Engagement and place

Strategic priorities

Our Engagement and Place Strategy aims to ensure that we benefit society through our research, education and the way the University operates. The core value of social and environmental justice underpins everything we do. The strategy aims to deliver programmes to support: ◼ inclusive and sustainable economic growth ◼ health and wellbeing ◼ cultural richness ◼ inclusive education and lifelong learning ◼ global – local connections ◼ evidence-based policy making

Measuring progress

Social mobility: Improve social mobility by making our education and research as accessible as possible

Mutually beneficial partnerships: the strength and breadth of our mutually beneficial partnerships Inclusive growth: the University’s contribution to inclusive growth in the North East and develop a more prosperous economy and more equitable society

Progress during the past year with an eye to the future

North East inclusive growth

Arrow, one of our flagship programmes which supports the growth of existing business by matching university academics with innovative regional SMEs, is on target to over-perform on all contracted outputs. In the next three years, it is forecast to lead to 143 new jobs, 53 new products or services and an increase of £16.9m in company turnover in the region. Company creation via Northern Accelerator, another of our flagship programmes which supports the creation of new tech companies based on university research, is making a real difference in the region – turnover of our spin-outs increased from £7m to £9.4m in 2020–21 and the number of employees was up to 234 at the end of July 2021. We are developing a long-term sustainable funding model for Arrow and Northern Accelerator to replace European funding which will cease in 2023.

We have continued to develop our student placements, developing our Engaged Newcastle programme with employers and have increased student placements. Our degree apprenticeships ensure that we are equipping students with the skills and capabilities that match employers’ business needs. We launched our first suite of degree apprenticeships in September 2019 and to date just over 100 apprentices are enrolled on one of our advanced and degree apprenticeship programmes. We are maximising opportunities for inclusive growth through the development of our strategic sites – Newcastle Helix, Campus for Ageing and Vitality and Energising Blyth, linked to our plans to support skills and lifelong learning.

Social mobility

We are working through UniConnect, North East Raising Aspirations Partnership (NERAP) with the Office for Students (OfS) and Department of Education (DfE) in the North East to ensure progress is made to improve the proportion of new entrants from low participation neighbourhood students to achieve the targets in our Access and Participation Plan. We are developing approaches to project-based learning, particularly linked to our strategic sites, working with schools and industry partners to ensure our education and research is as accessible as possible.

Newcastle academics have developed a bespoke dataset and analysis of city trends, aligned to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, in order to establish the evidence base for the Newcastle Future Needs Assessment. The work was carried out under the Newcastle Agreement, part of our Collaborative Newcastle programme which brings together the NHS, local government, higher education, voluntary and community sector in Newcastle. Together we’re combining efforts, expertise and resources to achieve a single, shared vision. Working collaboratively and creatively to reduce inequalities, tackle some of the big things that hold people back, and provide better opportunities for all.

Partnerships

Following the launch of the Collaborative Newcastle Universities Agreement in July 2021, we have taken forward the development of a strategic programme with Northumbria University that addresses local need. The partnership brings together our combined world-leading expertise for the benefit of the communities of Newcastle and beyond. We have developed our partnerships with the North East Local Enterprise Partnership and North of Tyne Combined Authority to connect our innovation and skills to key growth areas. Through our partnership Energising Blyth, we are working with schools, colleges, employers and local government in South East Northumberland to connect our research capabilities in battery technology and renewable energy with a programme to support upskilling and reskilling of local people of all ages and backgrounds. Insights North East (INE) aims to build a shared understanding of the knowledge and data across partner organisations and develop new ways of connecting that knowledge base to regional policymakers to better address the needs of local communities. The £5.5m project has received £2.8m from Research England’s Development Fund. Our partnership with the University of Pittsburgh has developed significantly, launching plans for a global hub and building collaborative projects ahead of our next international place-based conference. We will deliver a programme of activity to support Collaborative Newcastle – people, planet and prosperity. We will share best practice nationally through the Civic University Network.

Social justice

We bring together academics, practitioners from the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise sector, and professional services colleagues at the University to work collaboratively to address issues of social justice. The forward programme of activity includes three annual social justice forums and a targeted funding scheme for collaborative projects. We are supporting the West End Children’s Community as part of a long-term commitment to working with local communities and building on our strategic partnership with Tyne and Wear Citizens through a shared post. We continue to support the University of Sanctuary and our commitments in the Race Equality Charter.

Engagement culture

We held our inaugural Engagement and Place Awards in May 2021, making awards to projects that demonstrated a strong relationship between high-quality engagement and high-quality research or teaching, creative and innovative approaches to engagement or outreach, clear benefits of the engagement to both the research or teaching and the external organisation or community and long-term impact or ambition.

AWARDED We have combined the action plans from the Engage Watermark accreditation and the Knowledge Exchange Concordat to create a strategic combined knowledge exchange and engagement action plan. Linked to this we will be supporting student knowledge exchange projects, which enhance student experience and employability. In academic year 2021–22, we will be developing plans for a public engagement festival to showcase our world-class research and teaching, and to engage local communities.