The Social Inclusion Strategy is about removing economic, social, and cultural barriers that have prevented people from working, studying, and succeeding at Warwick. Given the nature of those barriers, and their prevalence in wider society, we know that this is a long term and challenging programme of work. But, our ambition is to get really good at doing this, learning from our practice and building on our successes. Launched in August 2019, this is our first opportunity to reflect back on some of the achievements and progress that we have made three years into our ten-year strategy.

The pandemic period has highlighted inequalities that we knew existed. However, they have been seen in a still sharper focus. It makes even more apparent why our work in this area is and must be an integral part of the Warwick 2030 strategy. Black Lives Matter has also bought to wider public attention and recognition that racial inequalities are still very real, and not a thing of the past. Our commitment to the work in this area has not wavered, and we are pleased that we have been awarded the Advance HE Race Equality Charter (Bronze). It shows that we understand where the barriers and challenges lie, and we have clearly set out how we can become truly anti-racist. We are also pleased to have achieved Gold Employer status from the Stonewall UK Workplace Equality Index for our work with bi and trans communities. Our work on gender equality also continues to progress as we continue to hold a Silver Athena Swan award at institutional level, with 12 Bronze and 8 Silver departmental awards. We have also welcomed the recognition of our work on improving disability equality through Business Disability Forum’s Disability Smart audit, in which we were awarded Bronze in 2021.

Having our work validated by external agencies is most welcome, and helps us to learn from and share best practice. But of course, none of this happens without the work of students, staff, and partners. This is the work of our university as a community, and many of the projects, ideas, and resources come from co-created work. This includes projects such as ‘Queering University’, through which we have learnt so much about the experience of LGBTQUA+ staff and student, and we have gained a better understanding of what we need to do to improve the experience of our staff and students. We have seen through the ‘Say My Name’ project, how what may seem to be small actions can make a big difference to making people feel included and helping us to be inclusive. . The Inclusive Education Model is a partnership effort to provide all of our students a genuinely inclusive experience that helps them to achieve their potential and truly shine and eliminate the identified awarded gaps.

Our work is not just restricted to the campus, the outreach work that is happening with young people to improve social mobility and inclusion through projects such as our partnership with the EY Foundation and the National Scientific Thinking Challenge that has engaged nearly 4,500 school children across the country, is about developing our future talent.

We want to thank everyone who has and continues to contribute to this work, and hope this report gives you a flavour of some of the work that our community has engaged in and created over the past three years.

Kulbir Shergill (Director of Social Inclusion) and Professor Stuart Croft (Vice-Chancellor).