The Local Policy Innovation Partnership (LPIP) Hub is hosted by City-REDI at the University of Birmingham, acting as a ‘hive mind’ with partners from Higher Education (HE) and civil society organisations with expertise in place-based practice. One of the Hub partners is the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE), with 15+ years of experience supporting Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) to embed better support for engaged and inclusive practice.
In this blog, City REDI’s Elizabeth Goodyear and the NCCPE’s Paul Manners introduce the Hub’s latest project.
Understanding How to Scale up High-Quality Place-Based Research: Exploring Our New Initiative
In the ever-evolving landscape of higher education, fostering collaborative, impactful, and engaged place-based research is an increasingly urgent challenge. REF 2029 has as a goal ‘an inclusive and collaborative research system that supports a diversity of people, ideas, institutions, methodologies, outputs, and activities’. The new Government are calling for a new spirit of collaboration to tackle deep structural challenges, through a ‘mission’ driven approach.
The LPIP programme was set up, in part, to respond to this need. Four LPIP projects are getting underway across the UK, and the LPIP Hub has been set up to work with the LPIP projects – and anyone interested in place-based practice – to lead to a step-change in the quality and impact of the evidence created by universities and their local place partners.
Our latest research initiative focuses on how HEIs can step confidently into this space. We want to help accelerate how well HEIs use their knowledge-building capability to address needs and contribute to positive change within communities across the UK.
This blog post outlines our plans – and invites you to help us rapidly consolidate the existing evidence base about good practice in place-based, engaged research.
Understanding Place-Based Research
It goes without saying that working in a place-based and collaborative way is not easy, and places significant demands on HEIs and the people who work in them. It requires us to embrace new ways of working, new methodologies and new professional standards.
The good news is that there are pockets of fantastic and effective practices that have evolved over many years, inside and outside HE. The challenge is that these are far from mainstream, and are often ‘counter-cultural’: the missions and ways of working of HEIs can inhibit these ways of working. For instance – our internal systems can often generate bureaucratic hurdles; our internal recognition and reward systems don’t always value these ways of working; and many researchers lack the experience and opportunity to work in these kinds of place-based engaged ways. Equally, partner organisations have in many cases had to significantly scale back their investment in their own research and learning capability.
All of this means that there is an urgent need to mobilise what we know about how to research effectively in place-based ways.
Project Framework
Our project is starting with mapping what we already know. We are asking some basic questions to consolidate this collective knowledge, create connections between people, and begin to scale this work up. And this is where we need your help – later we will invite you to share your ‘go to’ resources in these areas:
| Why? | What do we know about how to lead in collaborative and place-based ways? Place-based work needs a clear sense of purpose and strategy, new kinds of ‘system’ leadership, and a different kind of accountability. Can we codify how to develop this kind of strategic leadership, and the governance arrangements and frameworks needed to support this kind of collaborative working? |
| What? | What infrastructure, systems and processes are needed to scaffold this way of working? Again and again, people trying to work in place-based and engaged ways run up against practical hurdles created by systems and ways of working that weren’t designed with engagement in mind. How do we work around these challenges, and develop new ways of organising ourselves, and designing and managing projects? |
| Who? | What skills and expertise are necessary? People are at the heart of place-based working: it is relational, responsive and sensitive to inclusion, and it requires skill sets that aren’t always understood and valued within universities. How can we define these capabilities and the professional ‘standards’ that we should aspire to? |
| How? | What research and knowledge-building methodologies can we draw on to do this work well? At heart, this is about ‘putting knowledge to work’ to help build better places and improve people’s lives. It is a long way from traditional modes of academic practice, requiring new methods, mindsets and approaches. Can we identify the different traditions of engaged research & KE that are most useful in this context? |
| Where? | How does taking a ‘place’ focus influence the choices we need to make? Cutting across all of these questions is a focus on how a ‘place’ lens on our practice creates particular challenges and opportunities. What are the most helpful tools and frameworks for understanding how to factor ‘place’ into our decision making? |
How You Can Help
We have begun a literature review to identify key lessons from existing research and practice, focused on these five questions, and to clarify their implications for practice. We would really appreciate your help in ensuring that the resources we synthesise reflect the most useful, inspiring and challenging content available.
We have created a form at the end of this blog where we invite you to share the resources and insights that have proved most useful and meaningful in shaping your place-based practice. One great link is all we ask for – but it may be that there are a number of key resources you would like to share or simply some top tips from your own experience.
And Then?
The literature review is just the start of our project. We aim to publish it by Christmas as a stand-alone report. But the purpose isn’t to create yet another document to stack on our virtual shelves. We are much more interested in how we can take the principles and insights gathered in the review to help us create tools and resources which ‘activate’ the findings. For instance:
- A set of professional standards that define the key capabilities required for place-based working
- A maturity matrix (inspired by the NCCPE’s EDGE tool) that helps organisations to assess their ‘place readiness’
- A professional development framework that outlines the knowledge and skills required for ‘place-based’ practice
- A resource bank of practical tools that you can adapt
Please join us on this exciting journey by feeding in your expertise and learning using our MS Form.
This blog was written by Elizabeth Goodyear, programme manager at City-REDI / WMREDI, University of Birmingham, and Paul Manners, co-director at the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE).
Disclaimer:
The views expressed in this post are those of the authors and not necessarily those of City-REDI, WMREDI or the University of Birmingham.