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Institutional Context
Summary
The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (Central) is a single-faculty small specialist institution in theatre and the performing arts (Arts Specialist). Offering Bachelors, Masters and Doctoral degrees alongside non-degree diplomas and courses, it combines university-intensive research, scholarship, and conservatoire practice across three primary intersecting areas: Technique and Training, Performance Making, and Performance in Society. Knowledge Exchange is embedded through all research, scholarship, teaching, and commercial activity. In addition to achieving Gold status in the 2017 TEF, in the 2016 ISTA, Central was the only HE institution wholly dedicated to this field designated ‘world leading’ by HEFCE, and in REF 2014, Central was the second-highest ranked drama institution for impact, with 86.7% of its impact assessed as outstanding.Institutional context
Central’s mission is to develop practitioners and researchers who shape the future of theatre and performance; bridging the creative industries and the academy, it serves as a Knowledge Exchange (KE) hub where diverse practices and ideas are explored and shared through KE with partners and publics, supporting and boosting the cultural economy. KE is delivered through staff and student engagement with the creative and cultural industries and broader society, across Central’s key institutional strengths: teaching, practice, research, and scholarship, and focal areas: Technique and Training (contemporary performance techniques, acting, voice and movement pedagogies, and histories); Performance Making (playwriting, directing, verbatim, design, theatre criticism and theatre technology, production, and construction); and Performance in Society (applied practices; queer, gender and political performance; critical race theory; theatre as a social institution; theatre arts in health settings, including dramatherapy; and theatre in transhistorical and transnational contexts). Staff teaching and working alongside industry professionals builds KE into all our practices, continuing through COVID, as students, staff and industry learn together how to adapt their practices to online or hybrid modes of working, shaping methods, and developing audiences.
With an Academic staff base of 111.4FTE (2019-20), Central enrols c.1100 students annually across taught and research degrees. 100 open courses and workshops yearly engage approximately 1300 people ranging in age from 6 to 73 and originating from 41 countries. Central’s income in 2018–19 was £19.7m, of which 57% was invested in staffing and a further 6% in student-facing Visiting Professionals. KE infrastructure is supported through internal and external funding, including ISTA and QR, as Central does not receive HEIF funding.
The performing arts workforce’s freelance nature and our graduates’ success in establishing commercial, charitable, and social enterprises, from the largest UK theatre production companies (e.g., Delfont Mackintosh, Sonia Friedman Productions) to smaller, socially focused organisations (https://www.cssd.ac.uk/content/our-alumni-achievements) generates strong sustainable collaborations between staff, students, industry, and publics. This includes over 657 student placements (2018-19; https://www.cssd.ac.uk/content/our-industry-connections); onsite public- and industry-facing events with over 31,000 visitors (2018-19; https://www.cssd.ac.uk/events) and online events, e.g., The Theatre Times’s International Online Theatre Festival (https://thetheatretimes.com/iotfestival2020/), with over 500,000 visitors; 413 industry-based visiting lecturers (2019–20); curricular engagement and collaboration, e.g., a three-year partnership with Complicité generating studio productions, workshops, and research (https://www.cssd.ac.uk/news/central-and-complicite-studio-season), and Collaborative Doctoral Awards with industry bodies and cultural institutions, including the National Theatre Black Play Archive and Association of British Theatre Technicians (https://www.cssd.ac.uk/research-degrees). Central embeds academic staff in industry; 45% of academic staff currently hold fractional positions to facilitate industry collaborations (as designers, choreographers, curators, directors, movement directors, acting coaches, NHS trust dramatherapists, and visual artists). Academic staff engage with over 1110 external organisations, translating work for varied audiences and engaging publics as presenters and guests on over 20 BBC radio and television programmes, as well as other national and international media outlets (i.e., SkyNews, TRT News, CCTV-China), and journalistic outlets both general (The Guardian) and specialist (Sight & Sound, Exeunt, Total Theatre, The Stage). Shared benefits through collaborative partner, industry and public engagement is fundamental to Central’s character and mission.
For further information, please send queries to Knowledge.Exchange@cssd.ac.uk
Local Growth and Regeneration
Summary of approach
Knowledge Exchange at Central operates in a wide range of ‘local’ spaces across the globe, from its own locality to the international. Our approach to growth and regeneration is needs-based and project-led, embedding Central’s expertise and practice within particular locations to deliver impacts and results that meet the needs of our partner organisations and publics. Working collaboratively with a range of partners, we identify key needs or challenges in a particular location and develop performance-based strategies to address them, centring holistic ideas of growth and processes of regeneration. We focus on developing reciprocal strategies, engaging local individuals, communities, and organisations in Knowledge Exchange to address local needs, while offering opportunities for learning and research to staff and students.Aspect 1: Strategy
Central is physically located in the London borough of Camden. The campus forms one side of the Swiss Cottage ‘Theatre Square’ development, which serves the local community with five publicly licensed theatre venues (three at Central, two at Hampstead Theatre). In addition to physical proximity as a driver for engagement in both Camden and the Greater London area, strategically, Central targets local growth and regeneration through Knowledge Exchange (KE) across focused projects locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. Delivering collaborative projects to address issues of local economic development, social inclusion, infrastructural improvement and public space in defined geographic areas, identification of targeted locations cuts across Aims 2, 3 and 5 of our KE Strategy (https://www.cssd.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Knowledge-Exchange-Strategy-2017-22.pdf):
2: We aim to cultivate, maintain and build new strategic collaborations with world-leading industry and public/non-commercial partners throughout the UK and the world to demonstrate the impact of theatre and performing arts training and research to a variety of industries and sectors.
3: We aim to facilitate strong partnerships and collaborative relationships with SMEs and equivalents, bringing our expert knowledge and expertise to bear in building the theatre and performance of the future, in both-short-term and long-term engagements.
5: We aim to develop collaborations and actively participate in KE networks across HE within the UK and internationally at both school and individual levels.
Key factors for identifying strategically relevant locations:
Physical Proximity
Areas of Low Engagement in Art and Culture: In line with Arts Council England policy that ‘Participation in the arts should not be dependent on where people live or their social, educational or financial circumstances’, Central identifies areas locally, nationally, and internationally to increase participation in the arts and culture.
Areas with recognised social and economic challenge: Using performance to facilitate KE, we identify areas where issues such as a lack of social integration and community cohesion, for instance, between new and settled groups or between those differing in class, race/ethnicity, disability, age group, occupation, or other characteristics; where there are challenges relating to social and economic deprivation, such as poor public health or sanitation provision; and where there are individuals or groups who are marginalised or socially excluded.
Areas where we can build on pre-existing relationships: As a small specialist institution, collaborations with industry and commercial/public partners are key for yielding significant and sustainable results and impacts. Such relationships produce KE feedback loops, generating research and curricular development as well as contributing to local growth and regeneration. Central currently has established partnerships with ten local organisations, 525 organisations within the wider London and South-East region, 215 bodies nationally, and over 500 internationally.
Methods of identifying significant local growth and regeneration needs include:
Engagement with local organisations, community and/or enterprise partners, governments and NGOs: Working in partnership and collaboration, we use a range of scoping exercises, including community workshops, surveys, and statistical analysis to identify of top-down and grassroots perception of issues and challenges relating to economic deprivation, social inclusion, and access to public space.
External Approaches: Through public and community engagement, wide dissemination of research, our existing collaborative relationships, and by producing and disseminating research findings and robust end of project reports, we encourage areas with social or economic issues or challenges to approach Central to work with us to identify their needs and develop sustainable solutions.
Aspect 2: Activity
The following examples provide an overview of the types of institutional KE activities focused on local growth and regeneration delivered over the past three years and in line with the strategy outlined above.
Project: Performing Places Bexley, 2017–19. (https://www.cssd.ac.uk/performing-places-bexley)
Location: Bexley, Greater London
Identification of Area: In addition to physical proximity (1a), an influx of migrants across socio-economic backgrounds produced tension and isolation between different parts of the community (1c).
Identifying Area Needs: Following a public symposium for local authorities, focusing on previous iterations (https://www.cssd.ac.uk/content/performing-local-places) of the ‘Performing Places’ project led by Professor Sally Mackey, Bexley Councillors approached Central to develop a partnership (2b), identifying a generational divide and lack of community cohesion that was negatively affecting foot traffic and high-street businesses (2a).
Funding: £205,000 from UK Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, under Bexley’s bid ‘A Place for Everyone’
Activity: Working collaboratively with a range of organisations, including local primary, secondary and tertiary schools; libraries; charities; community and religious organisations; high-street retailers; and arts organisations, the project mobilised a fictional narrative to encourage residents to consider how public space might more easily be shared. Imagining a parallel universe dissolving through lack of attention and care, the project produced 9 days of street performances; 76 workshops for schools, libraries and community groups; 11 schools/family performances; an educational resource pack and a touring exhibition, engaging publics in KE around notions of the ‘alien’ and collective consideration of ideas of attachment to place, drawing on Mackey’s practice research on re-connecting communities.
Evaluation: The project used both qualitative (surveys, focus groups, impact study) and quantitative (footfall measurements, data analysis) methods to measure success and identify outcomes in a 2019 jointly produced project impact study.
Project: Worli-Koli-Wada: My Neighbourhood, My Responsibility, 2016–present (https://www.cssd.ac.uk/worli-koli-wada)
Location: Mumbai, India (See also similar work in Dharavi, Mumbai; https://www.cssd.ac.uk/content/concrete-utopias-dharavi)
Identification of Area: This project builds on a long-term relationship between the Mumbai-based applied theatre company StageLeft and Dr Selina Busby (1d), working in an urban slum in India (1c).
Identifying Area Needs: Working collaboratively with StageLeft, G5A Foundation for Arts and Culture, and the community, the team ran scoping workshops (2a) with women and youth of the local community, which, through a series of storytelling sessions in 2018, identified issues such as social isolation, lack of physical space, and sanitation.
Funding: £19,669.49 from UK Global Challenges Research Fund (2017–20)
Activity: To draw particular attention to issues of mental health arising from lack of access to public space and advocate for better spatial access and sanitation, the project worked to develop and produce a series of site-specific performances in the lanes of the slum. These were produced internally and then shared with the wider community. Dissemination to local policy makers and government planned for 2020 was postponed due to COVID-19. Bringing together applied theatre expertise from Central and collaborators with embedded area knowledge, including local residents, to advocate for policy development, the project delivered results and impacts directly through collaboration and KE. (https://youtu.be/VZAzhjJMXQk, https://youtu.be/rRCRv4bMp5w)
Evaluation: Individual reporting practices and a cyclical process building evaluation and next steps into the project.
Aspect 3: Results
In order to maximise outcomes, results and impacts and to remain responsive to feedback from partners and collaborators, results-driven evaluation processes are built into all projects across all stages. Collation and analysis of quantitative and qualitative data is used to articulate key findings, which are shared with key stakeholders, including institutional, community, and individual collaborators. Internal monitoring of key performance indicators around KE and impact is based on this data, and through appropriate reporting structures, informs future strategic decision-making, including allocating support for external funding applications. Analyses by external partners also contribute to future development of projects and collaboration. The following examples indicate how we capture results of KE activity and what kinds of data are gathered.
Project: The Verbatim Formula (TVF; http://www.theverbatimformula.org.uk/)
Location: Camden, Wandsworth, Kensington & Chelsea, Glasgow
Activity: Co-created research, working with young people with experience of the care system, using verbatim theatre techniques to examine the question of what care should look like in the 21st Century, focused on issues of social inclusion.
Outcomes/Dissemination: TVF participants and researchers have provided evidence to Greater London Authority Peer Outreach Team’s Enquiry into Children’s Rights (2016) and the cross-sectoral NNECL consultation, commissioned by Become, on educational needs, and participated in the UK Parliament’s All-Party Group on Children and Young People in relation to the provision of care (ongoing since 2017). Invited training and sharing of findings include Children’s Service Departments in Wandsworth, Camden, Kensington & Chelsea; Office for Students Directorate for Fair Access; DfE; Scottish Parliament.
Evaluation Processes: Embedded across the project, evaluation is flexible and participant-led, seeking to capture the affective qualities of the activity and provide feedback to develop further iterations.
Impacts:
Statements provided from Training:
‘my understanding [of the experiences of young people in the care system] has greatly increased’ from ‘really specific examples of care leavers’ HE experiences’ (OfS Access and Participation Manager);
a Senior Policy Officer at the DfE noted ‘a change in my thought process’: ‘It is not good enough to assume we know what is the right approach and create policies around this without first sense checking that what we do is actually what care leavers want. We need to hear what they are telling us instead of assuming we know what they are saying’ (2020 Impact Report, Dar and Williamson; https://www.cssd.ac.uk/content/breaking-silence-using-testimony-and-theatre-improve-practice-care).
Policy developments:
alterations to the ‘design and delivery of projects’ intended to evaluate the educational experiences of young people so as to include ‘more lived-experience data’.
considerations of how to ‘engage marginalised groups in a way that doesn’t further marginalise’.
Project: This Grief Thing (https://www.feveredsleep.co.uk/project/this-grief-thing)
Location: UK, locations in top 100 Index of Multiple Deprivation
Activity: A participatory art project inviting people to come together to think, talk, and learn about the social issue of grieving. Located in shopping centres, the project took the form of ‘grief gatherings’ in temporary shops, where people could talk about grief, and a collection of clothing, accessories, and cards for sale. The temporary shops opened at each of the project’s touring locations to reconceive public/commercial space and seek ways of resisting and subverting tendencies to conceal grief within private space as an individual, rather than collective, process.
Outcomes/Dissemination
Social Media:
https://www.instagram.com/permissiontogrieve/
https://twitter.com/feveredsleep/status/1256503069690519552
Interview features on BBC Radio Five Live (almost 5 million listeners), in The Stage (online 400k and print 30k), and in i-newspaper (248k print and online)
Regionally on radio (BBC Radio Tees, BBC Radio Lancashire, BBC Nottingham), on television (That’s Manchester; Ey Up Notts), and in print (Middlesborough Gazette)
Locally Visit Manchester and The Double Negative in Manchester; Blog Preston in Preston; and Left Lion in Nottingham
Evaluation Processes: Ongoing quantitative and qualitative monitoring and evaluation activities for funding partners: Arts Council England, Paul Hamlyn Foundation, and the Wellcome Trust
Impacts:
Participant statements:
Middlesbrough Town Council have developed ‘a new way of thinking about partnership working’, based on ‘mutually embedding’ partners’ ‘work, strategy and practice’, a model they ‘continue to pursue’, including through ‘a whole new approach to the use of retail spaces’ by the local authority, which is now reimagining them as ‘civic spaces’.
‘our space is now being used in a different way – we have pop ups happening in it all the time – the project sparked a different way for us to use the space’
Policy Developments
David Harradine/Fevered Sleep advise All-Party Parliamentary Group on Bereavement Support
Led to further funding from 2020–21 QR Strategic Priorities Fund to develop relationship with The Good Grief Trust and the APPG on Bereavement Support, as a platform for public contribution to National Grief Awareness Week (2–9 December 2020).
Project: Homemaker Sounds (https://homemakersounds.org/)
Location: London, Lebanon
Activity: Site-specific soundwalks recorded and co-edited with Filipino migrant domestic workers, engaging notions of public space, exploring how domestic and care workers frame a sense of home while living and working abroad.
Outcomes/Dissemination:
Features on BBC Radio 3 Arts and Ideas (22 May 2019), in the International Online Theatre Festival, and across multiple media
Website was launched on International Women’s Day (8 March) 2020, visited 3,940 times by 1,236 unique visitors as of 12 October 2020
Published articles in The Guardian, shared 136 times https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/11/communities-migrant-women-politicians)
AHRC’s Arts and Minds blog, accessed by 8,600+ readers
https://ahrc-blog.com/2019/10/11/the-realities-of-domestic-worker-activism-and-the-fight-for-truth-and-justice/).
Evaluation Processes: Individual participant interviews and project analysis
Impacts:
Statements from participants:
‘I’m more confident . . . I’m proud of myself.’
‘When I listen to it, I feel that we’re not alone, and that despite our fear, we are trying to express ourselves for the world to hear. We are risking our lives, our voices, to have freedom for everyone.’
For further information, please send queries to Knowledge.Exchange@cssd.ac.uk
Public & Community Engagement
Summary of approach
Knowledge Exchange through Public and Community Engagement is at the heart of Central’s mission and it is embedded across all research, scholarship, and commercial activity. As an institution based on providing industry-focused conservatoire training, in close engagement with an active research culture, those close connections and overlapping areas of knowledge production enable us to establish and prioritise interactions with a range of publics and communities, as well as education institutions, public bodies, charities, and industry to maximise social benefit. Building on a learning environment that fosters creativity, artistry, critical engagement, and radical innovation to bring practice and research into productive conversation, we are committed to building and maintaining strong partnerships and relationships to deliver public and community engagement.Aspect 1: Strategy
A 2015 infrastructure review identified Knowledge Exchange (KE) and impact as areas for strategic focus, resulting in restructured senior appointments in research, teaching, and enterprise, embedding KE throughout Central. With KE explicitly in their remit, Central appointed its first full-time Director of Research (2015), Director of a reconfigured Department of Engagement and Enterprise, and Director and Deputy Director of Teaching and Learning (2018, 2019), the former leading on the development of the institutional KE strategy. Since 2016, Central has made KE-targeted investment in an Impact Manager, Academic Lead for Impact, and two fixed-term KE fellows (2018–21). Central’s Knowledge Exchange and Partnerships Group (KEPG), co-chaired by the Director of Teaching and Learning and Director of Engagement and Enterprise, has responsibility for institutional oversight of KE activities.
Central’s Corporate Plan defines specific core public benefit strategic aims for public and community engagement. (https://www.cssd.ac.uk/sites/default/files/CORPORATE_PLAN_FOR_THE_PERIOD_TO_2020-21_0.pdf)
Central’s Knowledge Exchange Strategy (https://www.cssd.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Knowledge-Exchange-Strategy-2017-22.pdf), the third leg of our Academic Strategy, sits alongside and embedded across: Research and Learning and Teaching (https://www.cssd.ac.uk/content/academic-board).
The current iteration, 2017–22, defines six aims in relation to public and community engagement.
1: We aim to actively encourage all members of academic staff to engage in high-quality outward-facing knowledge exchange, maximising possibilities for dissemination and impact, as well as to facilitate possibilities for external income;
2: We aim to cultivate, maintain and build new strategic collaborations with world-leading industry and public/non-commercial partners throughout the UK and the world to demonstrate the impact of theatre and performing arts training and research to a variety of industries and sectors;
3: We aim to facilitate strong partnerships and collaborative relationships with SMEs and equivalents, bringing our expert knowledge and expertise to bear in building the theatre and performance of the future, in both short-term and long-term engagements;
4: We aim to support students and alumni through ensuring that creative entrepreneurialism is embedded across the curriculum at all levels;
5: We aim to develop collaborations and actively participate in KE networks across HE within the UK and internationally at both school and individual levels;
6: We aim to develop and maintain successful external funding through a variety of KE relationships, creating and augmenting possibilities for further income streams and commercialisation, including undertaking and delivering commercial learning and training excellence to a range of audiences.
Identification of public and community groups and their respective needs is through collaborative dialogue, including project- and participant-led activity, with particular focus on recognising and addressing needs towards supporting social cohesion and reducing marginalisation; developing the creative, arts, and cultural industries and increasing engagement in them; addressing challenges in the industry around under-representation; and improving wellbeing.
Aspect 2: Support
To deliver on the strategic aims outlined above, we provide a range of practical, financial, and structural support. To recognise, encourage, and promote all forms of KE, in 2017, Central introduced two academic pathways: Teaching and Research and Teaching and Scholarship. All Academic Staff self-selected pathways, enabling a bespoke and targeted approach to recognising all forms of KE in promotion processes.
FUNDING SUPPORT
Since August 2017, the Sabbaticals and Awards Committee has awarded £457k in support across both pathways, for sabbaticals as well as a range of smaller KE-related pump-priming, travel and project completion awards. All applications for support require specific detail on KE-related goals. To acknowledge public engagement through fiscal reward, we operate a flexible approach to consultancy income, ensuring that members of staff benefit directly, with income supporting further activity or going directly to the individual. KE funding from external bodies in the form of commissions and consultancies paid directly to staff was not captured prior to 2015 but totals £850k from 2015-17 and £1,356,640 from 2018 to 2020.
CPD AND PRACTICAL SUPPORT
In 2019, Central launched a series of informal Impact and KE sessions. These meetings — 12 to date — have also provided a venue for external speakers, including Hamish McAlpine (Knowledge Exchange Team, Research England) and Charlotte Jones, Independent Theatre Council. Staff awareness of institutional priorities for public engagement is raised through Faculty Day meetings and internal seminars, and these provide opportunities to publicly recognise institutional and individual successes in public and community engagement. To support the strategic development of KE engagement with industry, Central currently hosts over 400 Visiting Lecturers annually (413 in 2019–20), and has invested in excess of £600k annually in Visiting Professionals working closely with academic staff.
STUDENT SUPPORT
To bolster existing support for enterprise and KE delivered across curricula, in 2017, we launched a Start-Up and Enterprise Scheme for graduating students, which made five awards of £1k recognising innovative projects delivered by graduating students. Drawing on funding received through the 2016 ISTA competition, five £5k awards were made in each 2018 and 2019. The program underpinned a successful application with UAL and RNCM to the OfS/UKRI’s 2019 ‘Student Engagement in Knowledge Exchange’ initiative (£902k).
COMMUNITY GOVERNANCE/ADVISORY ROLES
Ensuring that public and community activity is recognised and supported, the governing body, which has recently included Vice President (Original Series) at Netflix, two presidents of BAFTA, a former CFO of the Arts Council and the National Theatre, and a former president of the Association of British Theatre Technicians, receives regular reports on KE activities and feeds back on further potential avenues for KE. (https://www.cssd.ac.uk/content/governing-body.) The recently appointed Independent Equity Committee, including Black and Global Majority industry professionals and academics, explicitly embeds KE, overseeing institutional engagement towards decolonising industry and internal practices (https://www.cssd.ac.uk/news/independent-equity-committee-appointed). Central staff serve in 18 governance roles across education, funders, social charities and arts advocacy.
Aspect 3: Activity
The following examples provide a cross-section of KE activities focused on public and community engagement in the delivery of the institutional strategy.
Creative Industries:
Project: Ladies of the Stave, Wendy Gadian, 2017–present
(https://www.cssd.ac.uk/content/ladies-stave-building-gender-equality-musical-theatre)
Community: Female-identified Musical Directors
KE Activity: Responding to a 2018 Musicians’ Union (MU) survey reporting that barely 10% of players in West End orchestra pits were women, Gadian partnered with the Musical Theatre Network to deliver a series of collaborative events exploring training, recruitment, underemployment, pay, and harassment to address pipeline challenges into industry.
Project: Parents and Carers in Performing Arts, Tom Cornford and PIPA co-founder Anna Ehnold-Danailov a (2008 Central graduate) 2015–18
(https://pipacampaign.org/research/best-practice-research-project?referrer=/research)
Community: UK theatre workers with caring responsibilities
KE Activity: Arts Council England/Creative Scotland-funded project with fifteen UK theatres to identify barriers and challenges of systemic and structural exclusions, leading to ‘Best Practice Charter’ and follow-on projects with sector partners including BECTU.
Other Projects:
Ayse Tashkiran co-founded the Movement Directors Association bringing together over 100 professional movement directors to address working conditions and representation. ().
Amanda Brennan founded and co-curated film festivals ‘On the Verge’ and ‘From the Wilderness’ (2017, 2018) to showcase emerging female directors and address pipeline issues. Over 500 entries were received. (https://www.cssd.ac.uk/event/from-the-wilderness).
In conjunction with Ben Buratta/Outbox Theatre’s 2019 And the Rest of Me Floats, 142 LGBTQ+ participants, aged 14–25, took part in workshops exploring the themes of the play, focused on increasing queer and trans* representation within the industry. (https://www.outboxtheatre.com/)
Collaborative Doctoral Award Candidate Nadine Deller launched ‘That Black Theatre Podcast’, celebrating leaders of Black British theatre with an initial season of 12 episodes (nationaltheatre.org.uk/blog/that-black-theatre-podcast)
Improving wellbeing in individuals experiencing challenging life circumstances:
Project: Applied Theatre to Deliver Better Patient Experience in the NHS, Nicola Abraham, in collaboration with Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust
Community: NHS Staff and patients across acute and long-term care
KE Activity: Central and NHS staff and students work with patients across wards including dementia and dialysis, developing Virtual Reality films using applied theatre techniques to improve patient wellbeing. (https://www.theculturecapitalexchange.co.uk/2020/06/02/wonder-vr-creating-meaningful-experiences-for-patients-in-the-midst-of-uncertainty/). The project was the basis of a £566k award from the OfS/UKRI’s 2019 ‘Student Engagement in Knowledge Exchange’ initiative.
Project: Music in Detention, Jane Munro
Community: Detainees in UK’s Immigration Removal Centres
KE Activity: Working as the lead dance art artist for Music in Detention’s ‘Dance in Detention’ project, Munro delivers collaborative arts workshops with detainees, using music, dance, and story to engage participants in the creative process. Sessions are recorded to improve wellbeing and made available publicly. (https://www.musicindetention.org.uk/what/music-with-detainees/).
Aspect 4: Results and learning
The Impact Manager coordinates quantitative and qualitative data collection and performance measurement through an annual achievements survey of all academic staff, communicating information across departments and directorates. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for KE and public engagement currently sit across annual Learning and Teaching, and Research KPI monitoring processes. Where internal funding has been provided for KE, staff produce project evaluations for the Sabbaticals and Awards Committee, detailing outcomes, results and next steps. Internally and externally funded projects are evaluated against strategic targets, with feedback provided to staff. Evaluation is embedded in many of the projects given as examples in the submission.
Central was the only HE institution to receive two grants from the OfS/UKRI in the 2019–20 initiative focused on ‘Student engagement in knowledge exchange’: for Abraham’s project, (£566k) ‘Innovative Student Involvement in Delivering Better Patient Outcomes in the NHS’, and with Royal Northern College of Music and University of the Arts London (£902k) ‘StART Enterprise Scheme’ (‘https://re.ukri.org/documents/2020/student-engagement-in-knowledge-exchange-project-summaries/)
Central’s strategic investment and focus on developing Knowledge Exchange and public engagement is further recognised in the following grants and awards (https://www.cssd.ac.uk/content/knowledge-exchange-and-public-engagement):
British Academy Rising Star Engagement Awards, focussed directly on KE capability in Early Career academics, for Dr Sarah Grochala (2018) and Dr Naomi Paxton (2019);
Selection of Dr Ella Parry-Davies as an AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker (2019), to increase public engagement in her research;
Abraham’s KE with ICHNHST received the National Dementia Care Award for Outstanding Arts & Creativity in Dementia Care (2019), as well as being a finalist for HSJ Mental Health Innovation for the Year and for the Culture, Health and Wellbeing Alliance: Collective Power Award 2020;
KE Fellow, Paxton has secured a competitive Parliamentary Academic Fellowship, developing a network of academics and practitioners to inform research and practice on public engagement with government (2020-21).
Baker’s work with The Verbatim Formula received the QMUL Widening Participation Award (2017);
Busby’s ‘Concrete Utopias in Dharavi’ was a finalist in Times Higher (Innovation in the Arts, 2016), and Guardian Education (International Projects, Social and Community Impact, 2017) awards, and named in the UK’s Best Breakthroughs list by UUK (https://www.cssd.ac.uk/news/made-at-uni);
Harradine was a finalist in Times Higher (Research Project of the Year) and Guardian Education (Social and Community Impact) awards (2017) for Fevered Sleep’s Men & Girls Dance.
Aspect 5: Acting on results
In line with KE Strategy Aim 1, according to the most recent institutional annual achievements survey 2018–19, 100% of staff identified engaging in clear KE activities around research, teaching, and/or practice, the majority involving public and community engagement. The Impact Manager reports back on these findings through all-staff meetings and through participation in a range of internal fora. These statistics and data provide the basis for ‘Brown Bag’ lunches and ISTLAR events, as well as course and department events. Clear reporting deriving from the survey, indicating names and roles of partner organisations, audience, participant and community engagement details facilitates both feedback and action on results. Annual setting of KEPG Terms of Reference enables reviews of the KE strategy and support mechanisms, and identification of future development.
The following chart demonstrates methods and opportunities for internal and external reporting on KE and its impacts.
Communication and Acting on Results of Public Engagement and Knowledge Exchange
Through the Impact Manager and Academic Lead for Impact, areas and projects are identified for improvement, and staff are encouraged to embed evaluation in KE and public engagement activity. Data on curriculum-related KE is also gathered through internal monitoring systems, including course-level Annual Monitoring Reviews, which include review of public and community engagement objectives and outcomes. This data feeds into internal KPI tracking, assessment, and reporting, and contribute to decisions about organisational support and resource allocation. The Director of Research and Director of Learning and Teaching produce an Annual Report for the Governing Body, which identifies key KE outcomes over the previous academic year, including feedback from partners and stakeholders. Going forward, Central will continue to build on its strengths in KE and public engagement whilst learning through monitoring and evaluation measures already in place to identify and further develop areas for improvement.
For further information, please send queries to Knowledge.Exchange@cssd.ac.uk