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Update from UCL’s Public Engagement Team
By sarah.barnes and h.craig, on 12 November 2024
We are pleased to let you know that the Public Engagement support offer at UCL has been relaunched! This blog outlines how we’re prioritising the needs of staff and students at UCL and shares our hopes for the future.
Firstly, Helen Craig, Joint Head of Public Engagement, shares what is new:
Welcome back to the UCL blog – and welcome back, me! I’m returning to UCL after a period of parental leave – the longest time I’ve spent away since joining the team.
I’m writing this blog because I wanted to share a bit of our history of supporting and enabling staff and students to engage, listen to, and collaborate with public groups and communities outside UCL, and to discuss what comes next.
Public engagement has been a part of UCL since 2008, and I’ve been a member of the team for over five years. We’ve certainly not stood still in that time, and one of my favourite work experiences has been to see colleagues and teams such as the Cultural and Community Engagement team and Co-Production Collective go on to do incredible work. Public engagement now sits within UCL’s (renamed!) Co-Production and Public Engagement team. We’re continuing to champion the varied approaches of public engagement across UCL, while also highlighting the sector-leading work of Co-Production Collective. With research funders and policymakers placing a greater emphasis on co-production, now is the perfect time to foreground this work at UCL.
But what does it mean right now? For a start, we’re going to be working even more closely with our colleagues in Co-Production Collective and seeing what we can learn from them.
We also want to shout a bit more about what we can do to help you! We’ve launched a new, permanent series of online bookable advice sessions, and given our website a refresh to reflect our new home. And our popular Engagement and Impact training returns this term.
We are also refreshing our in-person and online training and teaching offer and are available to discuss bespoke sessions to meet the needs of staff, students and researchers. In the upcoming months, we will explore ways to bring the engagement community together at UCL and to remove barriers that UCL staff and students may face when undertaking co-production and public engagement projects.
Before launching the new offer, we took the opportunity to reach out to our community at UCL to find out what they wanted and needed from our support.
Sarah Barnes, Joint Head of Public Engagement, talks us through what’s been happening over the last year…
I joined UCL at the end of 2023 as Helen’s maternity cover and was tasked with reaching out to colleagues at UCL to find out what they’re looking for when it comes to support for public engagement. It’s important to us that we’re able to cater to all of UCL’s faculties, institutes and disciplines, as well as having space to explore more focused support for particular approaches or subjects.
Undertaking any sort of consultation in a university the size of UCL can be a challenge, but I was really encouraged to see the enthusiasm for, and commitment to, engaging with the communities who have a stake in the work of UCL! Many of the people consulted have benefited from the support of UCL’s Public Engagement team and shared the journey they have been on with their own engagement practice.
One of the most important things with this work was not reinventing the wheel. There’s a huge wealth of experience and expertise out there in terms of what makes a successful public engagement support programme, much of which UCL’s public engagement team has contributed to over the years.
Consultees most valued the expert advice and support provided by the team, so we’re testing a new way to book one-to-one calls with us to provide anyone at UCL the chance to talk through their ideas and questions with us.
We’re also aware that the public engagement funding previously offered to the UCL community is greatly missed, so we are considering ways to continue to offer a grant scheme to support public engagement projects in the future.
Looking forwards, we’ll be reviewing the resources provided on our webpages, as well as reviewing and updating our self-directed online training. We’re also exploring more ways to bring UCL’s public engagement community together, so watch this space!
- Explore the new UCL public engagement webpages at www.ucl.ac.uk/public-engagement
- Find out more about Co-Production Collective at www.coproductioncollective.co.uk
2 Responses to “Update from UCL’s Public Engagement Team”
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h.craig wrote on 19 November 2024:
Thank you so much for your comment. We really appreciate the feedback, and we’ll discuss this as a team. You might be interested in the Citizen Science Academy at UCL who can be contacted on citizenscienceacademy@ucl.ac.uk or in the evaluation exchange who also have an email contact on their page.
I am a Trustee of 2 Charities- Citizens Advice and Highgate Cemetery where I am very interested in engaging in Citizen Science projects. From our perspective we are engaged in major long term projects where interdisciplinary skills from physical and social sciences are needed alongside expertise from the humanities.
Highgate Cemeteries is a unique site, with a unique project where we need to evaluate the impact of our work on heritage, nature and community. Highgate Cemetery is being “unlocked” with a project taking 7 years and £18m. After years of neglect, many of the physical structures are unstable, access is difficult, the Grade 1 listed Egyptian Avenue, the Circle of Lebanon and expansive views from the Grade 2 listed Terrace Catacombs will all be restored. The Cemetery is a haven for wildlife but the effects of climate change, the monoculture of self-seeded Ash trees and the impact of Ash die back have degraded the habitat. After removing dangerous, diseased trees there will be a chance to restore biodiversity with climate-resilient planting and improved water management. We need to develop a new interpretation plan to expand the stories we tell, reflecting the huge range of heritage and welcoming a greater diversity of people. We need to collaborate with citizen scientists and those in the humanities but don’t know how to describe or frame our projects to attract those who would find our projects interesting and apposite for their research.
I am also a Trustee of Citizens Advice Westminster and the newly formed (pan) London Board. Again we are wanting to foray into increased AI in advice but need help with cost-benefit trade-offs, evaluation of implementation, ensuring value to beneficiaries and to funders which may be described differently, may actually be different and – in some unusual circumstances- conflict. We don’t know how to see whether there are any citizen scientists wishing to investigate these Advice issues from the technical to the human, like employee resistance to change.
How do those of us who are working for the public good attract the attention of citizen scientists to see what would be a fruitful collaboration?
I receive the UCL Public Engagement emails (I am a UCL graduate and live nearby off Goodge Street) but much of the training you offer is restricted to the UCL community but there is no (obvious) way for us who have the need for citizen scientists to describe our needs to your community. Please help me do this.