the One Public Estates Programme.
The University Campus sits within the Growth Area of Northwick Park. Local landowners include the University, NHS Northwick Park University Hospital Trust, Network Homes, and Brent Council. The Brent inclusive growth strategy identifies a need for new and affordable homes in the Borough. Half a million pounds of funding from One Public Estates has allowed the partners to develop a Masterplan, carry out public consultations and submit three linked planning applications. These include new affordable housing and transport links that improve access to healthcare, skills, and community services provided by the Hospital and University – promoting inclusion and driving local growth.
As a result of its partnership working with Harrow Council, the University’s Creative Enterprise Centre has created a consortium of developers, local FE colleges, and business organisations that aims to support Harrow’s creative industries. Activities include support for Westminster graduates to locate their start-up businesses in Council run co-working spaces; provision of business support to local SMEs through the Harrow Business Improvement District; employment-creation opportunities for Westminster students; and the recent award of a £50,000 grant from the GLA to support the consortium’s application for GLA Creative Enterprise Zone funding.
The Greater London Region
Our regionally focused activities support the building of a city that works for all Londoners, in line with our core mission. We work with partners across the region to promote social inclusion, reduce inequalities, and remove discrimination; ensuring future growth and regeneration builds an inclusive London. There are two strands to these activities: utilising our research base to make a difference to Londoners and working with businesses to build a skilled and inclusive workforce across London.
Utilising our Research Base to Make a Difference to Londoners
Specific projects have focused on increasing the social and economic inclusion of migrant communities, such as members of the Alevi community and people of Caribbean and African heritage. The work builds dialog and identifies mechanisms that promote inclusion for these groups, in a way that respects and values diversity. Other projects have focused on delivering solutions in transport and health, to ensure support services and infrastructure work for all Londoners. Funding has been secured from various sources, including research councils; externally commissioned contract research; as well as internal University and Quintin Hogg Trust funds. Examples include:
The AHRC-funded Bass Culture project developed participatory narratives with the Caribbean and African-heritage communities in London to support the cultural recognition of Black British Music; produced and archived content that demonstrates the contribution of these communities to British culture; and provided a means to engage new audiences. The project’s contextualisation of the under-recognition of this community’s contribution provides a context for further challenging discriminatory practices that raise barriers to inclusion.
The University’s Active Travel Academy (ATA) works with partners such as Transport for London (TfL), the Cross River Partnership, Department for Transport, and the Road Safety Trust to identify, evaluate, and promote approaches that support active transport. The ATA’s People and Places Survey, funded by TfL, shows that active travel infrastructure increases levels of such travel in Outer London by 40-45 minutes per person per week; delivering over £700m in health benefits for an £80m investment. This is informing further policy development, including the introduction of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and pop-up cycle lanes. To build on this success the ATA has received funding from the Quintin Hogg Trust.
Building a Skilled and Inclusive Workforce across London
A variety of activities across the University provide skills training and consultancy services, with a focus on reaching groups that often lack support. For instance, our Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs) support London’s SMEs; we work with businesses on their inclusion agendas, ensuring they secure the business benefits of diversity; and the University’s Creative Enterprise Centre enables staff, students, and local businesses to work together to develop activities that support development of in-demand skills. Launched in 2017, and now called the Student Enterprise Centre (SEC), the University plans to develop its 29 Marylebone Road building into a space that provides a one-stop-shop for these activities and has a target of delivering enterprise and innovation experience to every undergraduate student by 2024.
Responding to our stakeholder needs, the Creative Enterprise Centre’s Pioneer programme was created to support diversity and inclusion in enterprise, widening participation to include communities traditionally under-represented in the start-up sector. The programme, supported by funding from Santander, draws together a network of entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds, to provide mentoring - for instance linking female student founders and freelancers with successful women entrepreneurs. The programme also includes outreach activities, such as the Westminster Inclusive Enterprise Festival (WINC) and outreach work with student societies.
This serves as a perfect complement to our extensive outreach activity in schools and colleges across London, which enables the capital’s next generation to learn about a range of careers and promoting access to university from under-represented groups.
Aspect 3: Results
Local Area Surrounding the University’s Harrow Campus:
Working in collaboration with members of the Brent Partnership, we are promoting growth and redevelopment of the Harrow campus and surrounding areas. Our contribution has helped ensure that future development will meet the need for new housing and infrastructure that supports positive outcomes for all members of the local community – including affordable homes, and development of ‘new commercial and community uses to help the new area of Brent thrive’.
Working with businesses in Harrow, we have secured further knowledge exchange opportunities with SMEs, Corporations, and NGOs. For instance, in 2020 the Harrow Accelerator raised investment income of £574,842; carried out £236,768 of R&D activity; created 31 directly attributable jobs, and further expanded employment opportunities via secondary impacts.
The Greater London Region
Our activities that focus on increasing inclusion in Greater London have secured a range of impacts. For instance, the Bass Culture project was important in the removal of the Metropolitan Police Form 696 Risk Assessment that required London’s promoters to give details of events, including the ethnicity of target audiences. This form was perceived as discriminatory towards black artists and its removal has resulted in Black British artists being able to access a wider range of economic opportunities, as barriers to performance in a variety of venues have been removed. Projects with TfL have resulted in the introduction of a new approach to CCTV technology, that has created a transport network that all commuters feel safe using. The work of the Active Travel Academy has influenced active travel policy in London, with Transport for London citing our work in their most recent cycling strategy. The CEC has engaged with an increasing number of local businesses and in 2020 more than 70 companies took on paid student freelancers. This scaling up of activity has been accompanied by growing numbers of business start-ups from 59 in 2018; to 120 in 2019 and more than doubling to 271 in 2020.
Our successes in developing student enterprise and in providing skills and professional development training for local businesses, has led directly to plans for considerable expansion of these activities over the next 5 years. The Creative Enterprise Centre will become a cross-University Student Enterprise Centre and short courses will be expanded. Both will come together in a new facility in September 2023, when a currently vacant building in Marylebone Road will be repurposed as an Inclusive Enterprise Centre. The objective is to build on our results and open enterprise training and enterprise incubation opportunities to all students and others in the local community, further contributing to local growth and regeneration.
For further information, please send queries to Research-Knowledge-Exchange-Office@westminster.ac.uk
Public & Community Engagement
Summary of approach
The University of Westminster has a proud history of public and community engagement. Our very ethos as an institution is to inform, share, and converse with the public about our work and its impact. This practice stretches back to public demonstrations of steam engines and ‘moving pictures’ for 1830s Londoners, includes counter-cultural musical performances like Pink Floyd and Soho Poly’s lunch-hour theatre in 1970s London, and continues to influence social and scientific conversations today in diverse areas such as health, artificial intelligence, the law, sexuality, and urban design. We view public and community engagement as a moral obligation to disseminate our work in both academic and public forums and, conversely, have our work informed and shaped by such sharing.
Aspect 1: Strategy
Our University strategy articulates our mission and purpose as providing opportunities so that people from every background can realise their true potential, contributing to a richer, happier society. Our Knowledge Exchange strategy articulates our public and community engagement agenda as central to who we are and as an agenda that opens the door to diverse local communities and visitors from across the world.
Our campuses in central London are located in the heart of a global city, while our campus at Harrow is located in the London Borough of Brent – the most ethnically diverse borough in England. Accordingly, many of the local communities we serve are ethnically diverse, with social and economic ties across the globe. Our student body is drawn from communities across London and the world, with 165 nationalities represented. This provides us with an alumni network that is unrivalled in its diversity, and our academic staff reflect a range of backgrounds and communities.
Informed by the experience of our communities, students, staff, and alumni networks, we have a strong commitment to overcome barriers to engagement and developing public and community engagement approaches that support inclusion.
In addition to this richness of expertise and experience within the University, we engage with stakeholders and work in partnership to develop approaches that meet community needs. For instance, our work with Open Age has highlighted the isolation and loneliness of elderly communities surrounding our central London campuses; and our research with community groups, public bodies, and museums has identified specific challenges faced when attempting to reach diverse audiences. In 2019 we established four Research Communities that articulate and focus cross-disciplinary strengths across the institution - the remit for these communities includes the development of strategic approaches to engagement.
Ensuring our physical and digital environments are accessible to the public is a key objective outlined in Being Westminster Strategy 2018-23. Details of rooms and facilities for hire are accessible via the University website and we work to ensure that engagement activities, undertaken in historic buildings such as the Regent Street Cinema and unique spaces such as Ambika P3 can be experienced by everybody. We have an emerging digital framework to support public engagement, including blogs, video platforms, podcasts, and our open-access University Press.
Aspect 2: Support
Ensuring support for public and community engagement lies within the remit of the Knowledge Exchange Committee and the University supports public engagement through a number of central and devolved approaches.
Professional Support
The Marketing Directorate promotes events via websites and social media, ensuring our research and engagement activities reach a variety of communities. Our Development Team establishes relations with local organisations and coordinates use of the University’s facilities and academic expertise for the benefit of local communities. Events Coordinators in each of the Colleges provide support to academics for a range of public lectures and community outreach activities. The Head of Public Affairs plays a strategic role in coordinating and planning these cross-university activities; the Head of Corporate Social Responsibility has a role in managing engagement with specific community groups, particularly regarding student/staff volunteering, and ensures alignment with the University’s growing Social Enterprise agenda.
Within the Research & Knowledge Exchange Office, a Research Impact Officer and two Facilitators appointed to support the Research Communities, work with academic colleagues in the development and delivery of engagement activities. To highlight our commitment to public engagement, the launch of the University’s four Research Communities in 2019 featured a specific stream of competitive funding for public engagement. This received 15 applications with 8 projects selected for £43,072 of funding.
Training, Digital and Physical infrastructure
The Research & Knowledge Exchange Office provides support for colleagues developing funding applications that incorporate public engagement activities. With the Marketing Directorate it also provides skills training for impact and media engagement. Training sessions support staff in building skills for TV and radio interviews; building productive relationships with community groups; and evaluating outcomes. Over 400 colleagues attended these training programmes between 2018/19 and 2019/20.
We are committed to enhancing the Researcher Profiles within the institution’s CRIS system, enabling colleagues to better capture their involvement in public and community engagement, improving visibility and recognising achievement; and University of Westminster Press has been established as a fully open-access publishing house to ensure audiences who wish to learn – whether enrolled or not – benefit from our research and its impact.
Academic Work Allocation, Reward and Allowance
To build academic leadership for public and community engagement the College of Liberal Arts and Science has created a role for a Public Engagement Lead. This role has 1 day a week dedicated to developing the College’s Public Engagement strategy and a Public Engagement committee in the College has been formed. The College also has a Professor of Science Communication with 2.5 days a week allocated to public science engagement. The leaders of the four University-wide Research Communities, and the Knowledge Exchange Leads, receive specific hours for their roles, supporting and championing public engagement. The University’s academic work-load model also designates 50 hours p.a. of professional duties for academic staff, which includes time for public engagement.
Aspect 3: Activity
Our public and community engagement is particularly focused on activities that engage London’s diverse communities, promoting inclusion through celebration of this diversity and further expansion into ‘hidden or underexplored’ areas. Major programmes include:
AHRC-funded Bass Culture Research centred around a four-week exhibition in 2018. This enabled the public to explore and celebrate the importance of Black British music in the development of multicultural Britain. The exhibition challenged negative interpretations and recognised the impact of Jamaican culture, not only on music but on broader British culture and identity. Consultations with the community indicated a sense of unease with the traditional white cube gallery space, which was seen as exclusionary to Black Britons. Therefore, the exhibition was held in Ambika P3, where the large and open space lends itself to exploration. The multimedia nature of the exhibition – photography, paintings, music and interactive events – was shaped through community consultations.
The University of Westminster Menswear Archive started in 2016 in response to the needs of students and designers who were unable to view historically important examples of menswear; an area of fashion frequently neglected in exhibitions and galleries. The 2019 Invisible Men exhibition in Ambika P3 contained 186 pieces from the Menswear Archive, the largest single UK exhibition of menswear to date. Alongside the exhibition, there were three in-conversation events and a conference. This enabled the public to experience menswear in new ways and attracted 5,692 visitors over 18 days. The exhibition and events attracted diverse and new audiences, with a survey suggesting 31% were BAME and 43% male.
The Difference Festival is an annual week-long celebration held by the College of Liberal Arts and Science. The festival opens the university to anyone who wishes to attend, honouring the founding public engagement principles of our institution. This showcases the work of staff, students, alumni, and friends of the University, to those who live and work in the local community. To reach-out to this local audience, we carry out targeted social media adverts and local maildrops, and researchers involved in the event participate in media promotion, including interviews on BBC Radio London.
Audience surveys and community consultation support our understanding of needs and the extent to which we meet these. In addition, we have long-standing community engagement activities and local stakeholder partnerships. For instance:
The Law School's Legal Advice Clinic provides a ‘valuable advisory service to the local community, helping support them to gain further advice and guidance when dealing with legal problems around family law, housing, immigration and employment’. This praise for our support of the local community accompanied the Social Enterprise Gold Mark, awarded to the University in 2020. The Social Enterprise Report highlighted strengths in our stakeholder engagement and detailed the work of our Polyclinic, which provides ‘low cost access to alternative health treatments’. The area of well-being is a focus of our activities and the University’s Centre for Resilience has provided wellbeing and resilience training for more than 500 workers across London.
Stakeholder partnerships include our Ceramics Research Centre-UK collaboration with Tate Exchange, which diversifies audiences for craft-based arts by engaging underserved communities in the production of art works, and the Regent Street Cinema’s hosting of activities such as ballroom dancing in collaboration with the charity Open Age, which tackles the loneliness of elderly communities surrounding our central London campuses.
Aspect 4: Results and learning
Our engagement activities generate a variety of results, based on attendance figures, evidence from audience engagement, participation and feedback. These insights inform the continued development by academic and support colleagues of their activities. In addition, Knowledge Exchange Committee is expanding systematic oversight to ensure lessons are shared across projects and activities address strategic objectives.
For instance, Bass Culture 70/50 was attended by 3,400 visitors across four weeks and the Difference Festival has reached 550 people over the past two years. Audience feedback has attested to the positive impacts of Bass Culture 70/50 on the community, with attendees reporting “It makes me feel proud of my heritage and contribution of Jamaican artists and culture in Britain”, while the Difference Festival recorded over 69,000 impressions across social media channels and over 100 uses of #DifferenceFestival on Twitter.
Feedback from collaborations with Open Age indicate this partnership is tackling the isolation felt by many elderly residents in the local community. Regulars of the Regent Street Cinema events attest that: “I come to Matinee Classics almost every week for the films, the dancing, the socialising and the wonderful staff […] These events are great, because big cities can be the loneliest places in the world.”
For the Invisible Men Exhibition, sharing through audience-generated images – particularly on Instagram – became part of the design process and outcome. Press and media coverage, predominately online, generated an estimated 1.12 million coverage views.
Aspect 5: Acting on results
We are very proud of our successes in engaging London’s diverse communities, with over 60,000 attendees at public lectures, performances, exhibitions, and other events in 2018/19. Academic and support colleagues continuously improve their engagement activities by responding to evidence collected from audience participation and feedback. This insight facilitates continuous development and often leads to follow-up projects and wider sharing of resources with community groups. For instance, we have received a number of requests to repeat the Invisible Men Exhibition at fashion events and content from Bass Culture has been widely shared. Examples of this sharing include a Further Education College utilising images and concepts from Bass Culture, to inspire students to undertake their own research and generate new work.
The University has recently committed new resources to support engagement. Further areas for investment include an enhanced web presence and social media together with resource for evaluation and sharing of impacts. Over the coming year we will review our structures with the view of providing further systematic oversight of engagement activity and learning from examples of approaches within our three colleges. We seek to draw the results of our activities together to improve the sharing of good practice, monitor progress towards strategic objectives, and further enhance the impact of our public and community engagement.
Since our founding in 1838 we have been committed to the provision of opportunities for social and cultural enrichment of the public and our local communities, and through this engagement we promote the inclusion of London’s diverse communities.
For further information, please send queries to Research-Knowledge-Exchange-Office@westminster.ac.uk