IWD 2024: Inclusion and Community-Engaged Projects at UCL Faculty of Brain Sciences.

The theme of International Women’s Day 2024 is ‘Inspire Inclusion’. With that in mind, this blog celebrates the work of brilliant colleagues at UCL in developing a new module ‘Exploring Power, Inclusion and Exclusion with Local Communities’. They are: Stefanie Anyadi (Team Manager, Teaching & Learning, Psychology & Language Sciences), Anne Laybourne (Head of Volunteering, UCL), Sophie Scott (Director for EDI, Psychology & Language Sciences), Victoria Showunmi (Associate Professor of Education, Practice & Society, Institute of Education), and Marie Xypaki (now Head of Teaching and Learning Enhancement, SOAS).

This Masters-level module is attached to the Division of Psychology and Language sciences but it is truly interdisciplinary, bringing together students from across UCL with community partners to work on a project. The current module convener is Vincent Walsh.

How did the module come about?

The module came about because through my work with staff on implicit bias and EDI related issues, it became apparent that there was a gap for UCL students interested in this area: there were no modules available for them to study issues of exclusion, privilege and power and their current, local impact. Marie Xypaki, who was then working at UCL Arena, was a keen collaborator in developing a module proposal under the umbrella of the UCL East modules. These are a suite of elective modules designed to be interdisciplinary and focusing, where possible, on working with several boroughs in East London. We soon linked up with Sophie Scott and Victoria Showunmi, who designed the content of the module and ran its first presentation in 2022/23. 

Stefanie Anyadi

We had a range of meeting over a period of 2 years. It was an exciting way to bring together different thoughts and disciplines to enable the students to deliver something for and with the community. Wonderful way to do Blue Sky Thinking with colleagues who wanted to make an impact with student voices.

Victoria Showunmi

What do students do and what is the role of the community partner?

 The students have lectures and discussion sessions around – for example – disability, identity and difference, the point of public engagement and coproduction of research, and they also work on projects with community groups and associations.

Sophie Scott

Much of the thinking was based around Victoria’s  work on ‘Who Are You?’ which engages students with critical reflectivity and thinking beyond one’s own individual boundaries. It was risking yet very powerful. Understanding themselves helps with understanding others.  Sophie’s work on happiness was core to the work. Students selected roles which included leadership so this could be added to their portfolio.  They needed to reflect on how there group worked as a team along with how they were including challenges and solutions.

Victoria Showunmi

Last year the students worked with the Black Women’s Kindness Initiative on organising a fashion event. They worked on many different aspects of the project, from designing posters and pamphlets, encouraging local businesses to donate items for goodie bags, helping with the logistics of the actual evening. They were so enthusiastic and engaged, it was fantastic.  

Sophie Scott

It was an incredible aligning of the stars initially; I was meeting with Cherrill Hutchinson anyway, about students doing their dissertations on something that could be useful for Black Woman’s Kindness Initiative. Cherrill mentioned an event she was trying to pull of for IWD 2023, which was around 12 weeks away at the time. I had a lightbulb moment and joined the dots – Cherrill’s event and ideas are all around black women and empowerment and breaking down stereotypes about the strong black woman and needed support as a small community organisation. I had 10 amazing students on a module, who needed a real life, impactful community-based project.

Anne Laybourne

Further information can be found at https://studentsunionucl.org/articles/learning-through-volunteering

How did the participants react? Were there any positive impacts?

From the students’ reflections, it was clear that they really loved the opportunity to do community work, and many of them singled out Adam Rutherford’s lecture on racism in science as something that really made them think differently! From my perspective, it was a very positive experience and it was great to work with the students alongside Victoria and Anne.

Sophie Scott

Cherrill was fantastic and really embraced and understood the learning experience of the students. My favourite thing was Cherrill telling me she had recorded herself arriving at UCL for her Instagram as no one would believe she was turning up to the new gorgeous East campus to teach!! It was a powerful moment. I know Cherrill was nervous but she was incredible in the classroom and brought a totally different perspective and angle than any of us UCL ‘providers’! We are really grateful to Cherrill for putting her faith in our students last year and jumping into the unknown with me.

Anne Laybourne

Watching the students grow and think differently.  More work needed to be done on the benefit of the critical reflective journal. 

Victoria Showunmi

Do you have any thoughts on how inclusion and community involvement could be embedded within other parts of UCL?

Well it did occur to me that, although the course ran out of UCL East, we also have a local community here in Camden! I think the sky is the limit for this kind of work – it’s such a positive experience for students, as well as staff, and there is so much more we can do. In reality, the actual limit is Anne Laybourne’s time – she’s amazing and is fantastic with the community groups but she is just one human being and there are only so many hours in a day!

Sophie Scott

Having a panel of community members (something like dragons’ den) and a prize for the most effective group is something I wanted to do but ran out of time. would be great, I am so pleased that sister systems is now part of the programme.

Victoria Showunmi

This year has been quite the step up – it has been a very different experience, pulling together five projects, as the module has grown. I brought in Molly McCabe this year, who is currently managing the Community Research Initiative. Molly has done an amazing job, working up project ideas with our community partners – the offer being what can we do with and for you with a team of four student volunteers over 6-8 weeks? It hasn’t been easy as there a lot more moving parts! We’ve had our first ‘fail’, with illness and some inexperience plus miscommunication contributing factors. But this is also a success – it’s messy real life, right?! It is SUCH a strong element of this module that there is a reflective assessment. This means the students will always be rewarded. Our specialism is to hold and repair relationships with our community partners so that something is salvaged for them when things go ‘wrong’.

Anne Laybourne

For more information about the UCL Community Research Initiative, and how to get involved in community-engaged projects, see https://studentsunionucl.org/volunteering/cris/ or contact the UCL Community Research Initiative Manager Molly McCabe.

Many thanks to the contributors to this blog for their generous help!