Introducing Warwick Institute of Engagement

Simon Swain opened this session. He welcomed everyone, including people from outside the University who had come along to find out what WIE is doing.

Simon reflected on the founding of WIE as means to pull together the engagement that people are doing, supporting people, providing training, connecting with the region, communicating about what the University is doing, and hearing from people about what they think we could be doing.

He also recognised that engagement will feature in assessment of research in future (REF) so it's important to ensure we're investing in this work now.

Andrew Todd and Michael Scott then took over to talk through who WIE are, our objectives for the conference and what we've already achieved in our 2 years. You can download the slides from their talk below.

Grapevine Panel Session

For this opening session we welcomed:

• Claire Whiteman – CEO, Grapevine Coventry and Warwickshire/ WIE Regional Fellow
• Professor Jackie Hodgson – School of Law/Deputy Pro-Vice Chancellor Research
• Gemma Wright – Head of Creative Learning at Warwick Arts Centre

To join us to share the work they've been collaborating on locally.

Claire opened the session by explaining that Grapevine does two things in its work across Coventry and Warwickshire:

• One is to strengthen people by taking what they have and who they are positively and using that to create a supportive network of relationships around them. Grapevine does that because relationships are really the only thing that can help people get what they need to keep strong, which is love, intimacy, purpose, connectedness and opportunity. An example of that work in action would be Teenvine, which is a chance for autistic and learning disabled teenagers to form friendships and learn together with their peers who don't carry those labels.
• The other is to shift power. We help people in communities spark movements for change that respond to the challenges they identify for themselves. For example, Collaboration Station: the go-to thing in Coventry if you have a challenge that you want to take action on. You book a table and get support from Grapevine to manage and facilitate, and to grow your team and take the ideas off the page and into reality. E.g., a group of people who want to purchase a woodland for the community and conduct education activities. E.g., a group of people with experience of having a partner or close person receiving a late-in-life diagnosis of E.g., a group wanting to make sure as many people as possible receive energy advice during the cost of living crisis. Claire then brought up the work of community organising in Ball Hill, which led on to Jackie.

The University of Warwick and Grapevine with people in Ball Hill:

Jackie then spoke briefly about a participation research project around air pollution in the Ball Hill area of Coventry she and several researchers from Warwick have been working on, working with Grapevine to help them connect with people in the community.

Wanted to put in a bid for a project involving members of the community as active researchers. Jackie had some staff ready, asked Grapevine what the community wanted and who might be involved.

Project will be on air pollution as this emerged as an issue that the community . E.g. workshops on how to gather data on air pollution. Children/school involvement. Citizen science workshop. Ambition is to build towards a citizen jury who would feel empowered to talk about how air pollution is affecting their community and to challenge decision makers.

Warwick Arts Centre and Teenvine:

Gemma then spoke about work on Teenvine the Warwick Arts Centre have been doing with Grapevine. This is part of their work to better serve underserved/underrepresented communities at WAC. It started with a consultation, then gave WAC spaces to Teenvine, then since November have been working on a BFI-funded cinema project. Monthly sessions with WAC team. Event this Saturday: they are screening the Adams Family with a quiz. Completely collaborative project. Next step is to work out how WAC can work with Grapevine and Teenvine going forward.

Claire commented that WAC is working with some of the most marginalised young people (e.g. attending special schools). Gemma commented that this will mean whatever their youth programme develops into the future will be fully accessible.

Partnership working:

The panel then all discussed the importance of partnership working and advice for those thinking about it.

• Claire: It’s important to work on the partnership as well as in partnership. I.e. not just focusing on the project but also taking breathers to talk about how the relationship is working. How is power and privilege playing out in what we’re doing for all of us?
• Jackie: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, provided you have the right partner. You have to be respectful of each partner and ways of working. E.g. of working with the police, finding differences in ethical considerations, boundaries. Importance of agreeing what it is appropriate for each partner to do, and to be realistic and work at the partnership.
• Jackie commented that personal relationships are very important, and when a person moves on from an organisation these relationship have to be established with the new person. It was important to meet Grapevine in person early on, be in same room, get to know each other.
• Gemma: respecting specialisms of others, letting go of ego, not going with set ideas of what you want to do. Being a consistent presence. Time is important.

Audience Q & A

What’s positive about Coventry? How do we turn the phrase "sent to Coventry" on its head, moving away from the negative connotations?

• Jackie: youthful city, City of Culture, lots going on
• Claire: the people – e.g., 50 people come to a monthly open ideas night who want to do something. Willingness to be sparky, bolshy, make change. Village feel – easy to make relationships.
• Gemma: transformation of city over last 20 years, e.g. more cultural institutions.

How do you find people to work with, what should we look out for?

• Claire: in our work, people are the right people for Grapevine if they want to make a change. Grapevine connects people up to work together
• Jackie: for me, it was less horizon scanning for a partner and more, in the nature of what I'm doing, coming across someone and seeing the potential to work together, and designing a project together in the first place. Or, being approached by people who are looking for someone to work with.
• Gemma: targeted towards who is currently underserved by WAC and who is currently not coming to WAC. Having a strategy with a set of outcomes helps.

Do you also work with rural parts of Warwickshire who might be underserved in other ways?

• Grapevine works in Warwickshire and Coventry
• WAC historically has worked with people in Warwickshire. They have now shifted towards Coventry but still nurture relationships with Warwickshire schools
• Jackie has done some work with Warwickshire police

Collaborative Approaches to Co-Production with Communities

This session was split into 2 parts. In the first Gemma Wright from Warwick Arts Centre and Nor Aziz, WIE Regional FellowLink opens in a new window shared the work they've been doing with the Playing Out in Canley Project. James Hodkinson then shared a brief overview of his new Co-Lab project.

Playing out in CanleyLink opens in a new window

• What Canley wants and needs through a project like Playing Out
• 3 year project until Dec 2023
• Artists led activities within the community that leads up to an annual parade (carnival for 2023)
• Think about how you welcome residents to the workshops as well as the wider community
• 2 primary and 1 secondary schools, community centre, library, churches, all of which have representation on the steering group.
• Learnt lots about road closures, safety, security!
• How to communicate with the community – FB but also posters and the quarterly Canley newsletter.
• They have a ‘crew’ that work on the Canley newsletter
• Parade on Saturday 10^th June this year. July last year so had lots of staff volunteers.
• Nor got small grants from various sources, then met people at the university
• Showed the *Canley Parade video

• Video does not include anyone from the university for specific reasons
• Audience discussion - What skills and approaches makes an authentic co=production model?
• Always think ‘how can I help them’ rather than ‘what can they do for me’
• Giving people a forum to gather together helps create alignment between individual interests.
• What are the challenges in collaboration and co-production? And how do we manage these?

Planning and evaluating events?

Question for discussion:

• What are the top 5 things to consider when planning events?
  Who – the audience
  What – what are your goals, and what do you/the audience expect/hope for
  When – logistics, timing etc. This all changes depending on who’s delivering the event
  Where – e.g. On vs off campus
  Which – which format is best?
  Health and Safety
  What team will run it?
  A Clear event plan
  
  Group task – Thinking about the bigger aims of your projects
  This is about empowering teams to support with events in a way that meets the needs of both the team delivering and the audience.
• Some aims from the room – Thinking about empowering skills, or supporting women in STEM at a later career stage (not just in schools).
• Key point discussed – when you’re oversubscribed to an event, knowing your bigger aims and objectives helps you to focus without discouraging. For example, taking “Positive Action” and explicitly stating the measurements or criteria for your event. Be very clear about what you have to prioritise, and offer alternatives.
• Link here also to monitoring and evaluation and thinking about this from the beginning – what data do you need from the start (e.g. event registration) to be able to evaluate the data/outcome/impact at the end?
• Think about identifying the outcomes that are needed to achieve your aims, and mapping these outcomes with activities. This can allow you to see the gaps as well as what you are achieving, and find out where else the audience might be able to access this information.
• Evaluation should also be proportionate to the intensity of the level of activity.

(Note that summaries included in the slides are their team’s evaluation framework)

Activity – Operational tick sheet about thinking logistically
(Note for the sheet, the top list is about bringing audiences on to campus, and the bottom list is about going out to schools for the activity

• Key points about interacting with audiences:
  • No DBS check is needed for single interactions (ie one day). If interacting over multiple days then this is required
  • The most important thing is safeguarding training. This is available from safeguarding@warwick.ac.uk, one hour course on moodle.
  • Encouraged to use this logistical tick list to think about whether you are doing the event in the best way, or can you better meet the needs of both the audience and your capacity in a different format.

Additional note:

The Education Endowment Foundation Toolkit is a particularly useful resource.

Principles of Inclusive Engagement

Context

1. The Statement was developed by the Inclusive Engagement Learning Circle and approved by WIE to help guide Staff and Students across the university in Engagement practice.

2. The aim of the session is to put the statement out there for the room to feedback on so we can plan the next steps of embedding the statement into WIE’s work.

3. The statement was read out and handouts given for participants to read followed by group discussions on the following questions:

1- What does this statement mean to you?

• Not just include, but value and give same weight to other voices.
• It means to seek to be inclusive, not just when the opportunity arises.
• How do we reach the voices of those who are seldom represented? Needs support, framework.
• This is a statement, not in action – how will it be monitored? Illustrates hope for change though.
• Is it not in action already? How do you roll it out more widely to enable change wider than WIE?
• This is not yet the action plan, but it is the starting point to help guide planning, etc.
• Today we had 3 men up front then the panel of women – this communicated that men lead; women do the work. There is an unconscious message we ourselves need to be aware of.
• It was acknowledged from the front - it is acknowledged, does it mean we can keep on doing it?
• The female panel was also non-diverse.

2- How should we start to operationalise and embed this statement?

• Shout about it when it is done well – an inclusive engagement award in WAPCE or add to criteria?
• Accountability for when not done well – how do you call it out?
• Repercussions for not following the checklists – adaptive to the departments for needs. Realistic targets and expectations.
• Have practical guidance.
• Checklist for doing events which includes the principles.
• Show we value people over money
• Transition people from aware of this to inbuilt in our practices.
• Diverse panels
• Module and course design guidance
• Promote values through workshops.
• Awareness raising
• Funding people for their time in doing the workshops.
• Different factors as challenge to operationalise.
  • Language barrier? Language lessons?
  • Accessibility of venues
  • Time is needed to action the change needed.

3- Next steps

• How do we develop wider understanding and resources?
• Now work with experts and look to develop the guidelines, etc.
• Starting with questions to help develop the thinking and planning of events.
• We cannot yet influence the wider university. BUT we are starting in WIE to bed in good practice and then work out from there. It will take time.

How to film smarter with your smartphone

Tripods

• Lens should be at eye height, with the interviewer at the same height as the interviewee
• Reviewed each of the tripods, recommending the £20 one from Amazon

iPhone settings for capturing

• 4K uses lots of storage, so only use if
• Might produce flicker when using florescent lighting, so use 30 frames per second to avoid this

Microphones

• Test by running finger over the top
• Make sure the mic has air all around it – avoid hair, lanyard, other things that might jangle

Interviewing

• Ask quick question to get the interview going (e.g. tell me what you had for breakfast)

Angle

• Person either looking directly at the lens or at the interviewer, using sunlight as the natural light.
• Person in shot standing at least a metre away from the wall due to shadows.
• Avoid posters and sockets in the wall behind.

Tackling the challenges of teaching science communication skills to large undergraduate groups

Led by Sophie Martucci, Module convenor for BS349 Science Communication in the School of Life Sciences

• Ever increasing number of students taking this module. Optional year 3 in School of Life Science
• Lots of external people come in to give talks, e.g. Kate Sayer (organises world book day). E.g. people from government civil service to talk about communicating science to politicians. E.g. press office
• Module started with lecture style for about 50 students. Then workshop style. Module became more popular so started being taught twice. This year, enormous increase in student numbers, about 200 total.
• Post-Graduate mentors each mentor 10 students, giving support, guidance, feedback. In workshop, speaker does their talk, then the mentors do skills development with the students and they do a task in their group.
• No end of year exam in this module. Coursework set weekly for their portfolio.

A PG Mentor spoke:

• Learnt from the module content
• By giving feedback, you learn some of the skills too – practising communication
• Example of a current PhD student who is a PG Mentor having previously taken the module. He used the storytelling skills learnt in the module at an interview to get a job.
• PG Mentors give feedback on weekly portfolio submissions.
• Reflective essay is worth 50% - marked. The best ones pull in pedagogy they’ve learnt through the module and examples from their portfolios.
• Final video/podcast project is worth 50% - marked
• STEM students are really creative, we just don’t have enough opportunities for them to show this
• A student talked about their reasons for taking the module and what they learnt, commenting that it was character building.
• Sophie reflected that the module is about more than just communicating science.
• Q&A: does the portfolio involve the real public? No, it’s an opportunity to practise.

Staff and Students: Delivering Public Engagement together - Paul Grigsby

Public Engagement in Classics and Ancient History

• Much smaller group - The entire classics cohort could fit into Sophie’s module twice.
• Classicists need to do PE to challenge the perception that Classics is elitist. Also need to justify classics as a subject, and to show that it’s a valid subject to study (student recruitment at back of mind).
• Last year’s cohort for the module was 16.
• Paul mentioned some of the things he does. He also shared the Warwick Classics Network (WCN) webpage.
• WCN is the outreach/engagement arm of the department, with a dedicated Research Fellow (Paul). Teacher resources, on-campus school events, student experience. 2023: paying students as assistants/ambassadors.
• The things our students can do in engagement are then promoted at open days to attract new students. I.e., they are attracted by the opportunity to do these engagement things.

URSS:

• Classics by Tallulah
• Rebecca Preedy – laser scanning with WMG and Lunt Roman Fort, time capsules, lessons in a box for schools. Paul plans to tie this in to his Roman Coventry Schools Project, using his paid ambassadors to help.
• This year’s URSS projects: Will, Kenzie and Isabella

Warwick Innovation:

• 20/21 Students made teaching resources using artefacts.
• 2022 Purchase of laser scanner
• Collab and Co-production fund
• Working with Warwickshire Museums on their Silver Denarii Coin Hoards. Students are helping to develop the project.
• PE in Classics module
• Has been annual, will transition to being every two years due to student numbers.
• Mentioned module fund
• Group projects
• WCN Roman Coventry Project
• Aiming to integrate all the above into a complete suite of school resources and opportunities for our local community

Alternative approaches to PE for Professional Services Staff

Question for discussion:
How do professional services staff at Warwick engage with the public?

• Events – going out into the community/spaces - getting the word out there
• Library services/ WAC/ WP and outreach
• Social media
• Invite onto campus
• Graduations
• Networking
• Press office
• Responding to requests from the public
• Consultation events for e.g. HS2
• Involvement in big events e.g. commonwealth games
• Contacting alumni or potential donors
• Employers
• Regional groups
• Applicant enquiries and open days
• Personal interactions, such as meeting people while dog walking
• PE doesn’t have a strict definition. NCCPE say “Whilst in some sectors it has a strict definition, in others it is used more flexibly”. Working in PE can give satisfaction of working on something bigger than yourself. Also great additional to your CV and skillset.
• PE often thought of as academics talking to the public, but it’s more than that. This session is a chance to think about what else there is, what’s already happening, and what we want to do/encourage others to do.

Question for discussion: How does your department contribute to or create Public Engagement opportunities?

• Organising alumni opportunities, e.g. social media, graduation ceremonies, trying to win philanthropic support
• Research engagement, open days/ workshops/ engagement with organisations/ research collaborations for events
• Industrial clients
• Science on the Hill – engagement event
• Invite local banks onto campus to help students set up bank accounts
• Local area tours around the region for new students
• Part of a working group – different University staff, local councils, police forces etc that work together thinking about students in the community
• Collaborations with the Warwick Arts Centre
• Free foyer programme at WAC – workshop Wednesdays, family Sundays, Jazz Fridays. Also Cosy warm hub space.
• All about bridging your dreams with other peoples dreams
• Helping with funding (as an external person, departments help with funding applications etc)
• Raising awareness of their team overall – talks at conferences, writing books, guest lecturing, mentoring and coaching externally.
• Question highlighted - Is anything we do externally PE? Difference with PE, outreach, WP? All depends on lens you’re looking at this with.
• (External perspective) Having conversations with departments about what can we create that is of value to community? What can departments offer that actually meets the needs of community? Finding out where community are at, and continuing that relationship.
• Industry days – continuing to raise awareness of what the university does

Question for personal reflection (not discussed): How have you contributed to public engagement?

 Question for personal reflection (not discussed): What other PE opportunities exist or could be created in your work?

• Overall hope for the session - Use this to inspire you, as well as take away and encourage colleagues. Find opportunities you wouldn’t usually do, put yourself out there and get involved in a small way. Reach out to others, talking to counterparts in other universities etc – exchange ideas/practices.
• Don’t have to be a “Public Engagement Professional” - people who are “doing the doing” are important and are public engagement experts in their subject, and in their own way.

Next steps for Public Engagement at Warwick

Icebreaker: How many years of public engagement are represented at your table?

167 years in the room.

Q1. What does public engagement mean to you:

• We discussed our love of learning and sharing that learning – helping to share the buzz
• This was a 2 way discussion – we need to enable the conversation.
• Accessibility is important. We talked about audiences and the importance of knowing who we were talking to but not talking down to people.
• We talked about relevance (this started as the importance of making our own activities relevant to others, then we looked at trying to understand the relevance for audiences, later we wondered whether ‘relevance’ was the right term – concerns about only focusing on things with impact rather than ideas etc)
• There was some discussion about the importance of engagement but also that it is not always seen widely (ie example of supervisor asking someone to stop engagement as it was affecting their workload not seeing the opportunity for it to support their other activities.
• Communication and sharing
• Sparking interest
• Inclusive approach and collaborative approach across the institution
• Relevance / giving back / inspiring / breaking the norm / shared learning / knowledge exchange / collaboration / journey of discovery / a voice for everyone / creating a community /
• Working with Primary schools: making kids smile
• Improving science literacy in households/ Enthusing the future/ Improving trust in science
• Widening participation and recruitment was recognised as a different stream of activity. Going to schools in deprived areas, because those who come to science festivals are a closed privileged group. Hard work but rewarding and really important. What is in it for us: Every girl drew a girl engineer
• Transferable skills (interdisciplinary), for students involved in public engagement. Warwick unique in having taught module on PE
• PE good for Career development, is a criteria for promotion. Not all departments have it in their time allocation calculation (yet)

Q1.a What is common:

• importance of reaching out and reaching in; communication
• Goal of inspiring audiences / unlocking thought / principled values and beliefs / sense of achievement and connection and satisfaction / shared learning / empowering stakeholders / feedback and evaluation

Q1.b What is different:

• The reasons why we do things and the desired outcomes; the audiences
• Audiences – students or alumni etc / re-engagement / different benefits from each audiences / approach to audience connection
• How you interact will impact different audiences
• Longevity of product – ie is it a podcast or is it an event – how long this will live

Q2 What is best practice in public engagement?

• We used words such as responsive, dynamic, engaging with broad audiences; clear communication with audience
• We started to look at what the ‘outcomes’ might be – was there some sort of change we were looking for? started with ‘imparting a love of learning’ but recognised that may be too much for some audiences? We came back to meaningful engagement but didn’t really get into what would be meaningful about it.
• Tailoring to the audience and recognising that changes – ensure relevance
• Memorable and fun / relevance
• Length of time for engagement
• Scale and impact
• Audience empathy – any barriers to communication / sensitivities
• We can’t control things we can’t measure, so we focused on measurable parameters for what success would look like.
• Schools - make things achievable. Success: when the kids are having fun - smiles on kids faces.
• Alumnae engagement - make them inspired and proud of being linked with Warwick. Alumnae Can inspire our students.
• Good practice - want to see them engaged
• How to do it: simplify complex messages into something digestible (Comment: one participant - totally agree but would question the limits of that).
• Evaluation – look beyond the numbers, public engagement is hardest to evaluate
• Community building and belonging is important as for kids to have fun while participating, but what about actual learning? Have they learned something new?

Q2.a How can Warwick be distinctive/unique in its public engagement?

• Our inclusive approach could be our strength (and the intention behind our approach)
• Our ability to reach diverse communities
• We wondered if ‘how we do engagement’ could be as important as ‘what we do’
• How do we tell our story in an authentic way / whats’ our legacy?
• How do we talk about ourselves / jargon and acronyms
• Create a pathway for underrepresented children by offering internships as a follow-up to engagement events
• Warwick distinctive because now we have a centralised wie.
• Network of departments rather than separate departments doing own thing

 

Q2.b What would success look like?

• We suggested success was when there was a ‘spark’.
• Recognised that would be very hard to measure – it would be different for different people and it may be invisible (or hidden). It may take some time to happen.
• Sometimes the audience itself could be a success – were we engaging with a diverse audience etc
• We also recognised that we create role models through our engagement – eg the spark for a young girl from a minority group seeing someone like them as a researcher/teacher/expert/scientist etc
• Best Practise handbook / shared experiences /
• Local people and new and diverse audiences / attendance and evaluation
• Effective data capture and how we use that / follow up
• Every girl drew a girl engineer after an event. This can be measured.
• “I’d like to be an inventor” 3 days after the event, but it is not possible to collect that feedback. Also hard to disentangle from other influences
• How to measure success? If it is in public interest you can have data held. Use statistics of achievement, enrolments etc.
• Collaboration, evaluation and why we are doing it.

Students and Public Engagement

Context

When looking to get Students involved in PE, there isn’t always the knowledge and understanding of what PE is with Students. Discuss in groups:

What is Public and Community Engagement?

Reciprocal conversation. Giving and learning from each party. There is something to gain for both parties in their knowledge. Not just money and resources.

WIE definition:

Engagement (also referred to as ‘public’ and ‘community’ engagement) is about people inside universities interacting with those outside universities to share knowledge and research, collaborate on ideas, co-produce new approaches and enable curiosity, exploration and conversation. Through it everyone gains valuable interactions and insights, in turn contributing to societal development and progress.

Warwick’s PE opportunities Provision

At WIE we offer:

• Resonate Events – can earn Warwick Award points
• MAsc
• URSS engagement projects
• PE Internships – 6 weeks paid for. Full time in partner organsations
• UG PG Modules
• Module development fund
• WAPCE

Using Vevox, the room was asked to answer the following questions:

• What opportunities does your department offer for students?
• How do you communicate opportunities to students?
• How do you actually find out about opportunities?

In an ideal world, who Gains what from students doing public Engagement? Consider this from the perspective of:

Students

• Enriches their university experience
• Improves their ability to interact socially and articulate themselves
• Developing empathy
• Sense of belonging
• Helps them build a highly transferable skillsets
• Public Engagement activities are recognised and celebrated via the Warwick Award (and look good on their CV)

Departments and the wider university

• Enabling informed and evidence-based approaches to teaching and learning
• Inspiring prospective students
• Students feel connected to local communities- cohesion
• Wider reach for staff/department's own PE activities
• Social impact
• Funding
• REF and TEF

The Public

• New knowledge and insights
• Understanding how research works and what universities do
• Input on what universities do and on students’ learning
• Establishing trust
• Making informed decisions, about learning, healthcare, legal rights, environmental consciousness, etc

In discussions around the table – Create a plan for a student opportunity.

• URSS public engagement project, Resonate event, taught module, department internship, or other opportunity
• What are the aims, and the benefits to the student, the public and Warwick?
• Are there any links to current projects/work at Warwick (by students or staff)?

Support from WIE:

• Resonate events
• URSS public engagement internships
• Public and Community Engagement Module Development Fund
• Collaboration and Co-Production Fund

Final thoughts and feelings

• What are you feeling optimistic or enthusiastic about?
• What are you feeling worried about or in need of help with?

Involving the local community in training the doctors of tomorrow

A really interesting talk from the WMS about how they are working with a community group to train the doctors of tomorrow, with the community group and doctors both benefitting immensely from this interaction. The community group have even been able to give student doctors feedback and mark practical assessments. It was great to see some of the community group at the conference too. WMS also talked about their new engagement activities with local mental health groups.

Designing High Impact Public Engagement activities for young audiences

Why do we want to work with young people?

• Make societal change
  • Give them an avenue
  • Help with crime rates
• Making things more accessible and affordable
• Learn more about this age group as I don’t work with them the most
• Earlier engagement is key as often by the time they get to secondary – decisions and mind sets have already been made.
• Younger ages can be easier to work with through schools as well – more flexible in terms of logistics to get in to the school.
• If we can pitch something to a primary age then secondary can be easier too.
• Raise aspirations
• Plant seeds
• It’s fun!

The bigger picture:

There is a network of people across the University who can support – you don’t need to feel you are on your own. I.e the WP Team work with year 4 through to PG students and beyond.

Main two age groups target years to identify are Year 6 and Year 9 – key for transition points i.e. moving to bigger school or making key life decision about GCSE and the impact his can have.

How to start:

Start with an aim and objective and link to what the session will add value to.

Important to always start with evaluation and link this back to the planning.

Evaluating your Activity:

This needs to link back to the aims and objectives. How you do it can be very varied – is it a tick sheet, is it a picture, is it a conversation?

How do we engage young people and how do we find the spark?

• Inspiration to them
• Bringing things above but not complicated
• Creating a feeling is important – we don’t always remember content but how it or the person made us feel.

Why do you want to design the session and what will they get from it?

What key areas will it link to i.e. careers, employability, curriculum?

Top Tips for Engagement

• Start with the age group and young people in mind
• What do the age group already know about uni, the topic or concept?
• What can they relate to in the room or environment on a day to day?
• Think about language we use – do they understand it?

Bridging the gap between what it is that you know and what they know – how can we expand their knowledge but in a way that works for them. How do you showcase the future options to i.e. careers, role models?

Be concise – their age is normally the number of minutes that they can concentrate for (rough rule of thumb) – need to then move on to an activity.

Offer a range of activities that are short and sharp – try and keep it simple but then adding layers of other opportunities.

Use of imagination can help too – can you tell a story or capture them in what you are trying to do it.

Content is not always key and doesn’t need to be complex, can be simple such as an egg drop but you build up the drama before it happens i.e wearing high vis, build up the energy, sense of competition.

Summarise their learning simply too – it’s good that they get a good feeling but what is the take away message that you want them to remember – if they are asked ‘how was your day?’ what is the one line/message you want them to remember.

How to build an impact, outreach and engagement case for future promotion

Context

Nick, Sarah and Ian represent the WIE Promotions Learning Circle who run workshops and offers help with promotion cases and applications.

Today looks to address how we get started with Engagement to help with your promotion case and understanding the impact that we have with our research and events.

Sarah Richardson - case study of Voice and Vote – celebrating 100 years of the women’s vote.

Impact is often hard to measure…

Lessons learnt – What I wish I had known when I started.

• To understand how my research is relevant to different Audiences.
• Take opportunities to engage with different groups.
• Speak to the research impact team and design in impact.
• Sometimes the least promising openings provide the greatest impact!

Nicholas Jackson – Outreach & Engagement

When started in Maths, there wasn’t much there in the Maths department.

He was encourage to attend a science fiction convention and found them to be a great audience to talk to about his research.

Got involved in a variety of outreach groups:

• The Big STEM group
• Brum Sci-com
• STEM ambassador network
• Coder club after school clubs
• Other ways to get stuck in
  • Resonate
  • Pint of Science

Some words of advice:

• You are an expert in your topic. You are allowed, encouraged to talk about your topic to a wider audience.
• Need to consider your audience and tailor your message accordingly.
• An audience only sees the talk you gave. Not the perfect one you have in your mind.
• Networking is key – it is essentially chatting to nice people about interesting things.
• Online presence and social media
  • Example of a friend who in a one minute video about her work generated 200K followers on tiktok.
• Promotions - Keep an updated list of what you do – when you do put your application in you will find it easier to reference this.

Ian Tuersley – Emeritus professor in WMG

WAPCE awards – Warwick Awards for Public and Community Engagement.

Ian and his team were the recipients of the WAPCE team award 2022 – The citation form the award ceremony gives us clues on what is worth celebrating.

“The Warwick Team Award for Public and Community Engagement is given to one team in the University who have made the most significant contribution to engaging the public in our learning and discovery, with the goals of sharing and co-producing knowledge, strengthening the role we as a university play in the region and showcasing the role Warwick plays nationally and internationally in making the world a better place. This year’s winners have not only achieved this in spades but have done so as a collaborative staff-student team. They thus also exemplify one of the most important elements of what makes Warwick special: staff and students working together to solve problems and create and communicate solutions. And as such it is a pleasure to be able to offer this award as part of our Graduation celebrations.

The principle aim of the Warwick-Human-powered Submarine Team has been to engage with the widest range of target audiences about the joys and wonders of engineering, and for the last ten years, that’s exactly what it’s been doing. Bringing in new engineering students each year, the project, led by Prof Ian Tuersley and Nigel Denton, has now had over 70 undergraduate members. And today we are proud to have with us the latest crop. Being part of this project has empowered the students to develop personally and professionally through delivering engagements with schools and the public. Supported by technicians and academics this staff-student team has engaged and inspired people of all ages in the importance of engineering and what it means to our lives. Throughout the project’s 10 year life, the team have also been supported by, and partnered with, businesses, strengthening connections between several well-known organisations and the university. The project has even become a best practice public engagement case study within the field, with the team being invited to present at numerous engineering professional bodies, showing the benefits a well-thought out and longitudinal project can have on those it engages with, but also on the staff and students delivering it.

• Collaborative Staff student team
• Widest range of target audiences
• Empower students to get jobs in industry.
• Engagement with schools and the public
• A yes attitude towards working with people and showcasing the sub at events/schools, etc.
• It doesn’t happen overnight!

Lessons Learnt:

People reading applications know about research but not always the context you are in, so give them the context of your work and give them a grasp of what your work means in very simple terms.

Practically - create a folder with feedback, quotes, power points, etc. that will help build your portfolio of acknowledgements and will help with your promotion cases. Give others voice to your brilliant work.

Think about how you present your case - Promotions workshops will help you with this – come along to the LC promotions workshops.

A practical guide to hands on engagement

This session focused on designing and delivering hands-on public engagement activities, most suitable for table-top activities on a table or stall. Topics included:

• The Three Stages of Engagement
• Design Considerations
• Considerations in Detail

In designing hands-on activities it is important to consider all the different design aspects at the same time and work out what is and isn’t the most important for your objective(s).

You don’t want to over complicate your activity so try to have one simple outcome or takeaway for participants and make everything you design or decide lead to that. For example, if you’re designing a new pen the number one thing it has to do is be able to make marks, so every design decision – material, shape, colour, ink etc. - has to not stop it from doing that.

The session included examples of simple hands-on activities placed around the room for participants to try out.

Public Engagement and URSS: a guide for supervisor - Kate Astbury

Research can lead directly to something meaningful particularly with URSS students

Spectrum of Public Participation: undergraduates likely to be informing or consulting

There are many different formats for a URSS to use, and supervisors should consider the best format for the research or level of participation

Possibilities:

• Embed the student event into a pre-existing/bigger event via WIE or your department (e.g. stall, display, presentation).
• Blogs – in some ways easy public engagement, but the art of the blog is very different to academic work – but consider, where is this going to go?
• Who might be interested in this research? Schools, conference attendees, audience on the departmental social media. Help them reach an audience.
• Exhibitions give students ownership over communicating with a non-specialist audience
• In person events such as workshops. Who might be interested and are their existing channels to those people – e.g. via WIE.

Q&A

Do you have an example of using Omeka?

Kate shows a webpage built using Omeka – a site builder particularly useful for online exhibitions

When in the schedule would the student present if they were taking over the social media?

At the end of the project, the student could then present on the work that’s taken place throughout on social media.

The WIE Mentoring Scheme - Florian Reiche

Launched last year and first round complete (8-10 mentors, some with two mentees). Looking now to reflect on what well and what could be better.

Run twice per academic year and are open for anyone. Next deadline for applications 28^th April 2023, with the next opportunity November 2023.

The premise: mentees are matched with an experienced and knowledgeable colleague to develop their Public Engagement skills

Menti with the question: What do you want to get out of mentoring? Instructed to think from the mentor or mentee perspective depending on our own position.

Contributions: connections, practical guidance, professional development, advice, support, ideas, inspiration, career progression, a listening ear, framework

The scheme has been designed to fulfil all of these – it has a lot of flexibility into it.

How does it work? Timeline on slide. Point 3 is a new step, a group meeting to give a little more detail on the framework.

Experiences:

Vishalakshi Roy

Flexibility is great but the framework is very helpful

When the scheme first started, there was not a specific focus on goal setting which now is a specific point in the schedule. This will be very helpful

Although Vish’s experience didn’t exactly match the type of PE the mentee wanted to work in, she was able to signpost and direct

The overall relationship lasted for around 6 months – after the third meeting they spoke about next steps and other people to continue having these conversations with (particularly those people Vish signposted him to)

Gemma Wright

Slightly different – Gemma was approached separately then carried out the mentoring via this scheme (but were pre-matched)

The mentoring was with an external individual and they had particular focuses to discuss. Setting the focus for each meeting was very helpful. It gave a clear trajectory and timeline.

Met 7 times, an hour-two hours each time. No set ending to this relationship.

The WIE scheme gave resources and structures that they couldn’t get without it

Q: how many people applied for it?

A: some mentors took on two mentees, but otherwise the numbers were balanced.

Q: do these mentoring relationship take into account public engagement balancing against other workloads

Closing plenary with Rachel Sandby-Thomas

Chris from Nifty Fox presented back his drawings from the day - you can view these hereLink opens in a new window.

• Rachel drew out the theme of listening to what people want, which is key to collaboration. Rachel loved the idea of starting on a journey together without knowing where it is going. It takes courage but can lead to richer outcomes.
• Rachel talked about unleashing potential in young people.
• Rachel talked about colleagues and people outside the university being responsive when they are asked for help – and being pleased to ask.
• Rachel talked about the importance of bringing different teams, people, parts of the university together to collaborate.
• Rachel reflected on the value of celebration and building pride.
• Strategy refresh: current strategy is generic and there’s a need to make it represent Warwick’s individuality. What are we like when we are at our best? And what is holding us back?
• Restless curiosity at Warwick. Ambition. Wanting to be extraordinary and better than the rest. Diversity of our community. A desire for everyone to be included. Want to lead the way ahead. Belief that we all have it in us to build a better world.
• Cultural Values: how do we reach those ambitions through our culture? The above (ambition etc.) plus grit and determination. Thinking freely. Thriving on difference. Creating connections. WIE is an example of these.
• In the Strategy Refresh, Rachel is trying to use examples where Warwick is already pointing the way ahead.
• The work that WIE does intersects/overlaps hugely with research and research impact, student experience, regional impact.
• Welcoming campus, wellbeing.

Q&A

Comment: Thank you for bringing different departments together

Q: What do you hope the extended WIE network will continue to do in the University?

A - Michael: What can’t we do? WIE as a research centre. WIE as a teaching department – even offering a degree one day.

A – Rachel: I want us to take this as far as we can. Also, re-establishing our place (current reputation of universities), sharing with others wat we are doing, being at the heart of our locality.

Comment - Kevin: Stonybrook, New York has a Masters in Science Communication within the school of communication and journalism

Q: How can we include more community partners next time?

A - Michael: As an example, the WAPCE celebration in July will include community partners

A – Rachel: and we should involve them in other discussions at the University too