V. Plans for the Future

PLANS FOR THE FUTURE

The Institute has managed to accomplish a huge amount in its first year and a bit of operation. That is testament to the incredible hard work of the Institute core team, the enthusiasm and effort of our Fellows, the commitment and energy of our community partners, as well as of course the support and encouragement of the wider university and particularly its senior leadership.

We are committed to building on these strong foundations going forward. As we publish this our first annual report, we are welcoming our new cohort of Fellows and bringing the entire Institute family together for the first time in the same room to celebrate our achievements so far. We are also reviewing applications for the 2nd round of our new Collaboration and Co-Production Fund; beginning our journey of supporting students who have been successful in their 2021-2 URSS public engagement project applications; reviewing the 1st stage of applicants for our new Warwick Award for Public and Community Engagement; as well as making final preparations for welcoming circa 5000 people to campus as part of our Resonate Campus Festival event at the end of April 2022.

We are also full of plans for new initiatives in the near future. In March our new Associate Director, Dr Kerry Baker, will begin with us full time and will lead on developing the Institute’s events programme for 2223 and beyond. The Institute has also recently been successful in securing further Higher Education Innovation Funding (HEIF) to develop new initiatives particularly aimed at encouraging students to participate in public and community engagement projects and develop their associate skill sets, for which we will be recruiting a new Engagement Officer to join the team. Alongside this, we are delighted that Prof Helen Wheatley, who has directed the Resonate Festival, will join the Institute core team to champion our Regional Relationships, and that we will also be able to bring into the team additional event organisation support to develop a programme of events focused on Health and Wellbeing over the next two years.

As we continue to roll out our Skills Festival and Training programme for staff and students, we are also busy developing a new post-graduate taught module in public engagement to be delivered through IATL, which will be an interdisciplinary module linked in the first instance to a variety of Departmental PG offerings, including Warwick Manufacturing Group. We are also delighted to be collaborating with the Liberal Arts Department and School of Cross-Faculty Studies in the development of a new Masters course in Community Engagement. At the same time, now that the world is once again opening up, we hope to bring forward a new International public engagement Visiting Fellowship scheme to bring inspirational public engagers from across the globe to Warwick to take part in events and share their expertise. Additionally, we also hope to develop short-term Institute Fellowships for those in our region with whom we collaborate so that they can benefit from access to the university’s knowledge-base and continue, as a result, to embed the university in our community and our region.

We are also of course working to support the development of the STEM Grand Challenge public engagement hub through RIBA Stage 2, alongside developing its financing and fundraising case, and also taking up a new role in supporting the development of the Discovery Zone in the university’s new Eco-Park project. At the same time, we are developing new ways to ‘plug-in’ to all the university’s different Faculties to support their public engagement activities, programmes and nascent Grand Challenges.

We look forward to the challenge, and most importantly, to working collaboratively with you all.