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Institutional Context
Summary
The University of Leeds was founded in 1904, with origins in the Leeds School of Medicine and the Yorkshire College of Science. The Yorkshire College of Science was founded in 1874 to support innovation in the wool and textile industries. Industry links and knowledge exchange has been embedded at Leeds from our inception
The University is now one of the largest in the UK and strives to achieve academic excellence within an ethical framework informed by integrity, equality and inclusion, community and professionalism. However, we do not exist in isolation. We understand our actions have an impact on the wider community and take our social, economic and environmental responsibilities seriously.
Institutional context
Leeds is the largest city region economy outside London. With a skilled workforce of 1.4 million people, over 100,000 businesses and a Gross Value Added of over £69 billion, the region is the largest contributor of UK GDP in the Northern Powerhouse. Leeds key growth sectors include digital technologies, healthcare and innovation, manufacturing, and financial and professional services.
The University has a proven track record of commercialisation, creating over 110 companies in the last 20 years. Our Nexus innovation hub opened in May 2019, with innovators and businesses from all sectors located on campus and based in a new state-of-the-art building. Nexus provides easy access for collaboration with University research, talent, facilities and expertise.
The University and Nexus play a key role in the West Yorkshire Devolution Deal. The Deal will establish the West Yorkshire Innovation Network, providing a dual-hub for the community of innovative entrepreneurs, start-ups and SMEs in the West Yorkshire ecosystem.
We are also a key stakeholder in the regions MIT Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration Programme, developing entrepreneurial ecosystems in the Leeds City Region that will have both local and national impacts. MIT identified the region as having significant strengths to support the UK economy and the University has been supporting local engagement with this prestigious leadership programme.
Recently ranked third in the UK for our sustainable impact, by actively becoming a positive partner in society we are taking our ethos of sustainability beyond campus to the wider world; from our suppliers to the communities we work with across the Leeds City Region and beyond.
Students and our local community are core to our ethos at Leeds and we take our commitment to widen access and participation seriously. Our partnership with IntoUniversity provides intensive and targeted support to some of the most disadvantaged communities in the City with over 6,000 students across East and South Leeds benefitting from this programme since 2014. In 2018/19, 3,192 vulnerable students were supported through a series of bespoke targeted retention, success and progression measures and 1,596 adults were engaged in educational and community activity.
We continue to ensure our campus is welcoming – somewhere our local community and visitors to Leeds can explore. Residents and visitors can access our facilities, including the sport and fitness centre The Edge and the Brownlee Triathlon Centre. Our public galleries and museums include the Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery, Treasures of the Brotherton Gallery, and Michael Marks Building, housing the Marks and Spencer Company Archive just a mile away from their first market stall.
Our communities are also included in a calendar of cultural and scientific events including, the University’s Be Curious festival; Leeds Festival of Science; Leeds International Concert Series; and Yorkshire Sculpture International, coordinated with partners across the City.
For further information, please send queries to knowledge-exchange@leeds.ac.uk
Local Growth and Regeneration
Summary of approach
The University of Leeds aims to advance knowledge and create solutions to local, national and global challenges. The skills, knowledge and networks created through this approach benefit and reinforce our engagement in the different geographies within which we are active.
Leeds and Leeds City Region are central to our economic growth and regeneration activities. We strive to strengthen the regional innovation ecosystem by facilitating business creation and growth; supporting skills development; and encouraging entrepreneurship.
We work in partnership to identify need and leverage our distinctive research and innovation strengths to deliver impactful activities. Our engagement focuses upon local, national and international economic development, leading to positive impacts on health and wellbeing, environment and culture.
Aspect 1: Strategy
The University of Leeds aims to advance knowledge and create solutions to local, national and global challenges.
The University is a significant actor in Leeds and was set up with the aim of serving the economic development of the City including contributions to improved health, environment and culture. In recent years, the University strategy has broadened to reflect the growing importance of the wider Leeds City Region (LCR) as an economic geography. We have actively engaged with the LCR Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) on policy development, the Local Industrial Strategy, and major initiatives to drive entrepreneurship and innovation. Both the City of Leeds and LCR have diverse economies based on a sectoral mix similar to that of the UK as a whole. LCR has sectoral strengths in finance, manufacturing and health; and unique capabilities in low carbon transport, agritech, creative industries and circular economy, which align well to the research strengths of the University. LCR performs below the UK average in productivity, skills, and investment in R&D and innovation; and faces major environmental challenges. As the largest research-intensive university in the region, with a breadth of world-class expertise in both disciplinary and interdisciplinary research, we are well-placed to tackle these challenges by supporting the innovation and growth needs of a wide range of sectors in Leeds and the city region.
To understand the needs of the region and identify how the University can help to address these, we engage at the highest level in a broad range of formal and informal ways with Leeds City Council, West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA)/LCR LEP and Yorkshire Universities. For example, our Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research & Innovation sits on the regional Business Innovation & Growth Panel, one of only two representatives from the nine universities in the region to have a position on this influential advisory group. We also undertake market and capability mapping of regional economic need, such as the University-led Science and Innovation Audit in medical technologies. When developing business cases, we undertake detailed consultation with stakeholders. For example, the development of NEXUS, our innovation hub, was based upon a comprehensive review of LCR’s innovation provision, analysis of facilities for high growth technology companies and a review of best practice.
National engagement is built upon our distinctive areas of research and innovation strength through which we collaborate with industry, university and public sector partners to enhance UK capability. The University is a partner in key national institutes representing excellence in specific disciplines. These engagements enable us to create partnerships that accelerate innovation to meet national and global challenges and improve UK productivity and competitiveness.
Our global regeneration activities target challenges faced by developing countries. We work in partnership with countries around the globe, making significant positive impacts. Priority countries for partnering are identified where these have the capacity to amplify the impact of our collaboration across a broader geographic area. For example, in addressing the needs of the broader sub-Saharan Africa region, Leeds’ research partner of choice is South Africa, which has a strong research infrastructure and facilitates engagement with less-developed countries across the region.
Intelligence gathered through our engagement mechanisms feeds into the University’s five-year strategic planning cycle. The last three years of local growth and regeneration activity have been directed by our 2015-2020 strategy which set our aims to ‘…create and enhance strategic partnerships and collaborations in education, research and innovation – regionally, nationally and internationally’ and to ‘…provide an integrated approach to enterprise which promotes creativity, innovation, enterprise and impact in the University and across the city region’. The University’s new Vice Chancellor, appointed in September 2020, is leading the development of our vision and strategy for the next five years.
Aspect 2: Activity
We use a range of initiatives to support regional economic growth. Assessment of their effectiveness is ongoing and informs further developments.
We strive to strengthen the regional innovation ecosystem, facilitating business creation and growth through building an entrepreneurial community. The University leads the Leeds City Region MIT Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration Programme (REAP) to accelerate the development of the region’s innovation-driven entrepreneurial ecosystem, based on historically strong and emerging clusters. The aim is to raise the level of aspiration and positively impact on levelling-up economic growth and societal benefit across LCR and the UK. The University-led REAP Team involves stakeholders from Nexus, LCR LEP, Leeds City Council and Leeds Academic Health Partnership, alongside local SMEs and large corporates. The strategy focusses on companies with the propensity to launch, scale and grow through innovation, and sits at the heart of the Local Industrial Strategy. The Leeds MIT REAP team recently launched the LEAP initiative in response to the pandemic as a free online programme for would-be entrepreneurs, providing tools and mentoring support to kick-start business ideas that have arisen during the recent lockdown.
NEXUS, our new flagship £40 million innovation hub, co-locates a vibrant community of innovators to create business partnerships that deliver local, regional and national impact, driving innovation in existing companies and the public sector, and stimulating the start-up of new high-growth companies. NEXUS connects businesses to the research expertise, facilities and talent of the University to facilitate longer-term partnerships between businesses and the University.
We work with our partners in the City, NHS, third sector, local community and other universities to better understand needs and to improve regional health and social care. Leeds Academic Health Partnership (LAHP) brings together academic capabilities in education and research with the health and care system across the City in order to speed up the adoption of research and innovation. By delivering integrated education across Leeds’ health partners and creating leadership for growth, the LAHP helps to reduce inequalities and prepare the future workforce.
We are establishing an Institute for High Speed Rail & Systems Integration to drive innovation and skills development in the rail industry; we have secured £11 million investment from UKRPIF, £13 million from the LCR LEP Growth Deal, with a further £40 million from the University and rail industry partners. It is anticipated that the Institute will be the catalyst for 3000 new jobs and increase the region’s export potential.
We undertake activities to create a regional talent pool to support the growth ambitions of local employers. The University is the lead institution in the Go Higher West Yorkshire (GHWY) network, helping young people across the region with access and preparation for study, and engaging businesses to build a better workforce for the future. SPARK is the University’s Business Start-up support service for students and graduates who wish to set up and run their own ventures. Spark engages with around 1500 students a year from all academic disciplines and provides advice, mentoring and practical support.
We use our academic capability to inform policy development in local and regional civic governance. For example, we chair the Leeds Climate Commission which was established in 2017 to help Leeds make positive choices on issues relating to energy, carbon, weather and climate. Policy Leeds was launched in 2019 to support engagement of researchers with stakeholders. We have actively engaged with WYCA in the development of an Economic Recovery Plan in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, ensuring that regional recovery initiatives are based on the latest academic research in economics, productivity, urban analytics, transport systems and public health.
We grow and align key University research strengths to make significant contributions to regional, national and international innovation and economic growth. We are actively engaged with LCR LEP in the development of the Local Industrial Strategy, ensuring the impact from our research is maximised for the benefit of the region. We undertake a range of activities to enable regional organisations to benefit from research and innovation at Leeds, including KTPs, knowledge exchange projects and collaborative R&D. We partner in key national institutes in which Leeds contributes specific research capabilities and facilities to accelerate innovation. For example, the Turing institute for data science and AI, where we lead on urban analytics; and the Rosalind Franklin Institute for life sciences, where we lead next generation chemistry. Significant investments made by the University align with these centres, e.g. our £96 million investment in the Sir Henry William Bragg Building aligns with our partnership with the Henry Royce Institute where we lead the Atoms to Devices strand. In addition, we have led on the establishment of national capability based upon our regional business strengths, for example building upon our strengths in colour, textiles and design launching the Future Fashion Factory.
We work with our partners overseas to design interventions that are relevant to the Sustainable Development Goals. As a partner in the Newton Fund, South Africa is a key enabler for knowledge exchange and growth across Africa. For example, as the site of the Square Kilometre Array Africa, and with its focus on Astronomy for Development, the Development in Africa with Radio Astronomy (DARA) in South Africa aims to help create new, sustainable radio astronomy groups across Africa with transferable skills for job and wealth creation.
Aspect 3: Results
Major initiatives such as Nexus and MIT REAP have been designed to deliver significant, long-term, sustainable benefits to the regional innovation ecosystem and economy. These initiatives are at a relatively early stage however early indicators and uptake from stakeholders are promising.
The importance of MIT REAP to the regional innovation ecosystem is recognised in the West Yorkshire Economic Recovery Plan, where the programme is central to a £340 million ask to government to support regional entrepreneurship.
Since opening in 2019, NEXUS has attracted 39 members from a range of sectors. In its first 12 months, NEXUS members have: collaborated with the University on projects securing £10.8m of grant funding and £8.7m in Angel or Venture Capital (VC) investment; created over 125 new jobs; invested £3.5 million in R&D-related activities; provided internships, jobs or placements for 110 University of Leeds students and graduates; and delivered events that over 7000 people have attended. As a result of joining the NEXUS community, 71% of members find it easier to access new talent; 82% have improved products and services; and 95% would recommend NEXUS. In recognition of its importance to the regional economy, NEXUS is one of only two centres in the LCR identified as hubs for the new West Yorkshire Innovation Network, a community of innovative entrepreneurs, start-ups and SMEs established in the recent West Yorkshire Devolution Deal.
Over the past 3 years, SPARK has supported 185 new business start-ups led by University of Leeds students and graduates. Since 2017, Spark-supported businesses have generated over £13.2m, created 297 jobs and secured external investment of £5.4m.
Our spin-outs are predominantly based in the Leeds City Region and employ over 1,250 people. Over the past three years they have created 304 jobs; generated turnover over £70m; and attracted investment funding of £137m.
The LAHP created the Health and Social Care Academy creating a single, joined up approach for innovative learning and development for 57,000 people in Leeds.
Leeds Climate Commission has produced a Mini-Stern Review for the City of Leeds, and has pioneered a Climate Action Readiness Assessment (CARA) to map the city’s readiness to act in different sectors and to identify strategic interventions. Leeds Social Sciences Institute has led a review of research-policy engagement between the University and Leeds City Council. Our DVC: Research & Innovation is Chair of the review group to act on the recommendations that have emerged. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, academics from Leeds have led on the establishment of a Place-Based Economic Recovery Network (PERN) with Yorkshire Universities, bringing together experts from WYCA, Leeds City region LEP, and other HEIs. PERN has informed the regional Economic Recovery Plan, and has led on the region’s response to BEIS’s national consultation on post-pandemic economic growth.
In South Africa, DARA has leveraged R1.5M from the South African Government, and local trainees have gone on to establish businesses in earth observation, satellite services and data analysis. The success of the DARA model is leading to leading to new, similar initiatives involving University of Leeds researchers working in partnership with local areas in Asia and Latin America.
For further information, please send queries to knowledge-exchange@leeds.ac.uk
Public & Community Engagement
Summary of approach
Leeds is a signatory to the Manifesto for Public Engagement (PE), and promotes research that makes a difference. Our senior champion, the Deputy Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation, and the Public Engagement team support our researchers, who engage with a wide range of communities for the purpose of impactful research. We respect different forms of PE (appropriate for different disciplines, individuals and demographics), seek evaluation of outcome-focussed engagement, celebrate outstanding performance and recognise quality engagement within staff promotion criteria and workload models.
Social responsibility, trust, accountability and relevance guide our work: to be open about our research; secure trust in our research; ensure public money for research is spent for society’s benefit; and make research relevant in people’s lives.
Aspect 1: Strategy
Strategy and Governance: The University received RCUK CSF funding for 2015-17 to establish our institutional PE team. The Strategic Plan for PE, approved by the Research and Innovation Board (RIB) and reviewed by University Senate, was co-produced with the involvement of over 140 staff members. It challenges us to ensure that by 2020 every research project includes an appropriate form of public engagement. RIB is chaired by the DVC Research and Innovation (R&I), our senior champion for PE, with PE activity being reported on a quarterly basis. The University has committed to the PE Team’s long-term future, integrating the Team into the University’s central R&I Service. The Vice Chancellor is the University signatory to the Manifesto for PE.
Contributing to University objectives: Through Be Curious, our annual research open day, we have raised the profile of the University with the public and strengthened our relationship with local and regional communities. This is a key way of driving engagement with public and community groups. The PE Team has contributed to raising the quality and success rate of research proposals through funding for early engagement with stakeholders and through proposal surgeries.
Responsibilities: PE is an essential element in generating impact from research and therefore our PE strategy is aligned with our core research and knowledge exchange activities. Creating impact is fundamental to our institutional strategic plan, with responsibility for the promotion and delivery of PE through our research and innovation falling within the remit of the DVC R&I, Faculty Pro-Deans for R&I, School Directors of R&I and the Directors of the R&I Service.
Resources: The direct team consists of two people who co-ordinate activity across the Institution and work alongside centrally and faculty-based colleagues. A network of Engagement Champions are active in enhancing the spread and adoption of engagement practices in their school/institute/service and act as local contacts. Operational budgets are obtained from a range of sources including HEIF, research councils, charities and University strategic development funds.
Facilities open to the public: We have a number of galleries, collections and theatres as well as a sports centre on campus that are free and open to the public. The galleries receive more than 20,000 visitors per year.
Aspect 2: Support
The University has a suite of practical support for PE.
Networks:
1) Pepnet is open to all staff with an interest in PE (founded 2013) and offers four workshops a year, forming part of our coaching offer with topics selected through regular staff surveys.
2) Necnet is open to all Champions of Engagement. Meeting twice a year, it enables bi-directional exchanges of information and PE best practice.
3) Patient Involvement and Engagement Forum brings together colleagues from across the Institution working in health research to promote and share PE best practice.
Funding: Funds are available for engagement with stakeholders prior to submitting a research proposal through, our Engagement Excellence Scheme and Research Development Fund. The primary source of funding for PE delivery is through the incorporation of PE within research proposals which, for successful applications, embeds activity in the future research.
Other Resources:
We signpost existing opportunities for engagement, advise on what works, lend resources for engagement activities, coordinate institutional PE bids and facilitate partnerships with regional organisations.
Training: An introductory PE course (three per year) trains up to 90 people annually. The Engagement Excellence Scheme (EES), a year-long mentoring and coaching scheme, works with up to six Engagement Fellows. Fellows are supported and coached to deliver an activity. We offer research proposal surgeries to support inclusion of PE and support researchers to develop an engagement mind set, away from an information-deficit model and dissemination-only mind set.
Reward & Recognition: To demonstrate our institutional commitment to PE, we hold Annual PE Awards, assessed by an external panel of judges and presented by the DVC R&I to awardees and graduates of the EES. The ‘PE and outreach’ criterion was introduced in 2016 to our three staff promotion pathways: research and innovation, student education and academic leadership.
Aspect 3: Activity
Organising principles: Our strategy aims to ensure engagement is an integral part of all research, transitioning the Institution to delivering ‘engaged research’. Staff are supported to deliver outcomes-focussed and mutually benefitting engagement. Ownership of engagement resides with the researcher and PE is underpinned by the STAR framework: Social responsibility, Trust, Accountability and Relevance.
Major activities to deliver our strategy:
We introduced the General Impact Framework (based on ESRC and NCCPE), which we use in our proposal surgeries and coaching work, helping to bring colleagues together from different disciplines around a comparable articulation of outcome. Colleagues have welcomed the framework and recognise its usefulness for developing their thinking and supporting proposal writing.
To assess the effectiveness of our PE, we collect data on activities from across the Institution through an online system, capturing PE alongside academic publications data. This enables university-level reporting, acts as a mapping tool for PE and provides researchers with a personal repository of their PE activity.
To broaden the capacity of the PE Team and provide robustness to our work, we implemented the Engagement Excellence Scheme. This flagship coaching scheme, unique within the sector, aims to support future leaders of PE. The content of the scheme is guided by input from the Fellows and is open to all academic disciplines, facilitating connections across research areas and raising researcher engagement profiles.
In 2016, we introduced the University’s annual research open day ‘Be Curious’, which allows a wide audience to visit our campus to find out what we do alongside our student teaching. This provides researchers with the opportunity to engage local families with their research. Involving around 250 staff and 25 students, the event attracts over 1000 members of the public.
To allow researchers to gain experience of working with the public, we initiated the Museum-University-PE Programme, working with museums to enhance the work of the University and deliver valuable input for our partners; including Leeds Central Library, Thackray Medical Museum, Science and Media Museum, Eureka! The Children’s Museum).
Aspect 4: Results and learning
Conceptual impacts
We have a robust shared understanding of PE created through our co-produced Institutional PE strategy. In turn, this has facilitated academic Schools to produce and deliver local PE plans. We have trained over 600 people in the past three years. Participants of our courses are adopting an engaged research approach:
“I will now put …public engagement within the planning of my project so that it is not an afterthought but a proper pillar of the overall result.”
“Good comprehensive overview of the cycle through which to think about engagement. Took home interesting point about how to frame a topic/issue for different audiences to engage with.”
There is a clear understanding of where to get support for PE; continuous communication of the offer through a range of channels (website, around 1000 hits/year; Twitter, ~3-4 tweets/week; emails) alongside close working with professional service colleagues (e.g. Communications, Staff Development, Research and Innovation ). The PE Team deals with over 400 enquiries, proposal support and face-to-face communications a year.
Staff recognise the value of PE to their research and to the University; each year the majority of activities at our research open day are provided by staff who have not previously undertaken PE. This opportunity provides staff with an accessible platform to try and to develop their PE skills.
Instrumental impacts
We have attracted additional funding for PE delivery at both an institutional level (e.g. Being Human Hub, RAE Ingenious, WT ISSF, HEIF, EPSRC PE Fellowship, AHRC, NIHR) and through individual research project applications. Researchers acknowledge this support:
“…without the PE team input our PE grants wouldn't be competitive.”
The quality and success rate of proposals engaging stakeholders in the co-design phase has significantly improved. Since 2017/18 our academics have attracted over £9M in research grants with support from our Research Development Fund, with a success rate of ~50%.
Celebrating outstanding performance in PE through awards: In 2015-16 we introduced the annual PE-awards. All three winners submitted to the NCCPE Engage 2016 competition, with one winning the ‘Engaging with Young People’ category and with a second selected as a finalist in the ‘Individual-Led Projects’ category.
The value of PE is formally recognised through its inclusion into our academic promotion criteria. The criterion was used in 25% of all successful applications in the first year, now increasing to 35%.
Capacity building impacts
Through our Engagement Excellence Scheme graduates, 23 Fellows have so far taken up academic school-based leadership roles for PE (from ECRs to Associate Professors), embedding and extending PE across the institution. The scheme is hugely valued by Fellows with a high number of applications to participate.
For Be Curious we run an extensive evaluation of the event with visitors and staff, obtaining high praise from both groups. Over 60% of staff feel PE is valued by the institution, 88% of staff aim to undertake further PE, and in 2020, 75% of staff felt that PE was of increasing importance. Be Curious has helped to focus the University around PE and many researchers now build associated activity into their research proposals.
“Be Curious made a big difference… It is different from a regular science festival, and I find it more exciting to engage with a wider audience. I think people at the Uni, myself included, feel proud of Be Curious, and it is an event to aim for with our PE.”
We have developed valuable partnerships with external stakeholders, e.g. the Science Museum Group – initially contributing to their half-term activities and recently co-hosting the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture and consulting on Bradford Science Festival. Such partnerships bolster our institutional presence and regional reputation.
Aspect 5: Acting on results
The University has committed to the long-term future of the PE team, aligning it to one of the University’s core functions (research) and ensuring institutional support for PE is available to all researchers. The RCUK Catalyst Seed Fund (CSF) has truly delivered a catalysing effect on PE at Leeds.
As part of the CSF, we used the EDGE tool to assess progress (see final CSF report). We progressed in 10/11 ‘Purpose’ dimensions; 13/14 ‘Process’ dimensions and 7/12 ‘People’ dimensions.
Internally, we share stories, results and information through a monthly subscribed PE staff newsletter and a staff news website, totalling around 45+ postings/year. Our Twitter account (@UniLeedsEngage), with more than 1200 followers, sends 3-4 tweets per week, sharing opportunities and news with internal and external audiences.
Since producing our PE Strategy, we have built staff understanding to ensure that PE is part of impactful research and something that we do; it is not a separate activity but a core part of our research and knowledge exchange. By adopting a stakeholder-centric approach, we now see PE alongside business, policy and patient engagement as equally valuable forms of activity that all lead to impact.
We recognise that our expertise, involvement and linkage with some stakeholders is not as strong as with others. To address this and to move further to all research being ‘engaged research’, we have established an Engaged Research Microsoft Team. This currently has ~550 members (academics, researchers, PGRs and professional staff). Through this online community we aim to embed an outcomes-focussed approach to engaged research whilst providing a forum for discussion, networking, training and resources.
Offering funding for pre-submission engagement leads to an extremely good return on investment, generating a higher application success rate and more impactful research. Feedback following successful applications provides evidence of how important and strongly influencing PE has been on shaping the final submission of a grant proposal. The scheme is integrated with our research development support function, helping to achieve an increase in our overall research.
Our research open day, Be Curious, has created a focal point within the Institution; increasing enthusiasm for participation, and acted as a stepping stone to larger national events, e.g. the Royal Society Summer Exhibition. Be Curious has become an important brand and this has inspired us to find new ways in which we can utilise Be Curious to open our doors to the public and improve our connections with our communities.
For further information, please send queries to a.c.i.ruppertsberg@leeds.ac.uk