Humanities Civic Engagement Strategy
This strategy builds on previous operational and strategic priorities in the Faculty’s Strategicand Operational Plans and on the specific objectives and criteria in its SR plans and programmes. It also seeks to position Humanities at the heart of the University’s Civic Engagement plans.
It also builds on our recent strong track record in engaging with Greater Manchester organisations, communities and individuals and influencing policymaking in the region. In recent years this has included:
- The Justice Hub
- Creative Manchester
- The BeeWell Programme
- The Oldham Economic Review
- The Productivity Institute’s NW Regional Forum
- Supporting the Greater Manchester Inequalities Commission
- Supporting the Greater Manchester Independent Prosperity Review
As for the University as a whole, Civic Engagement forms a core part of our vision and strategic plan. It reflects how our work is enhanced and inspired by our location in Greater Manchester and the way we improve lives across our city and region. This connects with our history and the founding of the University’s predecessor organisations such as the Mechanics Institute and to our present as we work in and with the Greater Manchester city region. As Britain's first civic university, we were founded by, and for, the people of Manchester. For us, contributing to the wellbeing and prosperity of Greater Manchester is a fundamental part of our purpose.
- Further details on the University Civic Engagement plan
Humanities have helped lead the Civic Universities Agenda and the signing of a Civic University Agreement between the city region’s five HEIs (and also incorporating the 10 main FE colleges too) to advance wellbeing and prosperity throughout Greater Manchester. We played a part in establishing the Civic Universities Commission, where the first evidence sessions were held here at the University and from which CUAs have been launched.
- Further details are available to download (PDF document)
Our commitment to civic engagement can be seen in our research that involves our population and informs local policies, our engagement through staff and student experience activities, the social impact of our cultural institutions, our role as an economic anchor and our alignment to the Greater Manchester strategy and ambitions.
Our core goals of research and discovery, teaching and learning and social responsibility are enhanced, and inspired, by our city region and its pioneering spirit. We actively engage underrepresented communities and places, involve a wide range of people in our work and listen to public concerns and aspirations across our region.
This agenda has helped the University to produce REF Impact Case Studies as well as to support our submission to the Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) and to the (Times Higher Education), social impact rankings measured against the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
In recent years this ‘civic’ or GM focus has underpinned our strategic and operational objectives in Humanities SR as part of our wider faculty strategy and operational plan and also the broader university SR strategy and plan.
This ‘civic’ focus also connects and drives our recent work on ‘levelling up’ and our interest in the policy agendas of both national and local government. Addressing local and regional inequalities are major objectives of both the UK Government and the GMCA and can be seen in the Levelling Up white Paper and the Greater Manchester Strategy:
Much of the Faculty’s work can be seen in the University’s ‘Levelling Up’ webpages – collated through the Global Inequalities Institute.
There are opportunities for the faculty to further shape policy emanating from these documents eg through Innovation GM.
Within GM - our various strategies and operational plans over the past five years have focused on tackling inequality in GM (communities, people, places) and the city region’s poorest places with lower skills/education, wages, living standards, health etc (we’ve pushed a particular focus on GM Towns/Boroughs eg Rochdale, Tameside, Oldham, Wigan, Bury, Bolton, Salford but also towns within them such as Ashton, Middleton. NB Manchester itself obviously remains a relatively poor LA with lots of the above issues/indicators).
This has helped give a focus for students eg through WP and GM Higher but also for school, college interaction eg through school governors programme, public engagement and outreach. It has also helps research proposals or community focused programmes too such as through our funding programmes – ‘Engaging Our Communities’ and SR in the Curriculum’. Finally - but perhaps most significantly for Humanities Civic Engagement agenda it has provided a GM policy focus working with GMCA, Mayor and individual local authorities and communities:
And also things like the following:
Looking to the future we have taken the opportunity of a hiatus during Covid19, to rethink and refocus our Faculty SR funding competitions towards this ‘Civic Engagement’ agenda. NB this doesn’t rule out traditional or broader SR focused projects but it does ask for a GM or ‘Civic’ focus to them. We have also taken the opportunity to ‘rescale’ the competitions and with match funding from University SR we are able to offer larger funding allocations (£10k per school) so that faculty funded projects can fill the gap between smaller school funded projects and larger schemes at University level. The intention is that this will allow the Faculty (and each individual school) to establish a ‘signature’ civic engagement project – either scaling up from smaller existing projects or supplementing larger programmes already operating at scale (eg the Justice Hub or BeeWell).