Reframing the Civic University: An Agenda for Impact 3031176855, 9783031176852

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RETHINKING UNIVERSITY-COMMUNITY POLICY CONNECTIONS

Reframing the Civic University An Agenda for Impact Edited by Julian Dobson · Ed Ferrari

Rethinking University-Community Policy Connections Series Editors

Thomas Andrew Bryer University of Central Florida Orlando, USA John Diamond Edge Hill University Ormskirk, UK Carolyn Kagan Manchester Metropolitan University Manchester, UK Jolanta Vaičiūnienė Kaunas University of Technology Kaunas, Lithuania

Rethinking University-Community Policy Connections will publish works by scholars, practitioners, and ‘prac-ademics’ across a range of countries to explore substantive policy or management issues in the bringing together of higher education institutions and community-based organizations, nongovernmental organizations, governments, and businesses. Such partnerships afford unique opportunities to transform practice, develop innovation, incubate entrepreneurship, strengthen communities, and transform lives. Yet such potential is often not realized due to bureaucratic, cultural, or legal barriers erected between higher education institutions and the wider community. The global experience is common, though the precise mechanisms that prevent university-community collaboration or that enable successful and sustainable partnership vary within and across countries. Books in the series will facilitate dialogue across country experiences, help identify cross-cutting best practices, and to enhance the theory of university-community relations.

Julian Dobson  •  Ed Ferrari Editors

Reframing the Civic University An Agenda for Impact

Editors Julian Dobson Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research Sheffield Hallam University Sheffield, UK

Ed Ferrari Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research Sheffield Hallam University Sheffield, UK

ISSN 2629-2432     ISSN 2629-2440 (electronic) Rethinking University-Community Policy Connections ISBN 978-3-031-17685-2    ISBN 978-3-031-17686-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17686-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

1 Why  the Time Is Right for a Civic Turn  1 Julian Dobson and Ed Ferrari 2 A  Question of Leadership 25 Jonathan Slater and Farah Hussain 3 How  Should Universities Understand Their Social Impact? 41 Sue Jarvis 4 Can  Universities be Climate Leaders? 63 Kirstie O’Neill 5 How  Universities Can Help to Build a Healthier Society 83 Liz Mear and Paul Johnstone 6 Civic  Universities and Culture: A Tilted View101 Amanda Crawley Jackson and Chris Baker 7 More-Than-Civic:  Higher Education and Civil Society in Post-Industrial Localities121 Nicola Gratton and Martin Jones

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8 Placemaking  for the Civic University: Interface Sites as Spaces of Tension and Translation143 Julia Udall and Anna Wakeford Holder 9 Bringing Civic Impact to Life163 Julian Dobson

and Ed Ferrari

Index175

Notes on Contributors

Chris Baker  grew up in the Northwest of England where he developed his passion for creativity and innovation. He moved to Sheffield in the late 1990s to study design where he invented novel packaging systems to eliminate waste on a global scale, growing his own company which he then sold in 2008. He has supported over 100 entrepreneurs with their ideas and organisations, primarily in the creative industries. Chris developed his career as a Knowledge Exchange professional as Head of Knowledge Exchange and Innovation at the University of Sheffield and now supports the advancement of Knowledge Exchange at Sheffield Hallam University. Julian Dobson  is a researcher and writer with a broad interest in place and society, and a particular focus on the complex systemic changes required to achieve environmentally and socially just approaches to urban life. A senior research fellow at the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research at Sheffield Hallam University, he has written widely on the topics of social and economic regeneration, urban greenspace, town and city centres and the role of the voluntary and community sector. He is especially interested in how and why change happens and the role of evidence in shaping policy and practice. Ed  Ferrari  is the Director of the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research (CRESR) at Sheffield Hallam University. He is an acknowledged expert on strategic housing, planning and transport issues with over 20 years’ experience of leading and collaborating on dozens of research and evaluation projects for local authorities, central ­government and charities. He has skills in quantitative research, particularly in the spatial analyvii

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sis of administrative data, and has authored several books alongside dozens of reports and academic papers. He is currently managing editor of the leading international journal Housing Studies. Nicola  Gratton is Associate Professor of Community and Civic Engagement at Staffordshire University. She is a qualified Youth Worker and has extensive experience in the public and community sectors as a youth worker, community development worker and training development manager. She has been instrumental in the development and implementation of Connected Communities, Staffordshire University’s approach to community and civic impact. She specialises in participatory action research and creative research techniques and her research interests focus on using these to address social inequality. Anna Wakeford Holder  is a researcher, designer and educator, trained in architecture and town and regional planning. She is a director of social enterprise architecture practice Studio Polpo, and a Senior Lecturer in Architecture at Sheffield Hallam University. She has experience in architectural and urban design practice in the UK and the Netherlands, and in higher education in the UK and Denmark. Her research focuses on architectural knowledge, agency and ethics in the social production of the built environment; the politics of urban projects instigated between state and civil society actors; and feminist practices of participatory planning and design. Farah Hussain  is a PhD researcher at Queen Mary University of London and a Research Fellow at the Mile End Institute. Farah’s research concentrates on the relationship between political parties and their members with a particular focus on race, religion and gender. Farah has also carried out research on public policy, higher education and local government. She was a local councillor for Valentines Ward, London Borough of Redbridge from 2014 to 2022 where she served as Cabinet Member for Housing and Homelessness for over four years. Amanda Crawley Jackson  is Associate Dean for Knowledge Exchange at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. Before that, she was Faculty Director of Knowledge Exchange and Impact (Arts and Humanities) at the University of Sheffield. A scholar in the field of French and Francophone Studies, she has published widely on place, space and mobilities in contemporary art and photography from France, Algeria and Morocco and has curated several exhibitions, the most recent -

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Invisible Wounds - at the Graves Gallery in Sheffield (2020). She is currently completing a monograph on post-traumatic landscapes in contemporary literature and photography. Sue  Jarvis  is Co-Director of the Heseltine Institute for Public Policy, Practice and Place at the University of Liverpool. She has a professional background in  local government practice, and public policy, and senior leadership experience of delivering public services at council and combined authority levels. At the Heseltine Institute, Sue leads engagement across local and regional stakeholders to align academic research with place-based policy outcomes to support sustainable cities and regions. Sue also works with local partners on a portfolio of research focused on community assets, social infrastructure and public service to address policy challenges in place. Paul  Johnstone is a public health practitioner and academic working nationally and internationally. He has recently been National Director for Regional Development for the Department of Health (England), and National and Regional Director for Place and Regions at Public Health England and NHS England. He has been a hospital doctor, GP and public health director. Internationally he has worked for the World Health Organization in Sierra Leone, in the West Indies and as a volunteer in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sudan.He is now Health Adviser for VSO (Voluntary Services Overseas) and Honorary Professor of Global Health, University of Manchester and Visiting Professor at Leeds Beckett University. Martin Jones  is the Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive of Staffordshire University, a Professor of Human Geography and a researcher in urban and regional political economy. Author or editor of 14 books, Martin is internationally recognised for economic and political geography. His book Cities and Regions in Crisis: The Political Economy of Sub-National Economic Development was awarded the Regional Studies Association Best Book award 2021. Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and The Royal Society of Arts, Martin holds an honorary professorial position in Oulu, Finland, was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize for Geography, and is the originator and co-editor of the journal  Territory, Politics, Governance. Liz  Mear  has extensive experience of leading across organisations and systems. She was an NHS Foundation Trust Chief Executive, followed by roles as the Chief Executive of an NHS Academic Health Science Network

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and Managing Director for an Academic Health partnership. In these roles she worked with health, local government, university, and voluntary sector partners to improve residents’ lives. Liz chairs the national Small Business Research Initiative healthcare funding panels, an Integrated Health/Care Place Committee, and is business advisor. She was a NonExecutive Director for Health Education England. Kirstie  O’Neill is a lecturer in environmental geography at Cardiff University, having previously worked at the Universities of Hull and Lancaster, and the London School of Economics. Her ESRC-CASE funded PhD, at the University of Hull, explored the role of alternative food networks in facilitating rural development. Subsequent research has drawn on longstanding interests in sustainability, focusing on green building, green entrepreneurship and the green economy, urban sustainability governance, and universities as spaces of, and actors within, sustainability governance. Jonathan  Slater  is a Visiting Professor at King’s College London and Queen Mary University of London. He sits on the boards of the Charter Schools Educational Trust, Morley College, Sheffield Hallam University, and the Institute of Government. Jonathan was Permanent Secretary of the Department for Education until 2020, at the conclusion of a 20 year civil service career that included Justice, Defence, the Cabinet Office and No. 10 Downing Street. Before that Jonathan worked in  local government for over ten years, ending up as Director of Education and Deputy Chief Executive at Islington Council. Julia Udall  is an educator, academic and practitioner, based at Sheffield Hallam University, UK, working at the intersection of artistic spatial practice, critical architectural pedagogy and design activism. Her work seeks to develop ways to make urban space otherwise by drawing attention to, and supporting forms of collectivity, interdependence and mutuality, between humans and non-humans, in the face of this precarious moment. Julia is a director of architectural collective Studio Polpo, who contributed to the British Pavilion ‘The Garden of Privatised Delights’ at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2021. She is Fellow of the Future Architecture Platform (2021).

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Fig. 2.1 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 5.1 Fig. 6.1 Fig. 7.1 Fig. 7.2 Fig. 7.3 Fig. 8.1

Fig. 8.2

Fig. 8.3

Domains of civic activity and progress cycle 14 The five steps of building institutional strategy and leadership within the Civic Impact Framework 30 Stakeholder intersecting interests 46 Domains of civic activity and progress cycle 87 The tilted view: A four-step process towards critical self-reflection 114 The Connected Communities model 131 Embedding Connected Communities 133 Evaluating Connected Communities 134 Refugee Rights Hub. In a contemporary university building, on a neighbourhood campus, set within green space. This location has the drawback of requiring two bus trips for most clients to access. Image © the authors 150 Live Works. A permanent urban room in a high street shop unit. The project also hosts residencies and exhibitions in suburban spaces such as local libraries and supermarkets. Image © the authors 155 CSM Rural. Bringing students from central London to North Yorkshire poses a challenge but will also offer an immersive complex and evolving site of experimentation. Image © the authors158

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List of Tables

Table 1.1 Table 1.2

The seven domains of civic impact The civic framework in a nutshell

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CHAPTER 1

Why the Time Is Right for a Civic Turn Julian Dobson and Ed Ferrari

In April 2022, two months after Russian armed forces blasted their way into Ukraine, a professor at the Kyiv School of Economics shone a spotlight on a dilemma facing universities globally: are they there to make societies wealthier, or better? And if the latter, what does ‘better’ look like? Inna Sovsun, a Ukrainian MP who was deputy education minister between 2014 and 2016, told a Times Higher Education conference in Stockholm that the role of universities was to make societies ‘more open, more inclusive, and more tolerant and more caring about each other’ (Morgan, 2022). She claimed research developed at German and French universities had helped Russia develop military capabilities: while the research had made those institutions better off, had it made society better? Professor Sovsun’s intervention was a visceral response to a humanitarian, political and ethical crisis. But it reflected and underlined a more widespread heart-searching in and around higher education. If universities are a public good, who and what are they good for? Are they an expensive irrelevance at a time of global crisis—a crisis that extends far beyond the

J. Dobson (*) • Ed Ferrari Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Dobson, Ed Ferrari (eds.), Reframing the Civic University, Rethinking University-Community Policy Connections, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17686-9_1

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Ukraine conflict to include rising costs of living, growing wealth disparities, long-term impacts of Covid-19, food insecurity, climate change and drastic biodiversity loss? Higher education is not only seeking to define its contribution in an era of crisis. Increasingly it is also adopting a defensive stance in which its own existence is deemed to require explanation and justification to governments and publics in an era in which trust in elites, experts and institutions has been badly eroded. Part of this stance has involved universities searching for a convincing and engaging mission that connects them to the communities and places they serve. This book examines and explores an emergent narrative that promises to fulfil such a role for many institutions: the tradition of the civic university. Its overarching argument is that, given the right resources and commitment, a civic orientation has the potential to produce deeper, broader and more lasting benefits for communities than we have seen in recent decades. During this time universities have increasingly come to look and behave like private corporations, serving ‘customers’ in students and research partners who may have only the most tangential connection to the locality. In the UK in particular, the idea of the civic university offers a driving logic that can frame strategies and decisions across all the domains in which universities are active, from learning and teaching to economic, environmental and wellbeing impacts within the communities that universities serve. This requires a searching analysis of who universities are good for in addition to what they are good at. This book stems from and builds on work undertaken by the editors with the Civic Universities Network in the UK in 2020–2021, and this book focuses on the UK experience except where otherwise stated. Working with senior university leaders, we prototyped a framework to assess civic impact. The Civic Impact Framework1—which we published in its ‘beta’ form for discussion in 2021—is designed to enable universities and their partners to understand the difference they are making and challenge themselves to do better. It identifies seven domains through which universities may have civic impacts (Table 1.1) and stresses the importance of understanding the geography over which universities may seek to have such impacts. Importantly, rather than offering a unified set of metrics to measure impact, the framework emphasises institutional reflection and learning by adopting a ‘maturity matrix’ model for understanding

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 https://civicuniversitynetwork.co.uk/resources/civic-impact-framework/.

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Table 1.1  The seven domains of civic impact Social impact

How do we want our university to bridge and reduce social divides and improve the quality of life of our communities, including the most disadvantaged? How can our university help our places move from ‘functioning’ to ‘flourishing’? What part can our students play in this? Environment, How could our university play a leading role in mitigating and climate and adapting to climate change, reversing biodiversity loss, and educating biodiversity students for sustainability? How will it influence environmental behaviours throughout our city or region? Health and How does our institution support the health and wellbeing of our wellbeing localities and communities? What does a flourishing community look like to us? Our cultural How does our university celebrate and enrich the cultural life of our contribution localities and communities? How do we create vibrant, creative and playful places? Economic impact How could our university’s work create more prosperous places and address and reduce economic inequality? What impacts is it having now? Can we articulate and promote a coherent vision of a flourishing local economy in partnership with local stakeholders? Estates, facilities How can our facilities be used for the benefit of the whole and placemaking community? Do all members of the community feel welcome? How do our facilities set the standard for placemaking and sustainability in our city or region? How can our digital infrastructure benefit our communities? Institutional How will top-level governance and strategies at our institution reflect strategy and our civic commitment to ensure we make the difference we want? leadership Which partners are we working with and to what ends, and what are their priorities? What would it look like if our civic priorities were embedded throughout our core activities of teaching, learning and research? Source: Dobson, J., & Ferrari, E. (2021). A framework for civic impact: A way to assess universities’ activities and progress. Sheffield: Civic Universities Network. https://civicuniversitynetwork.co.uk/wp-­ content/uploads/2022/04/Civic-­Activity-­Framework.pdf

strategic progress and encouraging peer learning. We return to the framework and how it may be applied later in this chapter. This edited collection extends the initial work that the Civic Impact Framework represents to offer a broader perspective, with expert contributors exploring and teasing out just what it might mean to be civic in current circumstances. While the book’s structure broadly echoes the domains of impact identified in the framework, it uses this scaffolding to foreground wider challenges, concerns and opportunities for higher education in the twenty first century.

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Why Now? Higher Education Under Scrutiny Universities in the UK have faced a torrent of criticism in recent years. Some of it has played on current ‘culture wars’, often imported from public discourse in the United States, in which liberal universities are depicted as standard-bearers for ‘wokeness’. The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill, which is working its way through Parliament at the time of writing, is seen as an example of government entering this particular fray, sometimes accompanied by veiled threats to reconsider the funding of institutions that sign up to benchmarking schemes such as the Race Equality Charter.2 Of greater long-term concern, however, is the argument that universities are not delivering skills and opportunities for the people who most need them. The commodification of higher education through the introduction of fees and loans, especially in England, has shifted the relationship between students and their lecturers: students are seen, and often see themselves, as customers who have bought a product designed to meet a particular consumer need (a degree and access to a well-paid career). If graduates do not enter the labour market at the expected level, they—and the governments that oversee higher education policy—hold the universities responsible. The need to attract and retain ‘customers’—especially at postgraduate level—has created continuing tensions between income generation and sustaining academic excellence, and has eroded the standing of humanities degrees once viewed as hallmarks of a liberal education. Many universities have invested in their estates and courses as a marketing exercise, wooing students with shiny state-of-the-art buildings and satellite campuses. In the words of the Civic University Commission (UPP Foundation, 2019): …as universities have become magnets for global students and massive research programmes, their connection to their place … can sometimes be called into question: how are the people in a place benefiting from the university success story?

The commission goes on to note that this disconnection from their localities leaves universities ‘with fewer friends at a time of unprecedented challenge’. Most recently, a cap on maximum fees in England and 2

 See https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/equality-charters/race-equality-charter.

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proposals for ‘minimum eligibility requirements’ suggests that a university education is no longer perceived within government as a privileged pathway into the labour market. Having bought into the principles of market competition, universities are now being accused of failing to deliver public goods. The traditional university experience—delivered within large, broad-based campus-focused institutions—is also increasingly competing within a more fragmented, diversified and specialised set of educational and vocational marketplaces which includes further education colleges, modern apprenticeships, distance learning (delivered both by traditional and new entrants), smaller private universities, and an explosion of online content (both free and paid-for) on platforms like Coursera and Udemy. So the universities that for decades rode a wave of public policy geared to increasing participation in higher education are now having their status called into question. This context has created fertile ground for a new debate on universities’ ‘civic mission’, but also risks reducing that mission to an exercise in self-justification.

Restoring the Vision: From Anchor Institutions to Civic Mission The notion of the civic university has a long history, stretching back to the land-grant universities of the US established under the Morrill Act of 1852, and the ‘redbrick’ universities that sprouted in manufacturing cities in the UK in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In both cases there was an understanding that these new institutions would directly contribute to the economic, intellectual and social development of their localities. While there has always been a strong economic narrative to discourses of the civic in higher education, this has come to the fore in recent decades. The Dearing Report (1997, p.  90), for example, viewed universities as central to a ‘learning society’, noting that they ‘make a significant economic contribution simply by their existence in a locality, whether or not they adopt an explicit mission to generate local or regional economic activity or to play a part in the cultural life of their locality or region’. This role has often been framed in terms of a ‘third mission’ of economic development under the label of the ‘entrepreneurial university’ (Vorley & Nelles, 2008).

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The start of the twenty first century has seen a flurry of intellectual activity around the idea of the civic university. There has been a recognition that universities have significant impacts within their localities: they are often among the largest employers in an area, among the biggest holders of real estate, and have make a difference to local prosperity through their spending and effects on housing markets. In the United States, the Obama administration picked up the idea of universities as ‘anchor institutions’ (Taylor & Luter, 2013), supporting the work of the Anchor Institutions Task Force. Reflecting on the value of universities to place-­ based leadership, Robin Hambleton notes that ‘The American public university has, from the outset, aimed to fuse scholarly inspiration with a strong commitment to practical implementation. This value stance has advanced the quality of American scholarship, while also benefitting the cities where these universities are located’ (Hambleton, 2020, pp.  123–124) while also observing that ‘British universities have, until recently, been relatively detached from their surroundings’. (Ibid., p. 124)

This tradition has spawned much of the recent thinking in the US and beyond around ‘community wealth building’—the promotion of shared prosperity ‘through the reconfiguration of institutions and local economies on the basis of greater democratic ownership, participation, and control’ (Democracy Collaborative, 2020). In the UK, fresh debate on universities’ civic role has been stimulated through the work of academic leaders such as John Goddard at the University of Newcastle (Goddard & Vallance, 2013), again focusing especially on how universities can support local and regional economies. Goddard and Kempton (2016, p. 2) envisage mutually beneficial economic and social relationships between universities and the communities they serve: The civic university can be characterised by its ability to integrate its teaching, research and engagement with the outside world in such a way that each enhances the other without diminishing their quality. Research has socio-­ economic impact designed in from the start and teaching has a strong community involvement with the long term objective of widening participation in higher education and producing well rounded citizens as graduates.

Building on this work, the Civic University Commission describes a civic university as having ‘a clear strategy, rooted in analysis, which explains

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what, why and how its activity adds up to a civic role’. While it doesn’t impose a definition, leaving this to individual universities to devise according to their circumstances, it does suggest there should be four key tests of a civic university: • A public test, covering participation, understanding of local needs and public pride in the institution • A place test, covering alignment with local labour markets and serving diverse local populations • A strategic test, covering universities’ analysis of local needs, links with local leadership and definition of its geographies of interest • An impact test, covering both how universities achieve impacts through relationships with other institutions, and how they measure the effects of their work In practice, there will be many overlaps between these elements. Any definition or test runs the risk of excluding institutions that do not fit a mould, or offering validation to activities that may be little more than token gestures. The descriptions that exist are largely variations on a theme of what ‘good’ looks like. Goddard et  al. (2016), for example, identify seven characteristics of a civic university: a sense of purpose; active engagement with the wider world; a holistic approach to engagement; a strong sense of place; investment in impact beyond the academy; transparency and accountability; and innovative methods of communicating with publics and stakeholders. One may justifiably ask why these descriptors were advanced and not others; and what is it about these that is specifically civic rather than a generic quality associated with effective management and public engagement in a place-based institution. There is no escaping the fact that ‘civic’ is a normative concept, with an implicit political economy baked-in to the idea as we discuss in the next section. Arguably this opens up as many debates as it seeks to capture. Neither should we fail to notice that most descriptions of ‘civic’ have been constructed within the academy. Little of the literature seeks to explore how localities and communities might define civic from their perspectives, or whose perspectives are given prominence and why; Gratton and Jones, in their contribution in Chap. 7, pick up this baton as university leaders. There is thus a tension at the heart of the civic university agenda. Is ‘civic’ simply a positioning and orientation fashioned by universities to explain or justify their role, or a set of behaviours co-designed between

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universities and the wider community? And who constitutes the ‘community’ for each institution? For all the work that has been done on developing ideas of civic universities, the concept continues to raise as many questions as answers. But that is to be welcomed. Far from being a shibboleth to divide insiders from outsiders, ‘civic’ at its best is a catalyst for strategy, engagement, and action. It offers an opportunity for fresh thinking about place and purpose, and for entering constructively into the contests that such thinking will inevitably stimulate.

Place and Purpose: The Current Challenge and Opportunity The notion of civic implies a polity within which the common good transcends the advancement of individuals. It attaches worth to the collective, often in institutionalised form (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006). Benefits are valued insofar as they accrue to and across communities. This challenges the individualistic orientation of academia, where value is often perceived as the aggregation of individual student achievements and outcomes and reduced to crude economic indicators, such as average graduate salaries or the monetisation of knowledge transfer. A civic university, by implication, holds itself to account according to its contribution to the collective good (which can include the earning power of graduates, but also much more that cannot be measured simply in market terms). This requires a judgement about where the collective is situated (a spatial orientation) and about whose needs are prioritised within that collective (a purposive orientation). Both questions are tricky, although the place issue is perhaps more straightforward. Most universities have historic connections with a city or locality: in the UK, these are usually enshrined in the institution’s name and identity. British universities are very much of particular places, even it is not always clear that they are for those places. However, these place connections have been progressively weakened. Undergraduate recruitment has been into the university’s location rather than from it more often than not; at postgraduate level, universities compete in a global market and rely on international students as a key source of income. As their reach has expanded, universities have opened satellite campuses both within the UK and internationally. A student can study at the University of Nottingham

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at its campus in Ningbo, China, or at Glasgow Caledonian University’s postgraduate campus in Shoreditch, east London. But when the University of Nottingham considers its civic role its focus is on the city of Nottingham, not Ningbo (although this volume also highlights some unexpected spatial relationships: between Coventry and Scarborough in Chap. 5, or Central St Martins in London and Dalby Forest in North Yorkshire in Chap. 8). This question of where universities locate their civic identity and activity has been inflected by a new parochialism in British politics (Vail, 2021), encapsulated by the Brexit referendum in 2016 and an anti-urban rhetoric in England in which ‘towns’, rather than cities, are for the first time in decades the focus of political attention. Anti-urban can also sometimes embrace anti-intellectual: politicians (generally university-educated) have maintained a background rumble of anti-expert rhetoric and adopted populist tones pitched to resonate with working-class voters whose communities and industries have been displaced in the globalist, capitalist project of (re)making the city. Universities that once considered themselves a fount of policy expertise for political leaders have found themselves sidelined, and universities that consider themselves global players are having to reconsider what ‘local’ might mean to them. The ‘local’ will inevitably vary. For the University of the Highlands and Islands, the scale of operation is necessarily huge and sparsely populated. Queen Mary University of London, by contrast, despite its international profile, is localised within a packed corner of London’s East End. History, campus locations and partnerships all tug at the boundaries of place, teasing them in different directions. Partnerships can often be a defining factor. In the UK, the local authority may provide the most obvious scale of engagement between the university and the public. It is through the local authority that citizens exercise their local democratic rights and experience many public services. The democratic mandate of local authorities gives them a legitimacy as the collective voice of citizens within their boundaries: they embody the civic in ways that universities, as currently configured within the UK, cannot do through their governance arrangements and organisational status. The local authority, though, is often not coterminous with urban settlements: a university may be active in only a small pocket of a local authority’s area, or a local authority may cover only part of a university’s ‘catchment’ (indeed, for leading research-intensive universities ‘catchment’ is probably more accurately a social rather than spatial concept).

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However, the local authority offers a scale at which university leaders can engage with their peers in  local government at a strategic level, at least within the UK context. But frequently a local authority—Leeds or Birmingham, for example—will host several universities. In the worst case, ‘civic’ can then become a source of potential competition between institutions and risks being reduced to a branding exercise. While place presents challenges of how and where to draw spatial boundaries, ‘purpose’ challenges the direction of travel. To what end do universities see themselves as civic? Historically, discussion has focused on universities’ economic impacts. These are often couched in terms of support for business and enterprise, especially at a regional scale. Benneworth (2019) argues: ‘Universities’ main role is as a connection point to global knowledge resources in ways that make that knowledge more easily available to local partners.’ Others see economic impacts more in terms of direct employment and supporting local supply chains through procurement (Devins et al., 2017; Centre for Local Economic Strategies, 2019). Alongside support for business, there is a growing view that universities have a specific mission to raise attainment and skills within their local populations. The Civic University Commission asserts that ‘while civic agreements must be decided locally, we would be surprised if adult education did not form a core plank of the majority of agreements and make up one of the biggest shifts in university behaviour’. This may include contributing to areas of skill shortage or supporting key workforce groups such as healthcare staff (Frostick, 2016). But there is also recognition that the civic mission may be put into effect through contributions to local regeneration and public engagement (as highlighted by Research England’s emerging Knowledge Exchange Framework); cultural input (Riviezzo et  al., 2019), strategic foresight (Goddard, 2018) and place-based leadership (Hambleton, 2018). This public engagement work can take a wide variety of forms, including festivals and cultural events, support for neighbourhood-based initiatives in disadvantaged communities, and engagement activities undertaken during the course of research projects. There are questions over the impact these activities have beyond the realm of those who are already engaged with higher education institutions, including isolated or minoritised communities. Recent research commissioned by the UPP Foundation (2020) highlights the limitations of this engagement: its study of post-industrial towns found that one third of respondents had never visited their local university, even though more

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than half (59%) believed universities should play a greater role in the local economy. There is currently no consensus about what combination or balance of activities distinguishes the ‘civic university’ from one that is simply fulfilling its core tertiary education role. The UPP Foundation report recommended that universities should focus in particular on supporting town centre regeneration; jobs and economic localism; local educational attainment; local innovation and R&D; and the NHS. Civic universities, though, need to do more than simply attach their own tag to such lists of current political priorities if they are to become— in the UPP Foundation’s words—‘truly civic’. In the United States, this has been expressed as a ‘larger purpose … to play a vital role in the building of a better, more democratic, equitable and just society’ (Taylor & Luter, 2013). This civic mission could dovetail with a number of emerging agendas in the UK. Nationally, the concern with ‘levelling up’ articulated since the 2019 General Election and in the Levelling Up White Paper (HM Government, 2022) reflects a recognition that some places have been ‘left behind’ and marginalised in terms of opportunities and economic benefits. While the Westminster government has not acknowledged its own role in creating and aggravating the conditions it now proclaims a need to reverse, its recognition of the persistent inequalities facing many communities is welcome and opens some space for discussion of causes and potential remedies. The White Paper, for the first time since the Blair era of the late 1990s and early 2000s, calls for coordinated action to address disadvantage across a range of policy domains, with the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill promising to extend local government devolution to all areas of England and impose a legal duty on government departments to demonstrate progress towards 12 levelling up ‘missions’. At a local level, there is increasing interest in emerging frameworks for thinking about local economic development. The community wealth-­ building agenda, pioneered in the UK through the work of Preston City Council, seeks to channel local institutional spending and strategy to support local economies and communities, retaining wealth within localities (Centre for Local Economic Strategies, 2019). Organisations such as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation have advanced arguments for ‘inclusive growth’ that spreads the benefits of economic success more evenly, both socially and spatially (RSA, 2017). Kate Raworth’s notion of ‘doughnut economics’ (Raworth, 2020) highlights the need to conceptualise prosperity in terms of thriving while also supporting social and ecological

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goals, living within the ‘doughnut’ of sustainable consumption, an approach that has been trialled in Amsterdam. In such a context, the idea of civic universities can become much more than simply a protective cover for higher education institutions that now see themselves as under threat: instead, it can be part of a wider movement for economic and social change.

Framing Civic Action Within this context, a way of framing civic activity is needed that is flexible enough to cover the wide range of activities and circumstances across the higher education sector, while being rigorous enough to act as a robust self-assessment tool and a stimulus for further action. This challenge informed the authors’ work in 2020/2021 to develop a framework for civic impact (Dobson & Ferrari, 2021a). Much of the context and background for this work is detailed in a paper on ‘capturing and enhancing the impact of the civic university’ (Dobson & Ferrari, 2021b) and need not be repeated here. It is worth reiterating the rationale for this work, though. First, a civic impact framework can help universities to build on what they have done so far and shows them what evidence they need to gather to inform better practice—ideally through a system of peer review rather than self-­ assessment alone. Second, it provides a way of sharing and comparing between universities, allowing comparisons between different domains of activity. What the framework does not set out to do is to propose another university ranking system based on quantitative metrics. Such a move risks reducing civic activity to a public relations exercise, prioritising box-­ticking over genuine reflection and engagement. This is not to deny the genuine need for university and civic leaders to understand their relative position in relation to sensibly constructed peer groups and comparators; but to select particular metrics to represent civic activity privileges what is measurable and excludes what may be messier but of more value to the communities universities serve. The attitudes and behaviours of senior university leaders, for example, including their willingness to listen to community voices and openness to ideas from beyond the campus, are crucial to the success of civic activity but impossible to capture adequately in a simple metric. The civic framework was developed through a process of workshopping with members of the Civic University Network, sense-checking the domains we identified and the questions we were posing. The outcome is

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a tool that universities can use to identify, analyse, coordinate and improve their civic activities. It is not the same as a Civic University Agreement, which sets out priorities for civic action that have (usually) been identified in partnership with local institutions and community representatives, but it can be used as part of the development of such agreements and to test how effective they are in practice. The framework does not seek to impose a new set of obligations or a particular model, but instead asks how universities can build the wellbeing of their communities through their everyday activities and core business of learning, teaching and research.

Domains of Civic Action The framework identifies seven domains of universities’ civic commitment—the core areas in which universities can and do affect their places and communities. These are: social impact; environment, climate and biodiversity; health and wellbeing; culture; economic impact; estates, facilities and placemaking; and institutional strategy and leadership. In each of these domains, attention should be paid to how a university’s core work of teaching and research helps to further its civic ambitions. The framework also identifies six phases of progress. These start with mapping what is happening already, moving on to partnering with other organisations and stakeholders; agreeing priorities and actions; resourcing the agreed activities; evaluating how well they are working; and applying the learning from that evaluation process. Progress is conceptualised as cyclical rather than linear: ‘civic’ is not a goal to be achieved but a mode of existence that should be regularly reviewed and adapted as circumstances change (Fig. 1.1). The domains and phases emerged from a review of previous literature, examination of other relevant initiatives (such as the Knowledge Exchange Framework in the UK) and from discussions within the Civic University Network and with its partners. Table 1.2 provides an illustrative summary of the domains of activity and progress, with examples of overarching questions to be addressed in each phase and potential indicators. It outlines how universities can begin to develop a comprehensive approach to their civic activities, generating a whole-place and whole-system approach. We would expect universities to work across these domains simultaneously as well as sequentially, informed by their relationships with local partners.

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Fig. 1.1  Domains of civic activity and progress cycle

In practical terms, this framework is envisaged as a discussion-starter and checklist that can be applied across a range of institutional activities, either within one domain or all together.

Overview of Chapters In this book we have used the framework as a conversation-starter with our co-authors, and invited them to respond, each starting with one of the domains of civic action but using it as a platform to develop their own ideas and share their experiences. We then conclude with further thoughts on how the civic agenda could help to take the work of higher education forward at a time of multiple global and local challenges—bringing civic

4 Resourcing: how are activities supported?

5 Evaluating: how 6 Learning: What are we doing? will we change, and how?

We know how well our workforce and student intake reflects local populations, and the extent of our community and public engagement.

We are working with partners to create a shared vision of a flourishing society, with full involvement of all our communities.

Within our own institution, we have action plans for change in line with our shared priorities.

We have set aside resources to support our public engagement and can show how this will benefit marginalised and excluded groups.

We are measuring our social impact and we have worked with local communities to make sure our indicators are meaningful to them.

(continued)

We capture and share learning across our university and with key partners, and identify areas for improvement.

Core questions and potential indicators Key questions: How do we want our university to bridge and reduce social divides and improve the quality of life of our communities, including the most disadvantaged? How can our university help our places move from ‘functioning’ to ‘flourishing’? What part can our students play in this?

3 Agreeing: who will do what, and when?

Domains Social impact

2 Partnering: where do we want to go, and with whom?

1 Mapping: where are we now?

Progress levels

Table 1.2  The civic framework in a nutshell

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1 Mapping: where are we now?

2 Partnering: where do we want to go, and with whom?

3 Agreeing: who will do what, and when?

4 Resourcing: how are activities supported?

5 Evaluating: how 6 Learning: What are we doing? will we change, and how?

Environment, Key questions: How could our university play a leading role in mitigating and adapting to climate change, reversing climate and biodiversity loss, and educating students for sustainability? How will it influence environmental behaviours biodiversity throughout our city or region? We can fully We engage with We have agreed We have identified We measure the We are account for our local partners to priority targets resources to wider implementing carbon emissions create a shared for improvement support our environmental education for and we measure vision of a and consulted environmental footprint of the sustainable progress on carbon sustainable our partners and ambitions. We university within development reduction. We have locality and the wider support staff and and beyond our across the done an university. We are community on students in locality. We hold curriculum. We environmental and working with our their needs and modelling the ourselves to share our learning biodiversity audit suppliers, staff aspirations. environmental account by with peers and of our estate. We and students to behaviours we publicising our use our academic know what we improve our want to performance and expertise to waste. environmental encourage (such inviting support our impacts. as active travel). suggestions for partners in improvement. improving our local places.

Progress levels

Table 1.2  (continued)

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Health and wellbeing

We are aware of the health characteristics of our communities, staff and students, and know how our activities impact on them.

We partner with healthcare organisations and communities to promote local wellbeing.

We have targets for beneficial impact on our communities’ wellbeing and we are working with partners to take appropriate action.

We have identified resources to support our communities’ wellbeing. We take time to listen and value communities’ knowledge and experience.

Our priorities are informed by local communities, public health teams and healthcare organisations. We know what we can do differently and what impact it can make.

(continued)

We are listening to our communities to understand what wellbeing means for them and adjusting our activities and priorities in response.

Key questions: How does our institution support the health and wellbeing of our localities and communities? What does a flourishing community look like to us?

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4 Resourcing: how are activities supported?

5 Evaluating: how 6 Learning: What are we doing? will we change, and how?

Economic impact

Key questions: How does our university celebrate and enrich the cultural life of our localities and communities? How do we create vibrant, creative and playful places? We know what We engage with a We have We promote and We have asked We actively contribution we wide range of identified fund events and our communities consider how our make to local local cultural priorities for activities that what they think of activities can be cultural life. We organisations. We support and enrich and the activities we better. In doing have mapped this ensure local know which celebrate the support and have so we value and against local communities are communities we cultural life of our listened to their learn from the demographics and welcomed and need to work localities, and views. expertise and identified gaps and included in our with more support staff and knowledge within opportunities. events and (including our students to do our localities. activities. own staff and this. students). Key questions: How could our university’s work create more prosperous places and address and reduce economic inequality? What impacts is it having now? Can we articulate and promote a coherent vision of a flourishing local economy in partnership with local stakeholders? We know our We have joint We have agreed We are using our We have agreed We review our economic footprint economic indicators of employment and economic impact impacts with key and our impact on strategies with progress, with spending power targets and we are partners, local communities local partners, achievable to support our measuring including the and the lives of our which reflect our targets for local economy progress on groups most learners. shared priorities. change. and people. reducing affected by inequalities. inequalities.

3 Agreeing: who will do what, and when?

Our cultural contribution

2 Partnering: where do we want to go, and with whom?

1 Mapping: where are we now?

Progress levels

Table 1.2  (continued)

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Estates, facilities and placemaking

We have agreed design, quality, environmental and accessibility standards and benchmark our estates management against the best in our class. We know who uses our buildings and spaces, how and when.

We work with local communities and planning authorities to ensure our estates meet their needs and aspirations. We are open and transparent in our plans and developments.

We work with civic partners to ensure our estates management supports our civic ambitions. We have agreed priorities for action and improvement.

Our design, procurement, maintenance and management practices support an open and inclusive attitude and we are making our estate suitable for community uses as well as for our staff and students.

We work with peer organisations to critique and improve our practices. We invite local communities to tell us how we can do better.

(continued)

We review the use and development of our estates to ensure they support our civic mission.

Key questions: How can our facilities be used for the benefit of the whole community? Do all members of the community feel welcome? How do our facilities set the standard for placemaking and sustainability in our city or region? How can our digital infrastructure benefit our communities?

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4 Resourcing: how are activities supported?

5 Evaluating: how 6 Learning: What are we doing? will we change, and how?

Key questions: How will top-level governance and strategies at our institution reflect our civic commitment to ensure we make the difference we want? Which partners are we working with and to what ends, and what are their priorities? What would it look like if our civic priorities were embedded throughout our core activities of teaching, learning and research? We have drafted, We know the We have We have identified We regularly Our senior staff consulted on and number, remit committed to resources to monitor and are involved in approved a Civic and make-up of SMART targets support the civic evaluate the civic peer University the partnerships within civic agenda. effects of our civic networks or Agreement. we’re involved in. strategies and strategies, and communities of agreements. review them with practice. peers.

3 Agreeing: who will do what, and when?

Institutional strategy and leadership

2 Partnering: where do we want to go, and with whom?

1 Mapping: where are we now?

Progress levels

Table 1.2  (continued)

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impact to life by pushing the sector and universities individually to challenge and reinvent themselves for their places and communities. In Chap. 2, Jonathan Slater (former permanent secretary at the Department of Education) and Farah Hussain (a local councillor in London), both affiliated to Queen Mary University of London, focus on the implications of the civic agenda for university leadership and for the higher education sector more broadly. Drawing on their policy and political experience, they outline what it could mean to have a civic focus across an entire institution, and address the current gap between universities’ rhetoric on civic impact (as expressed in their civic university agreements) and their achievements. Chap. 3 turns the spotlight onto universities’ social impacts. Institutions often celebrate the social benefits they bring to communities, but it is rarer for them to ask their communities how effectively they think the university is contributing to their wellbeing. Here Sue Jarvis, co-director of the Heseltine Institute at the University of Liverpool, draws on examples both from the University of Liverpool and from local government to show how institutions can become more responsive to the resources, aspirations, needs and inequalities within their localities while drawing on their innate assets. We then address the question of universities’ climate and environmental impacts and ask whether they can act as leaders of a just transition to a ‘net zero’ economy and society. Kirstie O’Neill, lecturer in environmental geography at the University of Cardiff, considers how universities can reorient their work to put climate impacts at the heart of their civic role, setting the standard within their communities and encouraging others to take action. This chapter is both an assessment of the opportunity and a critique of universities’ frequent failure to take meaningful action in the context of climate crisis. In Chap. 5 we consider how universities can begin to take health and wellbeing seriously, not only among their own staff and students, but across the communities they serve. Liz Mear, managing director of Leeds Academic Health Partnership until 2021, and Paul Johnstone, Public Health England’s former national director for regions and places and visiting professor at Leeds Beckett University, outline how universities can work more closely with healthcare institutions to tackle entrenched health inequalities within the localities they serve and directly improve the health of their communities.

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The next chapter considers universities’ cultural impacts. Universities are major investors in culture, training and teaching the cultural leaders of tomorrow. But they can also offer platforms to celebrate their communities’ cultural achievements and amplify the cultures of diverse communities in their localities. Amanda Crawley Jackson, associate dean for knowledge exchange at the University of the Arts London, and Chris Baker, knowledge exchange policy and economic development manager at Sheffield Hallam University, draw on perspectives from practice and academic leadership to highlight the opportunities for more connected equitable and inventive cultural collaborations, informed by grassroots rather than panoptical perspectives. Chapter 7 turns to questions of economic development. While these have traditionally been at the heart of the civic and ‘anchor institution’ agendas, we see economic impacts as intertwined with every other element of a university’s work. Universities are major investors in their localities—not only through their campus developments and by attracting students, but by working with their communities to address issues of poverty and inequality. In this chapter Nicola Gratton and Martin Jones, associate professor of civic and community engagement and vice-chancellor respectively at the University of Staffordshire, share their experience of how universities can work with communities affected by multiple disadvantages and act positively to raise community voices and improve local people’s life chances. Another way universities affect their communities, often without being fully aware of it, is through their physical footprint within places. Campuses and facilities are the most visible symbols of these effects, but universities also shape the use of buildings and spaces in the wider urban milieu—creating ‘interface sites’ in which power is manifest, sometimes progressively but not always so. In addressing the question of placemaking in Chap. 8, architects and academics Julia Udall and Anna Wakeford Holder illustrate how universities can develop an imaginative and inclusive agenda for creating places that nurture both human and more-than-human communities. Finally, in Chap. 9, we return to the overarching question of what is at stake as universities develop their civic engagement. Reflecting on universities’ civic engagement to date, we argue that universities need to become champions of their localities, acting beyond their immediate institutional interests to make a long-term difference to the prospects of their places. This demands a deeply reflective approach, which looks critically into and beyond academia, holding the questions of the relevance and purpose of universities constantly to the fore.

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References Benneworth, P. (2019). State of the art review: University research and regional development. Queen’s University. https://www.enterpriseresearch.ac.uk/wp-­ content/uploads/2019/03/No25-­U niversity-­r esearch-­a nd-­r egional-­ development-­P.-­Benneworth.pdf Boltanski, L., & Thévenot, L. (2006). On justification: Economies of worth. Princeton University Press. Centre for Local Economic Strategies. (2019). Community business and anchor institutions. Power to Change. https://cles.org.uk/wp-­content/uploads/ 2019/02/Community-­business-­and-­anchor-­institutions-­Digital.pdf Dearing, R. (1997). Higher education in the learning society. HMSO. http:// www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/dearing1997/dearing1997.html Democracy Collaborative. (2020). Defining community wealth building. https:// community-­wealth.org/content/defining-­community-­wealth-­building Devins, D., Gold, J., Boak, G., Garvey, R., & Willis, P. (2017). Maximising the local impact of anchor institutions: A case study of Leeds City Region. Joseph Rowntree Foundation. https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/maximising-­local­impact-­anchor-­institutions-­case-­study-­leeds-­city-­region Dobson, J., & Ferrari, E. (2021a). A framework for civic impact: A way to assess universities’ activities and progress. Civic Universities Network. https:// www.shu.ac.uk/centre-­regional-­economic-­social-­research/publications/a-­framework-­for-­civic-­impact-­a-­way-­to-­assess-­universities-­activities-­and-­progress Dobson, J., & Ferrari, E. (2021b). Capturing and enhancing the impact of the civic university. Civic Universities Network. https://www.shu.ac.uk/ centre-­r egional-­e conomic-­s ocial-­r esearch/publications/capturing-­a nd-­ enhancing-­t he-­i mpact-­o f-­t he-­c ivic-­u niversity-­c urrent-­t hinking-­i ssues-­ and-­challenges Frostick, T. (2016). Building healthy cities: The role of universities in the health ecosystem. University Alliance. https://www.unialliance.ac.uk/wp-­content/ uploads/2016/03/UA-­Building-­healthy-­cities-­report2_web.pdf Goddard, J. (2018). The Civic University and the city. In P.  Meusburger, M.  Heffernan, & L.  Suarsana (Eds.), Geographies of the University. Knowledge and space (Vol. 12). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/ 978-­3-­319-­75593-­9_11 Goddard, J., Hazelkorn, E., Kempton, L., & Vallance, P. (2016). The Civic University: The policy and leadership challenges. Edward Elgar. Goddard, J., & Kempton, L. (2016). The Civic University: Universities in leadership and management of place. CURDS, Newcastle University. https://www. ncl.ac.uk/media/wwwnclacuk/curds/files/university-­leadership.pdf Goddard, J., & Vallance, P. (2013). The university and the city. Routledge.

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Hambleton, R. (2018). British universities  - The sleeping giants of place-based leadership? People, Place and Policy, 12(1), 1–7. Hambleton, R. (2020). Cities and communities beyond COVID-19. Bristol University Press. HM Government. (2022). Levelling up the United Kingdom. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_ data/file/1052708/Levelling_up_the_UK_white_paper.pdf Morgan, J. (2022, April 26). Ukraine war “shows need for HE to create more tolerant world”. Times Higher Education. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/ukraine-­war-­shows-­need-­he-­create-­more-­tolerant-­world Raworth, K. (2020). Introducing the Amsterdam City Doughnut. https://www. kateraworth.com/2020/04/08/amsterdam-­city-­doughnut/ Riviezzo, A., Napolitano, M., & Fusco, F. (2019). From the entrepreneurial university to the civic university: What are we talking about? In N.  Caseiro & D. Santos (Eds.), Smart specialization strategies and the role of entrepreneurial universities (pp. 60–80). IGI Global. RSA. (2017). Inclusive Growth Commission: Making our economy work for everyone. https://www.thersa.org/globalassets/pdfs/reports/rsa_inclusive-­ growth-­commission-­final-­report-­march-­2017.pdf Taylor, H., & Luter, D.  G. (2013). Anchor institutions: An interpretive review essay. Anchor Institutions Task Force. UPP Foundation. (2019). Truly civic: Strengthening the connection between universities and their places. https://upp-­foundation.org/wp-­content/ uploads/2019/02/Civic-­University-­Commission-­Final-­Report.pdf UPP Foundation. (2020). Extending civic engagement to post-industrial towns: Universities’ role in levelling up and building back better, Part II. https://upp-­ foundation.org/levellingup/ Vail, M. I. (2021). Political community and the new parochialism: Brexit and the reimagination of British liberalism and conservatism. British Politics, 16, 133–151. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41293-­021-­00170-­y Vorley, T., & Nelles, J. (2008). (Re)conceptualising the academy: Institutional development of and beyond the third mission. Higher Education Management and Policy, 20(3), 1–17.

CHAPTER 2

A Question of Leadership Jonathan Slater and Farah Hussain

Introduction During the summer and autumn of 2021, the Mile End Institute at Queen Mary, University of London asked us to review the progress made since the 2019 launch of the UPP Commission Report into the civic role of universities in the UK. The Commission’s report recommended the development of Civic University Agreements (CUAs) by universities looking to play active roles in their local places. With Jonathan’s long career in the civil service, including as Permanent Secretary at the Department for Education, and Farah’s dual roles as a local councillor in London and a PhD researcher at Queen Mary, it was thought that we had the expertise and knowledge to make a meaningful contribution to the understanding of how well the higher education sector was embedding the concept of the civic university into how it works and interacts with the public.

J. Slater (*) King’s College London, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK F. Hussain Mile End Institute, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Dobson, Ed Ferrari (eds.), Reframing the Civic University, Rethinking University-Community Policy Connections, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17686-9_2

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The focus of our work, at the request of the Civic University Network (which coordinates the efforts of all universities developing CUAs), was to explore the issue of evaluation: how to measure whether civic activity is making a difference. This seemed to us a worthy line of enquiry. After all, with our backgrounds in  local and national government we know how easy it is to convince oneself that working very hard, attending lots of meetings, and publishing well-written documents are all signs of progress. In reality, it is very difficult when you’re in the thick of it to work out what difference is actually being achieved. It is even more challenging to predict the public impact. We certainly had lots of experience in our working lives of wondering after the event if the efforts put into certain initiatives were really worth it in the end. We also felt it would be valuable for the universities interested in this work to have some support in measuring impact, as this is not always easy to quantify. It is easy to fall into the trap of measuring the wrong outcome of a project just because those figures or measures are the ones that are available, rather than the ones that make the most sense and help you to get the best picture of what is going on. Through our interviews, we found a lot of enthusiasm from people working on the civic agenda within universities across the country. But the reality was that their work was a much earlier stage of development than we had expected. Only one of the 12 we spoke to had published a CUA, and there was very little evaluation going on at all. In fact, most of even the most advanced universities were just getting started on their journeys to develop civic university agreements. So we refocused on the question of why this was, and whether it mattered. We had very interesting conversations with people committed to making a difference within their university’s local area and were able to produce a report (Slater & Hussain, 2022) which gave a snapshot of progress on the civic agenda in the higher education sector. And at the end of the report, we set out a challenge to the sector, in light of the limited progress we had found: Through this project, we have found that it is perfectly possible for universities to do the necessary work in this area  - to listen to local people and partners, to decide what to do as a result, either in consultation or in formal partnership, to set some measurable objectives, and to get on with it. And though there is clearly a whole range of significant challenges facing the sector, the case for universities to work with directly elected mayors, with local government more

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generally, and with other partners to play a strategic role in their locality is strong. As to whether or not this becomes more than a minority sport, that’s a question for universities themselves to answer. But if not, why not?

We concluded that this is essentially a leadership question. If a university’s leaders choose to prioritise their institution’s civic role, they can make a big difference. But if they don’t make this choice, then the impact on the ground of the efforts of individuals, however enthusiastic, will be limited: at best, ‘bitty’ and tactical; at worst, an exercise in little more than public relations. So what’s going on? To help us answer this question, we need to start with some easier ones and, in doing so, repeat some of what we said in our earlier report.

What Are Civic University Agreements and Why Bother? The concept of the civic university gained prominence in the UK higher education sector with the establishment of the UPP Foundation’s Civic University Commission in 2018. Its purpose was to determine the key challenges faced by universities in pursuing their civic roles and to make recommendations to the sector and government about what could be done to strengthen universities’ place-based roles. The Commission recommended that universities keen to cultivate connections with their local places should co-create Civic University Agreements (CUAs) with other civic partners (UPP, 2019). It set out four broad areas that these agreements should follow: 1. An understanding of local populations and asking them what they want. 2. Understanding of the university itself, reflecting on the historical strategic and geopolitical nuances that have shaped the institution. 3. Working with other anchor institutions, businesses and community organisations to agree what opportunities and problems exist in the area. 4. A clear set of priorities aligned with the plans and resources of other stakeholders in the area such as LEPs (Local Enterprise Partnerships), NHS bodies and local authorities.

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The UPP Commission’s report was received positively by government. Chris Skidmore, the then universities minister, spoke at the report’s launch saying: ‘I’m truly grateful to the UPP Foundation for commissioning this important project, and I hope that the Foundation will continue to lead the agenda and debate on the civic university going forwards. I particularly welcome the suggestion for new initiatives such as civic agreements, which aim to encourage universities to take a more strategic approach to their civic activity. It will be important that universities do not create these in isolation, and that we consider further how universities can be encouraged to join up with other key actors in their local areas to create agreements that best serve their entire community.’ The sector was equally enthusiastic: according to the UPP, nearly 60 institutions soon committed themselves to developing their own CUAs. These are strategic documents designed to shape, prioritise and measure universities’ civic activities. The idea for them came about through the UPP Commission’s research which found that, although many universities were committed to their civic roles and actively engaging with their local communities, there was a lack of strategic thinking to ensure this work met the needs of the place (UPP, 2019). The commission made the creation of CUAs its first recommendation for universities looking to play more active roles in their places. The commission was not prescriptive about what these agreements should look like, but did list a number of elements they should incorporate to have the best chance of success (UPP, 2019). These four elements, as listed above, were recommended to form the basis of the work that universities should put in to creating their CUAs. The CUAs that we looked at as part of our research project came in a variety of guises and forms. Sheffield Hallam University’s CUA places a lot of emphasis on consultation with local communities across the region in which it works, centring on the voice of the people. It has four clear priorities and lists a number of quantifiable commitments under each. The Greater Manchester CUA brings together five higher education institutions in the city and the office of the Mayor of Greater Manchester as signatories. Its six priorities are wide-ranging and ambitious, although not as a specific or measurable as those set out by Sheffield Hallam. This range of approaches by universities to the idea of CUAs is a strength of the civic approach, allowing institutions to work with their partners and local communities to implement the kind of agreements they can and want to.

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What Is the Civic University Network and What Does it Advise? Those universities committed to developing CUAs chose to collectively fund a network, hosted by Sheffield Hallam, to develop best practice and help universities share experiences and ideas. One of the tools they have developed is a Civic Impact Framework (Dobson & Ferrari, 2021): a comprehensive document that aims to assist universities in assessing the effect of their civic work. The framework was designed with university leaders through an iterative process. This broad document covers seven domains of local university impact: social impact; environment, climate and biodiversity; health and wellbeing; cultural contribution; economic impact; estates, facilities and placemaking; and institutional strategy and leadership. The last of these domains explicitly invites universities to address the leadership question. Universities are tasked with asking themselves three questions: 1. How will top-level governance and strategies at our institution reflect our civic commitment to ensure we make the difference we want? 2. Which partners are we working with and to what ends, and what are their priorities? 3. What would it look like if our civic priorities were embedded through our core activities of teaching, learning and research? The framework also proposes several steps that universities should take to ensure they are embedding civic work and civic thinking into the way they do things as an organisation. The steps are designed to be part of a cyclical and iterative process but do follow logical steps which build upon one another. They support an institution in its journey from mapping where it is now, to partnership working, agreeing who will do what and when, the resourcing of these activities, evaluation and learning. The document encourages and offers a helping hand to universities throughout the process, from the creation of a CUA to monitoring the agreement’s impact and later down the line, encouraging senior staff with experience in this area of work to support other institutions embarking on similar journeys (Fig. 2.1). Sitting below each of these headlines are questions which are designed to prompt universities to achieve these six goals. Universities are

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We have drafted, consulted on and approved a Civic University Agreement

We know the number, remit and make-up of the partnerships we're involved in

We have committed to SMART targets within civic strategies and agreements

Our senior staff are involved in civic peer networks or communities of practice

We regularly monitor and evaluate the effects of our civic strategies, and review them with peers

We have identified resources to support the civic agenda

Fig. 2.1  The five steps of building institutional strategy and leadership within the Civic Impact Framework

encouraged throughout the process to ensure that civic work is rooted within all the work they do, from the knowledge of the local area that they hold to consultation with community groups and financial investment. The last strand of the institutional strategy and leadership domain is a two-way learning process. Universities are encouraged to get senior staff involved in peer networks to support other institutions while at the same time asking themselves self-reflective questions such as ‘is there scope for us to do better?’ and ‘how are we judging how well we are doing?’.

How Did We Find Out What Was Going on in Practice? Working within the confines of the Covid-19 pandemic meant that the methods that we could use in carrying out our research were severely curtailed. Workshops, roundtables and face-to-face interviews were just not possible during the height of the pandemic, which meant that we relied on video conferencing and sometimes the telephone to conduct our interviews. These interviews were semi-structured. We used a list of questions and topics as a framework but were able to adapt these depending on how

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interviewees answered and allowed ourselves to be led by the conversation. We were very grateful to the people who gave up their time to speak to us during what was a busy and turbulent period for everyone. They not only joined yet another video call to discuss their work with us, but also sent us documents, webpage links and additional information that we requested, sometimes sharing unpublished drafts or works in progress. This more informal interview structure also allowed us to have meaningful two-way conversations with the people we spoke to. When they raised challenges or issues they faced, we (anonymously) shared relevant ideas we had gathered from other institutions we had spoken to and were able to offer our own insights. Of course, no one was under any pressure to take on our suggestions, but we did feel able to have mutually beneficial conversations. In terms of who we spoke to, we were led by the experts at the Civic University Network and the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement. They provided us with a list of universities which they thought were among the most advanced in civic engagement and would have something interesting to say about CUAs, and which spanned all four nations of the UK. Therefore, the sample of people we spoke to was not random and our results cannot be read across to the entire UK higher education sector. Instead, they should be viewed as a snapshot of where the most advanced or committed institutions were in terms of implementing the UPP recommendations during the summer and autumn of 2021. This sample allowed us to identify good practice, share this with universities just starting out on their civic journeys, and learn if there were aspects where institutions were still struggling in relation to this agenda. We contacted 12 universities in total: Queen Mary, University of London, Manchester, Staffordshire, Solent, Sheffield Hallam, Bath, Aberdeen, St Andrews, Swansea, Cardiff, Wrexham and Ulster. Out of these institutions, we were able to speak to representatives from nine of them. A small process of snowball sampling also meant that we were also able to speak to representatives of three other universities who were recommended by other interviewees. They were from London Metropolitan University, King’s College London and the University of London. Therefore, we eventually interviewed twelve university teams from across the four nations, although with more of a London focus than we had originally envisaged.

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What Did We Learn? We were struck by the wide variety of approaches being taken by different universities. Some were developing Civic University Agreements, others weren’t. Some had already got draft agreements, others were at the beginning of the journey. Some were aiming for something specific and quantifiable, others for something more ‘visionary’. Some were collaborating with other universities in their region with a view to a joint CUA, others were going it alone. Some were seeking formal agreement of the document with strategic partners like the local authority, others weren’t. There seems nothing wrong in principle with a great deal of variety. Indeed, there are obvious benefits in learning from different approaches. And the context facing individual institutions clearly varies significantly, from universities which stand alone as higher education institutions in their local area, to others (most obviously in London, but also in Greater Manchester and elsewhere) which are part of a much more complicated network. And, of course, some universities have been working on their civic role for a lot longer than others. However, we were disappointed to find only a small number of universities which seemed to have set themselves the objective of producing a CUA which goes beyond a series of declaratory sentences with ambitious adjectives, into the space of well-defined activities which members of the public would be able to relate to. It would certainly be possible to interpret some universities’ actions as more of a public relations or reputation-­ management exercise than as a way of delivering genuine improvement in the lives of local people. In our sample of 12, only a minority of universities had spelt out clearly what they were going to do differently and why, whether they had decided to encapsulate this in a formal CUA or not. We were also disappointed that only a minority of universities we talked to had taken a strategic approach to the development of their CUAs. Some had conducted an overall assessment of their current civic activities, consulted with local partners and people about what they thought of this and what they would like to be different, and set clear priorities for change as a result. This seemed to us very much to be desired. But it was not typical. It is possible that, at least for some of the universities we spoke to who weren’t following each of these steps, this was simply because it is work in progress. However, this was not the sense we got in most of our conversations. It seemed to us that there was often something of a disconnect between the enthusiastic work of the civic engagement leads we were

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talking to and the deliberations of their boards of governors or leadership teams. A common story we heard was of a one-person civic ‘team’, sometimes housed within a group of public affairs and other engagement and communications people. The civic leads typically pointed to their reliance on strong encouragement from their vice-chancellor or other senior sponsor, but this did not often extend to the sort of active engagement that is needed to turn enthusiasm into strategic impact. There was also sometimes a tendency for the amount of activity to distract from the question of what would make the most helpful difference to local people’s lives. Of course, there is a certain inevitability about the cost of partnership, not least in the number of meetings that need to be attended. But in the absence of clear prioritisation, either from the board, or from strategic partners, it can be hard for even the most committed civic engagement lead to distinguish the wood from the trees. So we sometimes found it hard to move the conversations we were having on from enthusiastic expositions of partnership working to the more interesting question of what difference this was actually making to local people. That said, we did find some examples of universities acting strategically and with clear purpose in developing their civic role. Sheffield Hallam, perhaps unsurprisingly given their role as host of the Civic University Network, to say nothing of the fact that the chair of their board also chaired the UPP Foundation Commission, seemed to us to have made the most progress in developing a strategic, measurable CUA, informed by a process which was both top-down and bottom-up. At the time of our meeting it was in draft form, but it has now been published (Sheffield Hallam University, n.d.). We were particularly struck by the way in which the university sought views from local partners and people on what they thought of Hallam and what they wanted of it, both through consultations and polling commissioned from YouGov, and then by the way the university responded by setting clear priorities (no more than five), and defining them in quantifiable ways which thereby have the potential to provide real impact locally, and for that impact to be measured to see what difference it has made. For example, the most popular request of Hallam was that they should train more nurses and other local NHS workers; the CUA commits the university to doubling the intake by 2025. At the same time, we should note that Hallam’s CUA hasn’t actually been ‘agreed’ with any of its partners, although they were consulted on its contents. It may well be that it’s no coincidence that the most

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well-defined, quantitative approach we found was in a university which has chosen to be clearly in control of the process. Some other universities we spoke to had decided to cede a certain amount of such control to partners, or indeed to other universities in the region, and it would not be surprising if such a process led to less specificity, at least over the timescales we have been considering. Hallam’s approach has been cooperative, however, as is evident in the number of very supportive comments from partners contained within the CUA (to say nothing of the fact that the doubling of NHS training envisaged in the agreement can only be done with the support of the local NHS). Queen Mary, also a founding member of the network, is one of two universities we spoke to (the other is Staffordshire) which bought in the services of Hatch, a market research company, to carry out a comprehensive analysis of their current impact on local communities. This is obviously not a cheap option, something which was given as a reason by at least one other not to follow suit, but has the advantage of providing a detailed assessment of the status quo, and of opportunities for improvement. Issues addressed included how to reach out to more disadvantaged students, how to help more graduates into local employment, how to focus R&D more effectively in support of the local economy, and how to make the university more accessible. But while QMUL has now published a CUA, it is declaratory in nature and unquantified, which means it very difficult to be clear what difference the university expects it to make on the ground. We also found several examples of universities working in strong partnership with other agencies, and reaching agreement to improve services together, even if these are typically not as clear and quantifiable as Hallam’s agreement. For example, King’s College London had agreed a ‘Statement of Intent’ with both Westminster and Lambeth councils at the time of our research last year, and has since finalised one with Southwark too. These identify agreed priorities, and initial projects to make progress—for example, in providing health checks for local residents, and providing business advice to SMEs identified by the council (albeit not quantified to date). In Greater Manchester, five higher education institutes have come together with the Greater Manchester Mayor and ten local authority leaders to agree six priority areas for collective action, including education and skills; reducing inequalities, net zero, the digital economy and the creative and cultural economy.

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So What’s Going on? We can now consider the question raised by our initial research. Even so, we should start with a health warning. Talking to 12 universities means that we aren’t in a position to report conclusively on the field of civic engagement. And the research we carried out was completed in 2021, since when a number of universities have made more progress, including through the launch of some new CUAs. But we do feel able to offer an informed perspective, particularly given that the universities were chosen because they were considered to be at the leading edge of engagement. In doing so, we have updated our research to take account of what has been subsequently published (like QMUL’s CUA, for example).

Do University Leaders Really Care About Civic? Our first conclusion is that, despite plenty of talk and lots of enthusiastic activism, the sector has so far not met the challenge laid down by the UPP Commission. Universities may say they want to develop a CUA, but few of those we have seen have done so with their eyes open to the scale of the challenge. Of the 12 universities we spoke to, only one seems to us to have produced a strategic and measurable CUA to date, and this one hasn’t actually been agreed with its partners. Of course, it is certainly possible to produce a document which describes plenty of civic engagement and call that a CUA, but that would be to miss the point of the UPP Foundation’s call to arms, which was about the importance of taking a strategic approach, setting clear priorities informed by genuine partnership. The reality seems to us to be that, in the main, universities have chosen to focus their efforts elsewhere, even where they claim to be developing CUAs. Of course, some will argue that increasing financial constraints over recent years makes this inevitable, to say nothing of the huge impact of the pandemic. But we are unconvinced by this argument. In fact, it seems to us that the current financial reality makes it even more important for universities to demonstrate their value to the public at large (not least because taxpayers are paying for half the cost of all teaching, as well as for much research), and where better to start than locally? And hasn’t the pandemic shown the importance of working together locally to protect each other?

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Both of us have experience in local government. We saw how councils responded to austerity ten years ago by really challenging themselves to think hard about how to generate as much value as possible—such that public satisfaction in local government actually increased while councils were having to make much more dramatic cuts in spending than universities have faced. Hallam shows that it is perfectly possible to develop a quantified CUA, even though there is of course room for improvement. Theirs includes not just a plan to increase the number of healthcare professionals they train from 2700 to 5400 over the next three years, but also a commitment to offer at least 2500 fully work-based degree apprenticeships. Even here, though, most of their commitments aren’t quantified, and many could be (for example, the level of reduction in carbon emissions, the extent of the Continuing Professional Development offer to local schools, and the amount of increased research in support of improving local healthcare pathways). Hallam also demonstrates the importance of seeing the CUA as means to an end, rather as an end in itself. Shirecliffe is a deprived part of Sheffield in which Hallam has been working with Save the Children. Together they have recreated a Sure Start centre, but the real story is how they have combined teaching, research and community engagement to create not only a valuable and valued service but also a genuine sense of commitment to place among the university’s staff. This wasn’t the only example we found of a university which puts the civic agenda at its core, but what seems much more typical are institutions which see it as an extra, however desirable. Put simply, the difference between those universities which have made good progress in implementing the UPP Commission’s vision and those which haven’t is collective ambition: the desire of the university’s leadership to meet the challenge—or not. And unpicking this headline raises three final questions: • What does the phrase ‘a university’s leadership’ really mean? • What is the nature of the leadership of the university sector as a whole? • How important is the government’s role? This isn’t the right place to try and answer them in full, but we think our experience of researching civic engagement offers some insights worth sharing.

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What Does University Leadership Mean? One of the barriers to progress in developing strategic CUAs we heard repeatedly was a lack of active engagement between the corporate leadership of particular universities and their individual faculties, colleges and so on. Sometimes we heard of senior leaders frustrated by what they thought of as local resistance. At the same time, the problem is just as likely to be a symptom of a corporate team disconnected from their people’s day-to-day realities (as evidenced by some universities we talked to where the interesting civic action was actually being driven by individual faculties themselves). Sometimes it was a combination of the two. There is nothing particularly unusual about the sight of the overall leaders of a large, complex organisation struggling to drive change forward effectively, either as a consequence of individual silos resisting the call to put the interests of the whole above their own, or of corporate leaders failing to connect effectively. But this seemed to us to be a much greater challenge in universities than other large organisations we have experienced. And when we tested this hypothesis with individual vice-­ chancellors, it certainly seemed that we were onto something. One said that it was important to understand that for academics, their own teaching and research comes first, followed by their faculty, followed by their subject matter nationally and internationally, with the interests of the university a distant fourth. And this list doesn’t even include the interests of the local population, which is of course the purpose of civic engagement. This would mean that any strategic initiative will take hold only where the university’s leadership is genuinely determined that it should, and is particularly at risk where an initiative doesn’t go with the flow of its academics’ professional interests. In the absence of this determination, we saw evidence of ad hoc civic engagement at the level of particular individuals and their departments, rather than thoughtful, open consideration of how to enable the whole university to make the best possible contribution to civic life. Conversely, Sheffield Hallam is an example of a university whose senior leadership team is not only strongly committed to civic engagement, but whose overall model of governance gives considerable weight to the benefits of university-wide action. So we should not be at all surprised to see the progress it has managed to make in this area. Other universities we spoke to which were on the same journey, but which had made less progress to date, looked to us to share Hallam’s aims,

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but perhaps with less authoritative or determined leadership. To be clear, we are not arguing for a model in which a university’s senior leadership team seeks to ride roughshod over the interests of its people—far from it. Rather, we are arguing that the whole purpose of a university’s leadership is to enable the whole to be greater than the sum of its parts, and that this requires a governance model which gives genuine authority to the ‘whole’, rather than one which can be ignored by the ‘parts’. In fact, we think it is worth thinking carefully about how a university’s leadership is defined. Is it actually at all helpful to think of the senior leaders of an institution as those at the corporate centre, distinct from those running the individual parts? What about the alternative model of leadership distributed right across the institution? After all, however determined and authoritative a corporate leadership team might be, isn’t a civic (or any other) strategy likely to be both more grounded and better implemented if it has been developed collectively?

What About Sector Leadership? We didn’t find any evidence of leadership of the civic agenda at sector level. The CUA initiative certainly started at this level, but came from the UPP rather than university sector leadership itself. And while, as already reported, about 60 universities soon committed themselves to developing their own CUAs, the practice we found on the ground has been very patchy, with no-one challenging individual institutions to up their game. There is a network which shares good practice to those interested, as referred to above, but no-one would claim that this is able to provide leadership across the sector. Of course, universities, just like other large organisations, jealously guard their own independence, and why shouldn’t they? However, it did seem to us that universities are missing the opportunity to act collectively on the important issue of their role in local communities. This is unsurprising, given the limited evidence we found of universities acting at the collective level within their own institutions. But if they don’t choose to play this role themselves, maybe someone else will seek to fill the gap.

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What About the Government? This brings us to the third of our three leadership questions. Who has been most influential in driving change in how universities operate over the last decade? How controversial would it be to suggest that the answer is the people who determine their financial incentives? At the top of that tree are to be found the Treasury and the Office for Students, whose policies on student finance and on the regulation of fee income have transformed the sector. It would be naive to suggest that universities should be any less influenced by financial incentives than any other organisation. And indeed, we found evidence during our research of the positive role that national governments can play in promoting civic engagement. In particular, we saw in Wrexham how the leadership (and funds) of the Welsh government kick-­ started a more strategic approach to civic engagement in Wales. Conversely, the UK government hasn’t really engaged at all on the civic agenda since the then universities minister’s warm words at the UPP Commission’s launch. It seems most unlikely that the lack of significant progress in taking this work forward east of the Severn Bridge is a coincidence. But universities surely don’t want the government or their regulator to take the lead for them here, do they? In conclusion, the roles universities play in their local areas matter to the public. The choices that universities make—either deliberately or casually—can have a profound impact for good or ill on nearby communities. The sector announced four years ago that it was going to take collective action to address this challenge. But it hasn’t actually done so, despite the sterling efforts of some individual institutions, which have shown what can be achieved with the right leadership. We think that universities’ institutional autonomy is very important. But it cannot be guaranteed. Indeed, universities are significantly less autonomous than they were ten years ago. The best way forward is for the sector to lead by itself, individually and collectively. And in the area of civic engagement at least, there is much to be done.

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References Dobson, J., & Ferrari, E. (2021). A framework for civic impact: A way to access universities’ activities and progress. Civic University Network. Retrieved April 14, 2022, from http://shura.shu.ac.uk/28648/1/civic-­activity-­framework.pdf Sheffield Hallam University. (n.d.). Our civic university agreement. Retrieved July 5, 2022, from https://www.shu.ac.uk/about-­us/our-­role-­in-­the-­region/ civic-­university-­agreement Slater, J., & Hussain, F. (2022). Civic universities – Where’s the beef? Mile End Institute. Retrieved July 5, 2022, from https://www.qmul.ac.uk/mei/media/ mei/documents/publications/Civic-­Universtiy-­Report.pdf UPP Foundation Civic University Commission. (2019). Truly civic: Strengthening the connection between universities and their places. UPP Foundation. Retrieved April 14, 2022, from https://upp-­foundation.org/wp-­content/uploads/ 2019/02/Civic-­University-­Commission-­Final-­Report.pdf

CHAPTER 3

How Should Universities Understand Their Social Impact? Sue Jarvis

Introduction The importance attached to the civic role of universities and their contribution to delivering the ‘public good’ through social and economic impacts is well documented (Goddard et al., 2016). As anchor institutions connected to their local area, universities use their assets and resources to contribute to the wellbeing of the communities around them: from the direct and indirect benefits of core ‘business as usual’ activity, through widening participation programmes and educational outreach, to more active engagement and alignment of strategic priorities with civic partners in research and knowledge exchange. However, in describing universities as the ‘sleeping giants of place-based leadership’ Hambleton (2018) advocates a scaling-up and rewarding of academic engagement with local stakeholders to advance social justice for all concerned.

S. Jarvis (*) Heseltine Institute for Public Policy, Practice and Place, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Dobson, Ed Ferrari (eds.), Reframing the Civic University, Rethinking University-Community Policy Connections, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17686-9_3

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At an institutional level, many UK universities have signed the global higher education sector’s commitment to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the SDG Accord. This commits institutions to work to address the global challenges facing society and the environment by contributing to the 17 SDG goals and targets that sit beneath them. The SDG Accord also commits universities to engage with all stakeholder groups, including students, academics, civic partners and local communities in this endeavour. Contributing to the global SDGs, therefore, offers universities the opportunity to align local research impact to international goals and gives students a chance to engage with real world issues in and beyond education to deliver social impact. In this chapter we consider what a civic agenda might look like from the perspective of the communities universities serve, and how universities can bridge social divides to improve the quality of life of communities, including the most disadvantaged. Focusing on university public engagement, of particular relevance to the discussion is the process of co-production with communities and civic partners to tackle social exclusion and complex policy challenges (Facer & Pahl, 2017; Hambleton, 2020) and to ‘resolve issues in ways that will benefit [the university’s] identified place’ (McNeill et al., 2020, p. 7). I will present three University of Liverpool case studies to show how an institution can become more responsive to the resources, aspirations, needs and inequalities within their localities. These are situated within the University of Liverpool’s wider contribution to civic activity and explore social impact at three scales of engagement: • The City Conversation: research with disadvantaged communities • UNICEF Child Friendly City Programme: place-based leadership at a city level • Covid-19 Mass Testing Pilot: tackling complex global challenges While institutions often celebrate the social benefits they bring to communities, it is rarer for them to ask their communities how effectively they think the university contributes to their wellbeing. So this chapter will also reflect on positive practice from another sector—local government—to assess how universities can go further in understanding their social impact.

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Public Engagement and Community Partnerships Public engagement between universities and a broad range of stakeholders is a means of extending reach and enhancing the impact of research and teaching activities with the wider public. It has been suggested that ‘public engagement is most effective when it is taken beyond informing or consulting and towards collaborative, participatory activities’ (Chang & Moore, 2017, p. 12). While some institutions can evidence a longstanding commitment to building university–community partnerships, for others this is relatively new territory. The University of Brighton’s Community University Partnership Programme (CUPP) is something of a trail blazer, having operated for almost two decades and being clearly embedded in the university’s strategic approach to civic engagement. Since its inception in 2003 this programme has co-created numerous knowledge exchange projects ‘of mutual benefit’ to enable community-based partners and academic researchers to tackle social issues that are not easy to solve. Elsewhere, the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Connecting Communities Programme (2010–2020) delivered over 300 projects with marginalised groups using arts-based and creative practice to co-produce bottom-up responses to contemporary urban challenges (Braginskaia & Facer, 2017). Community-based participatory research (CBPR) has become an increasingly prominent approach, particularly in conjunction with co-­ produced methods and, more recently, asset-based approaches to community development to tackle inequalities. CBPR seeks to equitably involve a variety of stakeholders in the research process and recognise the strengths that a mix of participants brings (Minkler & Wallerstein, 2011). Fundamentally, CBPR emphasises the ‘participation and influence of non-­ academic researchers in the process of creating knowledge’ (Israel et al., 1998, p. 177). While there are various definitions of CBPR, a common set of principles connects CBPR practice across disciplines. According to Wallerstein and Duran (2006), CBPR should: • Promote co-learning between academic and community partners • Build capacity in the community in which the research is taking place, for example through training • Benefit all partners, through the findings or knowledge developed through the research process itself

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• Include a long-term commitment to reduce social, health or economic inequalities Drawing on a long history founded in Arnstein’s (1969) conceptualisation of the ‘ladder’ of citizen participation in local decision-making, practitioners of CBPR have sought to move beyond tokenistic participation to genuine promotion of citizen power. Nyden (2003) argues CBPR can be more impactful than traditional research design, as it embeds a focus on outcomes at the outset of the project and within the participants involved. Others refer to a lack of connectivity between academic outputs and community participants' aspirations which makes it harder to demonstrate the social impact of the research which in turn reinforces structural inequalities (Beebeejaun et al., 2014, p. 38). Participatory processes in research also depend on the individual motivations and organisational capacity of specific communities to become involved (Head, 2007). The community sector is not homogenous and there is a spectrum of individual and community level interest and capacity to engage which academics and policymakers need to be aware of. This means that their interaction must be flexible.

Civic University Engagement in Liverpool City Region The University of Liverpool is located within the Liverpool City Region which has a population of 1.6 million people and a £33bn economy. Like other post-industrial city regions, the area exhibits a range of socio-­ economic inequalities and now faces added challenges to support the post-­ pandemic recovery. Levels of deprivation across most domains of the Indices of Deprivation are above the national average, and a third of Lower Super Output Areas (i.e., neighbourhoods) in Liverpool are within the most deprived decile in England (MHCLG, 2019). The University of Liverpool considers itself to be a civic university, and it delivers considerable economic and social value to the communities it serves and is a major contributor to the region’s economy, through employment (c. 11,000 direct and indirect jobs) and significant investment, earning £491 million for the region in 2015–2016 (University of Liverpool, 2019). The university’s strategic ambitions have a major impact on the city region’s prosperity, and staff and students are actively engaged

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in local social and community life. In signing the SDG Accord the university is committed to work to address the global challenges facing society and the environment. Place has a particular relevance for research impact and knowledge exchange and the institution’s research strategy is underpinned by strong partnership working with civic partners and industry alliances to deliver public benefit. From an educational outreach perspective, widening participation programmes help to create access to higher education for all and the continuing education programme offers a diverse range of courses, lectures and events both on and off campus, with multiple points of engagement and no entrance qualifications required.

Case Study 1. The City Conversation: Research with Disadvantaged Communities The City Conversation project, funded by the UKRI’s Enhancing Place-­ based Partnerships in Public Engagement programme, was a research partnership involving the Heseltine Institute for Public Policy, Practice and Place at the University of Liverpool, Liverpool City Council and the MyClubmoor Partnership Board, a community development scheme which is part of the lottery-funded Big Local scheme. The project focused on Clubmoor ward, a north Liverpool neighbourhood of 15,000 people experiencing long-term deprivation. It aimed to develop participatory approaches to community engagement that would lead to a better understanding of local issues and contribute to the design of more effective public services. In an era of prolonged pressure on public sector budgets, the potential application of this research in facilitating a meaningful dialogue between local residents and policymakers to identify shared priorities and inform a potential redesign of neighbourhood services is timely. The City Conversation adopted an asset-based approach, recognising the combined knowledge and potential contribution that residents, academics and public agencies working together can make to tackle difficult issues of deprivation. A steering group made up of representatives from the Heseltine Institute, Liverpool City Council, MyClubmoor Partnership Board and Liverpool Charity and Voluntary Services played an active role in the research design and engaged with community stakeholders throughout the project. As set out in Fig. 3.1, partners had existing and overlapping interests in exploring models of enhanced community development activity, which underpinned the project (Shand & Jarvis, 2021a, p. 3).

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Fig. 3.1  Stakeholder intersecting interests

The project recruited and trained 23 community researchers to engage with local residents through surveys and one to-one interviews. The community researchers were either local residents or group members associated with Clubmoor’s partner networks. The training used an asset-based approach which drew on all participants’ skills to carry out resident engagement and research. Positive feedback was received from all, with one participant noting: ‘Thoroughly enjoyed the lesson. [It] Answered why being a researcher is important and how this may assist the community’. Unfortunately, the lockdowns imposed during the Covid-19 pandemic limited the opportunity for the community researchers to carry out face-to-face interviews and community-based activity due to the stay-at-­ home order. A key objective achieved through the research was to strengthen relationships and build trust between community and public sector

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stakeholders. The partnership mechanisms and project management structures established at the start of the project, coupled with an ongoing process of co-production to adapt the methods due to the pandemic, made a major contribution to strengthening relationships. Discussions with community partners confirmed that they had ‘a better understanding of how the local authority works and felt more empowered and able to engage council officers in dialogue’ because of their involvement in the project (Shand & Jarvis, 2021a, p. 6). Similarly, public sector practitioners recognised the contribution of organised communities in delivering effective services that will shape their thinking and actions beyond the project. The participatory nature of the City Conversation promoted knowledge exchange between the community members, university and local authority and the learning points were shared with Liverpool’s People Power Partnership to inform community engagement practice. Residents’ insights about ‘the best things in Clubmoor’ and ‘what people in the neighbourhood could do to improve where they live’ were shared with policymakers. Through participation in the project, community members and frontline workers developed new research skills which can be used in future community-led research activity. The City Conversation project was time limited to the research grant period. This is a typical scenario for many university–community research projects, which stop once grant funding ends despite demonstrating social impacts. Ensuring long-term sustainability for public engagement and research with marginalised groups is a live issue for universities. Extending the Liverpool project could have developed the nascent research capacity in Clubmoor and contributed to knowledge exchange and impact beyond the immediate funding period. The advantages would be twofold: first, embedding the role of academic institutions into the locality and broadening the university’s interactions with multiple stakeholders; and second, providing longitudinal research potential with communities to influence public policy decisions.

Case Study 2. UNICEF Child Friendly City Programme: Place-based Leadership at a City Level In this second case study we focus on Liverpool’s UNICEF Child Friendly City Programme. The programme aims to embed a commitment to children’s rights in the policies, investment and public services used by

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children and young people and, in doing so, to create an environment where all children in Liverpool will thrive. The application of a ‘rightsbased’ approach by policymakers which incorporates views from under-­ represented groups is one of four dimensions central to creating an ‘inclusive city’ identified by Hambleton (2014, p. 17). Participatory research with children and young people is often framed by this ‘rights-based approach’ which has its origins in the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, emphasising children’s participatory right and their status as individuals with distinct views and contributions (Lundy & McEvoy, 2012). In this context, discussions tend to focus on a mismatch between the policy making process, local knowledge and a young person’s lived experience (Clark & Moss, 2001). Where collaboration does happen, research shows that the effects of children’s participation are profound and far-reaching (Graham & Fitzgerald, 2011). In their role as anchor institutions, universities have the opportunity to collaborate with fellow place-based leaders to advance children’s rights. In 2019, in partnership with UNICEF UK, Liverpool embarked on a five-­ year programme to transform into a Child Friendly City. The University of Liverpool is an important partner in this collaboration, which has created opportunities for a diverse range of partnerships between academics, practitioners and policymakers to work with children and young people, as co-researchers and engaged participants, to respond to the dynamic local policy agenda. Through the university’s European Children’s Rights Unit, expertise in research relevant to children and young people is being leveraged to help frame the debate and provide evidence for policymakers. This includes expertise in participatory approaches to research involving children as well as building capacities among practitioners and policymakers to enable them to apply a children‘s rights-based approach to their work. To support researchers working with children the unit has developed a bespoke ethics framework and training materials which are guided by the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child. The unit also hosts a Young People’s Advisory Group which brings together local children and young people to provide input into the design, implementation and dissemination of University of Liverpool research projects and Liverpool’s Child Friendly City programme. One of Liverpool’s early commitments to put children’s rights at the heart of the civic agenda has involved listening to children’s views when developing the City Plan for Liverpool. The consultation process for this

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plan, which aims to tackle inequalities to improve everyone’s quality of life in the city, gathered views from young people about ‘what is good about growing up in Liverpool and what can be improved’. Recurring topics highlighted by children and young people included: an appreciation of the city centre and its sense of identity which marked Liverpool as a great place for young people; affordability issues relating to transport and leisure facilities; and tackling climate change through local action (Liverpool City Council, 2021). The Child of the North Report, developed by a partnership of leading academics and health partners from across the north of England, presents evidence of how the public health, economic and social aspects of Covid-19 have impacted on the lives of children and young people (Pickett et al., 2021). In the chapter focused on ‘children’s rights-based approaches to the development of regional policy and governance’, Stalford and Drywood (2021) underscore the importance of place-based leaders involving children and young people in strategic planning and decision-making, advocating the principles of the Child Friendly City framework to achieve this. They call on policymakers to ensure local Covid-19 recovery plans adopt a children’s rights-based response to improve outcomes for children which are linked to factors such as child poverty and inequality, mental health and wellbeing, and schools and education (Stalford and Drywood, in Pickett et al., 2021).

Case Study 3. Covid-19 Mass Testing Pilot: Tackling Complex Global Challenges The Liverpool City Region has the UK’s largest concentration of translational public sector research and development into infectious diseases through the combined capabilities of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and University of Liverpool (Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, 2022). The university employs around 400 academic and research staff working in infection control and trains more than 200 postgraduates in infection-related research each year. This final case study demonstrates how Liverpool provided a ‘living lab’ to facilitate research and knowledge exchange during the Covid-19 pandemic, building on world leading strengths in infection control to produce research of global significance.

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Throughout the pandemic the NHS and civic partners adopted an integrated approach to support the city region’s public health work and, as part of this, the University of Liverpool undertook several studies to understand how the pandemic was affecting the local population. Sharing of data and intelligence was crucial, helping partners to co-ordinate actions and services rapidly as the pandemic unfolded. It included the Combined Intelligence for Population Health Action (www.cipha.nhs.uk) data source, a collaboration involving the NHS, local government and the University of Liverpool. Of particular note was the university’s involvement in Liverpool’s Covid-19 community testing pilot as part of the wider intelligence-led approach. The City of Liverpool and national agencies partnered to pilot community testing which was open to all people without symptoms of Covid-19 living or working in the city. This was a major public health intervention which depended on public participation. The University of Liverpool evaluated the Covid-19 mass testing pilot, which was sponsored by the Department for Health and Social Care and supported by a grant from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Led by the University’s Institute for Population Health, the evaluation focused on four aspects of the community testing programme: operational systems, biological performance of lateral flow devices, behavioural responses to community testing, and public health impacts (University of Liverpool, 2021). The public health component of the evaluation explored social and spatial inequalities in uptake and outcomes of the mass testing pilot, and specifically whether the community testing uptake varied by gender, age, ethnicity, deprivation, access to testing centres and digital inclusion. Academics from across the institution and across disciplines collaborated to assemble data sets, research and apply statistical modelling to explore ‘how outcomes varied with area-based factors’. The study identified ‘large relative inequalities by level of deprivation in uptake, repeat testing and positivity rates’ as well as inequalities by ethnicity and geographical location (Green et al., 2021, p. 7). These and the wider findings from the evaluation helped policymakers and strategic partners to target public health messaging about Covid-19 and to implement community approaches to testing. The research has also captured lessons for future pandemics. At a practical level, interventions included the production of videos and images by Liverpool City Council to target ‘hard to reach’ communities (including Black, Asian and other

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minority ethnic groups and white working-class middle-aged men) to raise awareness of the reality of contracting Covid-19 and promote public-­ health messages around lateral flow testing.

Discussion This chapter has considered how academic research can be leveraged for public benefit and what university engagement and co-production with communities and civic partners might look like from the perspective of the communities universities serve. The literature and Liverpool case studies promote an asset-based model which aims to engage community and civic partners in research on issues that affect everyday lives. The Levelling Up White Paper has set the national policy context for place-based regeneration and redistribution of resources between regions (DLUHC, 2022) and includes references to the role communities themselves can take. This includes adopting a Community Covenant approach between councils, public bodies and the communities they serve to drive change. A starting point for academics seeking to engage with local communities to deliver research and knowledge exchange must be an ‘an analysis of local needs and assets within and outside of the university’ so that research expertise aligns with local priorities. This approach is recommended by the University of Brighton’s team at CUPP in their guide on how universities should work with local communities to ensure partnerships are of mutual benefit (NCCPE, 2017). A recent review of universities’ potential role in developing social innovations points to an increasing demand from students and academics for university teaching and research to be ‘responsive to the needs of community members’ and orientated towards social impact (Bayuo et  al., 2020). To some extent this aim is not new. But the desire to offer innovative solutions ‘not just to localised problems but to more systemic and structural issues’ including climate change, pandemics and austerity (Nicholls et al., 2015, p. 1) has become more prominent and, as outlined in this chapter, is a crucial component of the contemporary university civic offer. Ensuring university–community engagement reflects the diversity of local populations is an important ethical consideration. In a report commissioned by the Local Trust and Joseph Rowntree Foundation asking ‘what needs to happen for communities to feel and be powerful in the 2020s?’ the role of stakeholder relationships and how these develop to

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support knowledge co-production with community organisations was recognised as an important means of securing social change (Baker & Taylor, 2018). Based on their experiences of working with communities, Chang and Moore (2017) identify five ‘enabling conditions’ which result in mutual benefit for the researcher and community participants. First, be flexible with the definition and nature of public engagement activities given potential partners and projects can be wide ranging. Second, recognise there are a variety of methods rather than a one size fits all approach. Third, ensure there is effective project coordination and support for projects. Fourth, where possible, sustain engagement beyond the funding period. Finally, use evaluation to bridge gaps between theory and practice and researcher and community perspectives (Chang & Moore, 2017, p. 27). The City Conversation case study demonstrates how CBPR methods can enable people to feel listened to and more involved in decisions being made by seemingly distant institutions (Shand & Jarvis, 2021b). However, critics highlight particular ethical challenges posed by the collaborative nature of CBPR, from navigating the power dynamics between professional researchers and community researchers, to tensions arising due to blurred boundaries between the role of researcher and community advocate, and ownership of data and findings (Banks et al., 2013). Drawing on practice from local government, Beebeejaun et  al. (2015, p.  562) note that when the conditions are right, co-production with communities ‘contributes to an ethos which underpins the role of universities in creating public value’. As mentioned earlier, literature on how communities think universities contribute to their wellbeing is limited, but there are numerous case studies and recommendations from community groups and policymakers across local government of relevance to the civic university agenda. Learning from The Big Local scheme, involving 150 communities seeking to create lasting change in their neighbourhoods, has shown what works well and less well for councils and the communities participating in these projects. Insights include how to manage complex relationships with community groups, recognising that these evolve when trust is built up and when communities take on a more leading role in local problem solving. In summary, five components of a successful working relationship are identified from the Big Local initiatives (Tjoa, 2018, p. 5): • Recognise what each partner is trying to achieve • Take active steps to build trust

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• Maintain ongoing dialogue and honest communication • Be flexible and adaptable • Develop shared ownership and accountability Elsewhere, a rapid evidence review to gauge the experience of individuals participating in health and wellbeing initiatives found social outcomes are particularly relevant for more disadvantaged groups and communities (Attree et al., 2011, p. 257). Participants can experience positive impacts of community engagement in terms of self-confidence, personal empowerment and social relations but also ‘unintended negative consequences’ and stress, which needs to be more widely recognised by researchers (Attree et al., 2011, p. 250). Other accounts have shown how community groups value co-­ production, for example by being able to influence policy decisions and in developing new skills and personal confidence of participants (Banks et al., 2013). Evidence from the United States suggests four incentives for communities to partner with universities: ‘obtaining project-related resources, leveraging further resources, gaining access to networks, and increasing legitimacy’ (Ferman & Hill, 2004, p. 245). The Liverpool case studies were aligned with big challenges facing the city. They leveraged high quality applied research for demonstrable public benefit and positioned the university as a broker to connect communities, academics, and public agencies in tackling difficult issues of place. The influence of the University of Liverpool on the development of the UNICEF Child Friendly City programme clearly demonstrates place-­ leadership. Similarly, the university’s role in Liverpool’s Covid-19 mass testing pilot demonstrates how delivering social impact at a local level can also translate to global challenges. This ability to drive local impact by working across multiple policy domains is an area where universities can add considerable value to the communities they serve. However, when discussing what a civic agenda might look like from the perspective of the local communities universities serve, there is a risk that research impact is simply viewed through a narrow lens of the specific project, method, or discipline rather than from an overarching institutional perspective. Often community research projects are viewed as ‘one-­ off’ or pilot activity designed to test a new method of engagement, respond to a particular local challenge or take advantage of a short-term funding opportunity. Universities are organisationally complex and research environments tend to be siloed, which can make it difficult for

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the social impact of civic activity to be considered more than the sum of its individual parts. So how can institutions become more responsive to the resources, aspirations, needs and inequalities within their localities? The building blocks for social impact, to varying degrees, are already in place. Having a strong focus on civic engagement and place leadership in the institutional strategy is a good starting point, but this sentiment needs to move on from strategic intent and rhetoric to implementation and social impact. Positioning social impact as the golden thread to bind the university’s vision, goals and priorities with its strategic architecture and culture is recommended. However, what constitutes success may differ between institutions and stakeholders, as will the resources earmarked for this agenda. That said, there are a number of ways to advance universities’ social impacts so that actions are mutually reinforcing at institutional level. First, give more emphasis to the value of action-oriented research and practice delivered with communities than to theorising about working with communities. The Research Excellence Framework’s focus on world-­ leading research over other forms of outputs can act as a barrier to academic participation in public engagement and action-research. Participatory research methods are seen as time consuming and often unpredictable and, as Baum et al. (2006, p. 855) highlight, are unlikely to lead to a high production of journal articles or attract competitive funding compared to more traditional scholarly research. In response to this dilemma, others suggest universities should develop new assessment criteria and metrics to capture the social value of co-produced research (Durose et al., 2018). To some extent the Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) provides an effective measure to benchmark the impact of university–community partnerships, including activities to address inequality and engage with marginalised groups (Griffin et al., 2022; Hill & McAlpine, 2019). There is also an argument for using a conceptual framework to engage and connect academics in work with local community partners, such as Wenger’s ‘communities of practice’ (Hart & Wolff, 2006, p. 122). This approach can provide a structure to navigate the complexities of partnership working. Second, consider how institutional structures can be adapted so they support a closer integration of academic scholarship, public policy and communities of practice to drive social impact. While some disciplines have seen a shift in emphasis towards co-production methods and new ways of generating knowledge which takes academics out of their ‘ivory

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towers’, the ability to navigate across policy domains and integrate academic research with public policy remains a specialist and relatively under-­ used skill. One way to address this may be to introduce Professor in Practice roles which integrate academic expertise with public policy experience and practice, such as the Professor in Practice in Public Policy role at the London School of Economics (LSE, 2020). The development and scaling of a Professor in Practice career path across an institution would help to achieve greater parity between academic and practice-based research. But this approach will require senior level buy-in and assurances to staff that the role is comparable with more traditional professorial appointments and reward structures. Without this backing, the Professor in Practice role may not be preferred as a career option. Third, harness the institution’s collective research expertise and use this to position the university at the core of evidence-based policy making in the city. Taking a cross-institutional approach rather than relying on ad-­ hoc relationships between researchers and local partners can help drive social impact. An example is the Heseltine Institute for Public Policy, Practice and Place at the University of Liverpool, an interdisciplinary social sciences research centre with a remit to work across the institution to broker and facilitate research impact for demonstrable public benefit. The institute serves as an important focus for civic engagement activities, anchoring the university in the city region and speaking beyond it to policymakers and practitioners. This arrangement is by no means unique and there are similar centres in other UK universities. Further, to support the university’s contribution there should be a strengthening of pathways to knowledge exchange to harness and scale scholar–intellectual and public policy networks. The introduction of knowledge exchange opportunities for early career researchers within the policy machinery of the city would also help to develop a future pipeline of researchers focused on practice orientation. Fourth, prioritise the development of a centre of excellence focused on community engagement practice and co-production methods to drive social impact. The centre would bring together researchers from different disciplines across the institution, and with stakeholders, to foster learning and collaboration with local communities. While a centre of excellence represents a substantial resource commitment by the university, it can bring substantial benefits and help frame action-orientated research in the institution’s research and impact strategy. Linked to this, it is vital that

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policy impact is also recognised and measured in a meaningful way for both academics and the communities universities serve.

Conclusion In support of the Civic Impact Framework (Chap. 1), this chapter has demonstrated how the University of Liverpool is collaborating with partners through public engagement and co-production of research to deliver social impact. The activities presented, at different scales of engagement, align with the university’s mission and strategic interests and its active role as an anchor institution contributing to the wellbeing of the communities it serves. From an internal perspective, the civic approach also encourages broader interactions across academic disciplines to support high impact collaborations and knowledge exchange. The ‘Leading Places’ programme supported opportunities for universities, councils and other anchor institutions to collaborate on civic-­ orientated projects to deliver local economic or social impacts. Learning from the programme has recognised the principal role of universities in building local capacity for place-based collaborations by applying interdisciplinary research and knowledge exchange to deliver social impact. Institutional challenges, including ‘the need to demonstrate public good and the need to be competitive and have an increasingly international focus’ were also noted in the programme evaluation (Shared Intelligence, 2018, p. 3). To some extent, having an institutional alignment with the UN Sustainable Development Goals can help to address this dilemma, as the SDG Accord provides a framework for universities to measure social impact at both the international and local levels. In the context of broader debates about institutional funding and resourcing public engagement activities, there is an opportunity to align institutional strategy more closely with the UK government’s ‘levelling up’ missions and policy programme. Here universities can take a lead role to facilitate community-based and participatory action research to explore complex policy issues. Similarly, collaboration between anchor institutions to develop local solutions to problems at city and city region level can contribute to ‘growing the institutional capacity of places’ as part of the universities’ role in ‘levelling up’ (Grant & Westwood, 2022). A recent report from the Institute of Social Sciences presented 24 case studies illustrating how social sciences disciplines in UK universities are supporting ‘place-based levelling up’ through their work with public and

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private sector partners. One of the report’s recommendations, directly supporting the university civic role, was for ‘clear and stable funding to support their strategic engagement with their local areas’ (Lenihan & Witherspoon, 2021, p.  12). The UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Strategy 2022 to 2027 (UK Research and Innovation, 2022) makes explicit reference to the ‘levelling up’ agenda and universities’ role in delivering economic and social impact in all parts of the UK, which gives reason to be optimistic.

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University of Liverpool. (2021). Liverpool Covid-SMART Community Testing Pilot (p. 66). University of Liverpool. Retrieved July 15, 2022, from https://www. liverpool.ac.uk/media/livacuk/research/Mass,testing,evaluation Wallerstein, N.  B., & Duran, B. (2006). Using community-based participatory research to address health disparities. Health Promotion Practice, 7(3), 312–323. Stalford, H., & Drywood, E. (2021). Children’s rights-based approaches to the development of regional policy and governance. In Pickett, K., T ­ aylor-­Robinson, D., & Mason. (2021). The Child of the North: Building a fairer future after COVID-19. The Northern Health Science Alliance and N8 Research Partnership. https://www.thenhsa.co.uk/app/uploads/2022/01/Child-ofthe-North-Report-FINAL-1.pdf (Accessed 15.7.22).

CHAPTER 4

Can Universities be Climate Leaders? Kirstie O’Neill

It is difficult to imagine a future that is humane, decent and sustainable without marked changes in the substance and process of education at all levels, beginning with the University. —(Orr, 1994, Earth in mind: On education, environment, and the human prospect. Island Press)

Introduction Climate emergency declarations have been spreading globally, with a diverse range of institutions recognising the climate (and sometimes also the ecological) emergency. In the UK, more than 75% of local government bodies and a smaller number of universities, (approximately 35%) have declared a climate emergency (O’Neill & Sinden, 2021). This process has been contentious, and debates have ensued over what these declarations mean, and more importantly, what should happen next. Recent

K. O’Neill (*) Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Dobson, Ed Ferrari (eds.), Reframing the Civic University, Rethinking University-Community Policy Connections, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17686-9_4

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Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecasts call for socioeconomic transformation, including ideas of degrowth (IPCC, 2022; Parrique, 2022), yet there is little sign of emissions abating nor the necessary institutional change to enable this (Dobson, 2019; Gills & Morgan, 2020; Stoddard et al., 2021). Universities are key actors in climate change education, and are potentially progressive organisations researching, teaching, and implementing low carbon futures. They are frequently perceived as innovative, with capacity to envision and enact radical changes; they often lead research and debates on sustainability and low-carbon transitions; and many are committed to (certain interpretations of) social justice. However, Higham and Font (2020) argue that this constitutes a form of ‘climate hypocrisy’ whereby institutions are ostensibly committed to ideas like sustainability and decarbonisation yet continue to practice (versions of) business-as-­ usual. Nevertheless, universities are frequently cited as having a moral obligation to decarbonise and are urged to lead in this field (Croog, 2016; Williams & Love, 2022). Some scholars focus on specific areas of university activity, for instance, the moral need to lead collective action on academic aviation emissions (Higham & Font, 2020), while others focus on campus greening opportunities (Leal Filho et al., 2015), and the role of universities in influencing future generations’ sustainability practices is seen as critical. Universities are large and complex organisations engaging in a wide range of activities, including teaching, research, and knowledge production (Cochrane, 2018). These activities have differential impacts on peoples, places, and climate. In parallel to debates around climate change and the role of universities, McNeill et al. (2021) note how, in countries like the UK, the concept of the ‘civic university’ has been adopted with renewed enthusiasm. In 2019, a Civic University Commission (2019) was established to identify how universities could better serve their places, connecting into related debates on the government’s ‘levelling-up’ agenda in a post-Brexit context. However, Neary (2020) suggests the civic university has problematic relations with capitalist ideals, and that the climate crisis demands a new approach given that many agree that capitalism created these problems. Contemporary debates on the civic university rarely revisit the movement’s history: reflecting on this, Neary (2020) suggests a more fundamental revitalisation of higher education is required. While some see these debates as entwined, like Neary (2020), I suggest that global

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environmental degradation and climate change represent such a serious threat that more radical change is required than is currently envisaged through the civic university agenda. Climate change represents a grave and uncertain future that no institution can afford to ignore. In this chapter, I focus on three strands of university activity where substantive change could be enacted, which together could create cascading opportunities to craft a more embedded and sustainable higher education sector. I first focus on teaching, which arguably offers a critical avenue through which to change and challenge incumbent ideas, discourses, and practices, creating imaginaries of different futures while also equipping students with the skills and knowledge to live well in a changing climate. I then examine the buildings that make up university campuses, which constitute the large and complex estates where university business takes place, grounding universities in particular places. Finally, travel for university ‘business’ is a key area with significant impacts, but which is yet to be strategically tackled by universities. Travel is closely tied to research visits, field trips and exchange programmes, as well as international students’ travel 1 (in 2022, there were 605,130 international students at UK universities, with some institutions having 50% of students from overseas.2 International students make up 20% of the UK total student numbers, similar to international university staff numbers3). These three areas of university activity could, combined, bring about a radical shift in universities’ response to the climate emergency. Anderson et al. (2022) suggest that with the scale of emission reductions required (albeit not just within academia), climate change demands system change. This is not a critique of individual institutions, nor the individuals that make up university workforces, but rather of the neoliberal trajectory and institutional culture that dominates many universities across the globe. Individual institutions may feel powerless in the face of these insidious developments. However, institutional and collective action can begin to challenge these processes, and to create new spaces of experimentation and practice, through which changes can emerge to, in Connell’s words (2019), ‘make another university possible’.

1  https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/universities-uk-international/explore-uuki/international-student-recruitment/international-student-recruitment-data (accessed 27 June 2022). 2  https://www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/student-advice/where-to-study/international-students-at-uk-universities (accessed 27 June 2022). 3  https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/universities-uk-international/insights-and-publications/uuki-publications/international-facts-and-figures-2020 (accessed 27 June 2022).

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Universities, Neoliberalism, and Sustainability Many view universities as institutions of change (Williams & Love, 2022), yet as Vernon (2018) outlines, UK universities have a long history of serving the interests of specific historically privileged groups, which can limit change, thus change often occurs slowly. However, Stephens et al. (2008) suggest that universities are not passive or reactionary organisations, but active agents that can catalyse change. Yet what kind of change is rarely specified—change can improve or weaken ‘sustainability’ (see Feola, 2020). Sustainability has been subject to much critique to the extent that some suggest it represents an ‘empty signifier’ (Swyngedouw, 2007), being so malleable that it encompasses a multitude of activities and ideologies. For example, Bekessy et  al. (2007) examined Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology’s sustainability agenda over a twelve-year period and found that while the reputation of the university benefited from setting emission reduction targets, the programme did little to reduce actual emissions. Like many other organisations, universities have adopted sustainability as a strategic priority, and many have published sustainability strategies. As large institutions with substantial environmental footprints, universities are not only responsible for producing research and proposing solutions but are accountable for their own emissions (Gormally et  al., 2019). Nevertheless, universities tend to take a ‘quick wins’ approach (Williams & Love, 2022), focusing on easier to reduce sources rather than tackling more intractable emissions. As such, university sustainability documents frequently represent a form of technological optimism, neoliberal entrepreneurialism, and university boosterism: sustainability is a new form of capital that can be employed to appeal to investors, grant funders, potential students, new staff and so on (O’Neill & Sinden, 2021). This then constitutes an optimistic view that relies on innovation and entrepreneurialism as a mechanism to deliver new solutions to challenges like climate change. Alongside universities’ strategies and actions, multiple incentives exist, including benchmarking (e.g., People and Planet Index), certification schemes (e.g., Food for Life), and awards and prizes (e.g., Green Gown awards) which offer financial and reputational benefits in recognition of sustainability achievements. Universities use these to highlight an institution’s (green) identity to prospective students, researchers, academics, and funders, thus communicating a ‘sustainable’ image. Sustainability is a key area that universities commodify for reputational advantages.

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Universities have become increasingly viewed as corporate entities that align with business-focussed ideologies, or what Collini termed HiEdBiz (20034), reflecting both the idea of the university as a neoliberal product, and a rationality that governs how universities are run (McNeill et  al., 2021; Patel & North, 2022). Vernon (2018) argues that the neoliberal university adopts and embeds logics based on market principles which fundamentally challenge previous conceptions of universities as public goods. As such, the ideology of neoliberalism has permeated many aspects of university governance: university leaders act like chief executive officers (CEOs), and universities are driven by neoliberal agendas to recruit more students, capture more grant funding, produce more 4* papers/research, and aspire to constant growth. Universities increasingly act like businesses, reproducing this ideology through their own actions and narratives, despite some academic critique (see Cochrane, 2018; Vernon, 2018). Slaughter and Leslie (1999) labelled this ‘academic capitalism’: universities have morphed into companies producing knowledge, delivering key skills of competitiveness and entrepreneurialism. Students are reconceptualised as atomised individuals buying an education in the market, while universities compete for students, funding, and league table positions. One area that perhaps embodies this changing nature of academia is an increasing internationalisation of higher education, from UK universities developing overseas campuses to growing international student numbers (and their fees). This can further weaken the link between universities and the specific places they are rooted within (Knight et al., 2021). The contours of the neoliberal university affect all operations, from the hiring of temporary staff on precarious contracts, students-as-customers, education-­as-commodity, and the nature of teaching that takes place (see Patel & North, 2022; Vernon, 2018). This is problematic given the growing recognition among many that the ‘system of capital accumulation with its commitment to material growth of economies’ (Gills & Morgan, 2020, p.  897) is responsible for exacerbating environmental problems while simultaneously working to preserve the status quo. Despite this, many confer universities with a moral responsibility to lead research on environmental change and to educate the next generation on matters of sustainable development and climate change (Renouf et  al., 2019; Higham & Font, 2020). Universities are simultaneously viewed as 4  https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v25/n21/stefan-collini/hiedbiz June 2022).

(accessed

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being uniquely equipped for practicing sustainability and leading the sustainability movement: indeed, it has been suggested that they have a moral duty to reach the next generation of influencers and leaders (Croog, 2016; Disterheft et al., 2013). The scale and severity of the climate crisis means that universities have a key role to play in preparing staff and students (as well as their local communities) for living with a new ‘normal’ of a changing climate, which will fundamentally reshape all forms of work and life (Renouf et al., 2019). Universities are seen to ‘owe’ it to their students to be at the forefront of addressing the ecological and climate emergency and to act now given their significant carbon and environmental footprints (ibid.; Gormally et al., 2019; Hoolohan et al., 2021). Moreover, graduating students could disrupt business-as-usual to create a more hopeful Anthropocene (Buck, 2015), but only if equipped with the skills and knowledge to be able to navigate uncertain futures. Initiatives like the eco-­ versity,5 which place diverse ecologies, economies, and cultures within the boundaries of the planet, could be more widely embraced to bring this vision of future flourishing to fruition.

Teaching: Another World Is Possible Teaching is an influential activity within universities. What students learn about can change their cognitive praxis so that they can critically question incumbent practices and envision radically different ways of being in the world. However, Patel and North (2022) argue that universities are increasingly driven by a neoliberal logic whereby as institutions they serve to produce student (or ‘customer’) employability and satisfaction, and to create conditions of competition and innovation enabling students to be ‘good’ neoliberal subjects able to thrive in business. Such modes of teaching and thinking may leave little space for utopian and radical critical thinking that challenges mainstream narratives of ecological modernisation and techno-optimism. As Taylor (2017) has argued, debates around the so-called Anthropocene have prompted calls for a wholesale shift in relationships between humans and our place and agency in the world. Taylor argues that much sustainability education remains wedded to a humanist approach that sees humans as core actants of change. To counter this, sustainability education requires a serious rethinking of business-as-­ usual. In acknowledging the tensions surrounding even the naming of the 5

 https://ecoversities.org/ (accessed 28 June 2022).

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geological epoch as the ‘Anthropocene’, Taylor (2017, p. 1449) critiques the tendency to employ ‘heroic techno-rescue and salvation responses, such as the scramble to find grandiose geo-engineering fixes, [which] simply rehearse the same kinds of triumphalist anthropogenic interventions that disrupted the earth’s systems in the first place’. The notion of the Good Anthropocene most clearly embodies this approach (Wright et al., 2018), and is often recited in popular media and other sources without critique. Education for sustainability should not reproduce business-as-­ usual or conform to the empty signifier approach to sustainable development. It is imperative that as university teachers we are empowered to better challenge the norms that are already quite well embedded in students’ minds before they enter university: accepting neoliberalism, established patterns of power, and the idea that continued or expanded economic growth will solve all problems, from the climate crisis to global hunger and poverty. Creating the space for radically new or different ways of thinking is, arguably, the role of the university, yet existing ways of thinking are often reproduced or go unchallenged. Conforming to political and social norms, as Connell (2019) suggests, will not resolve the multiple global challenges we face: students should be engaged in more strenuous learning, asking critical questions of their own knowledge and subjectivities. Many students are enthused by ideas and concepts like post-capitalism and degrowth but often struggle to see how such approaches can be implemented. Prádanos (2015) discusses how, pedagogically, we can encourage students to more fundamentally question concepts and ideas that are central to neoliberal ideology. Prádanos focuses on gross domestic product (GDP) as a way of highlighting how environmental harms can be valued positively for GDP; such measures could be abandoned in favour of different ways of understanding ‘prosperity’ (Jackson, 2009). Reflecting on recent teaching of a final year module on climate change, I have found neoliberal thinking and ideals to be well established within students’ minds despite the hyperbole around climate awareness through the Fridays for Future movement. Given that geography and environment departments are frequently assumed to be made up of those who are already committed to ideas like sustainability, it is frustrating that many final year students have not had the opportunity to problematise technological solutions to climate change. Electric vehicles and electric aeroplanes, along with green/sustainable consumption and carbon offsetting,

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and ‘iconic’ male innovators like Elon Musk, are not sufficient to bring about the changes required. Such ‘solutions’ broadly represent (neoliberal) ecological modernisation and business-as-usual approaches to the climate crisis. Focusing briefly on my own discipline, international fieldwork and research are often considered core to studying geography. This is problematised by some geographers who highlight not only the environmental impacts of air travel, but also the inherent power relations, for instance, when geographers research social justice and climate change while upholding the ‘ecological privilege’ of carbon-intensive travel (Nevins, 2014). Such field trips are rarely questioned, although some scholars are starting to propose low carbon alternatives as well as thinking about decolonising ‘the field’. However, it can be difficult to gain institutional and student buy-in to such changes. Williams and Love (2022) found that students, understandably, value the opportunity to apply class-based learning through field trips and while they suggest that the destination is not what matters most, their results nevertheless imply that students were less supportive of reduced flying. The international field trip has become entrenched as geography departments have increasingly offered ‘glamorous’ field trips to entice potential students.

Buildings: Signifiers of Place-Based Impacts Buildings are where most university business takes place, from lecture theatres to laboratories, and offices to canteens, and contribute to shaping the towns and cities where universities are based. University campuses frequently contain a wide mix of buildings of varying styles, sizes and ages, incorporating multiple ‘spaces’ for different purposes. Some are difficult to retrofit for improvements in energy and thermal performance, including old buildings that might be listed as being of heritage value or were developed for different prior purposes. Many universities manage large estates, are responsible for extensive student housing, and often operate energy-intensive equipment and facilities (Gormally et al., 2019). Buildings are major contributors to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions: direct emissions from UK buildings totalled 87MtCO2e in 2019, accounting for 17% of UK GHG emissions, primarily through burning fossil fuels for heating (CCC, 2019). If combined with indirect emissions from lighting and appliance usage, UK emissions from buildings rise to around

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35%.6 Globally, the UN estimates that the building industry is the single largest contributor to global GHG emissions (UNEP, 2011). The building sector has been the focus of endeavours to move towards greener ways of working and building (Gibbs & O’Neill, 2015). Campuses are frequently the target of sustainability initiatives while also being used to produce attractive spaces that appeal to potential students and to display modern ideals of power and innovation. These twin aims are often counterproductive, as the types of building being designed and built on many university campuses are often more about aesthetics than sustainability. Even newer ‘greener’ buildings have significant environmental impacts from embodied energy, materials consumption, and lifetime operation (Gibbs & O’Neill, 2015). ‘Green’ buildings serve agendas of attracting investment and new staff/students, as well as offering potential for research data and student projects via Living Laboratory approaches (Evans & Karvonen, 2014). Furthermore, universities frequently use their campuses as synonymous with their brand, a point of differentiation to convey messages about their identities (Stack, 2016). Thus, the university campus is a material signifier of the image the university wishes to convey, as well as being the immediate way in which local people perceive and experience the university. Universities are not disembedded or virtual institutions, but are rooted in specific places, which co-create the context and credibility for their actions. Universities are embedded within the spaces and socio-economies of places (Cochrane, 2018). Indeed, as Knight et al. (2021) acknowledge, the interactional nature of university work is critical for knowledge co-­ production, and where it happens (geographically) affects the knowledge and social benefits that arise. They see universities as bridging institutions, bringing together the global and local across the various activities they fulfil, enabling them to deliver civic mission objectives. Moreover, universities are significant developers of infrastructure and often seek to expand these estates (e.g., to accommodate growing student numbers or high-end research buildings), meaning that universities and municipalities may have shared interests. Universities often work with the public and private sectors to create large-scale land use change within city centres, specifically the development of innovation campuses/districts 6  https://www.theccc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Fact-sheet-buildingsupdated-July-2015.pdf (accessed 10 June 2022).

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(Knight et al., 2021). These focus on economic growth and entrepreneurial development, linking university expertise to growth sectors such as finance, data, and life sciences. This suggests, they argue, that universities ‘reflect not only the creation of new initiatives, but the evolution and transformation of old areas and local labour market conditions into different and distinctive place-based business communities and entrepreneurial systems’ (p. 215). By generating partnerships with a variety of actors and across spatial scales, universities have boosted ‘both local prosperity and the success of the city’s economic and knowledge-producing actors on the global stage’ (ibid.). These shared interests primarily relate to economic development and growth, while the authors say rather less on social and environmental justice. McNeill et al. (2021) suggest that the new models for financing real estate expansions employed by neoliberal universities represent an institutional risk. Universities play a significant role in the urban geography of cities, typically occupying extensive areas (McNeill et al., 2021), yet have a fine balance to tread, as they have been critiqued for creating divides between those within the university and those outside. Goddard and Vallance (2013) note a ‘town and gown’ tension where universities can act as urban gentrifiers, both through their own estates and by affiliation with a growing trend of private student apartments.7 Vernon (2018) estimates that the student housing market is worth £45 billion and is increasingly dominated by offshore companies who avoid tax liability on incomes. Goddard and Vallance (2013) advocate that universities embrace their civic role by partnering with local institutions for social benefit, and to connect universities into areas of socio-economic disadvantage. While some do this, it can be isolated from mainstream business. The ‘glossy’ campus buildings not only project a certain image about an institution, but also signal who is welcome, who works within, and who belongs in such places. Architectural styles embody political, economic, and cultural identities: McNeill et  al. (2021) note that some University of Sydney buildings embody the architecture of European Settlers, dominating the landscape with strong political-economic narratives of power while appropriating the materials of Indigenous communities. Connell (2019, p.  180) envisions that a future ‘good’ university would see ‘buildings [that] use materials and forms familiar in the 7   See, for instance, the Universities Partnership Project: https://www.upp-ltd.com (accessed 28 June 2022).

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neighbourhood, the budget does not allow fashionable architects or costly materials. But they are designed for interactive teaching, and close working relations between operations and academic staff’. We can find instances of these practices albeit not yet within the mainstream: for instance, the University of British Columbia developed a First Nations Long House in 1993, intended as a space for intercultural exchanges and as a hub for Indigenous students.8 Such approaches might involve reducing reliance on carbon intensive building materials such as cement, glass, and steel and providing a more inclusive space.

Flying for Research and Study: Embedded Behaviours and Practices As with buildings, carbon is embedded in all motorised forms of travel: transportation accounts for almost 25% of total global anthropogenic energy-related carbon dioxide emissions (Higham & Font, 2020). If commercial aviation were a country, its emissions would be the sixth largest in the world, just behind those of Japan and Germany (EESI, 2019). While not the largest emitter compared to energy and agriculture, aviation releases more carbon dioxide per passenger kilometre than other transport modes (Whitmarsh et al., 2020), and is growing rapidly, growth which is forecast to continue (EESI, 2019). Carbon dioxide emissions grew 21% between 2013 and 2017, from 710mt to 860mt (ibid.) and flying is forecasted to grow exponentially over the next 30 years. Aviation is currently  responsible for 2–5% of emissions, decarbonisation of aviation is difficult, and it causes atmospheric harms in addition to the emission of GHGs (EESI, 2019). Worryingly, aviation is one of very few industries not asked to make emissions cuts as part of the UK government’s plans to reduce emissions by 80% by 2050 and is being supported to expand (Harrabin, 20199). In contrast, climate scientists like Anderson et  al. (2022) argue that policy-makers must ‘use the full suite of policies at their disposal’ to bring aviation in line with the Paris Agreement’s emission reduction requirements. Roelofs (2019) called air travel the ‘dirty little secret of academic life’, with GHG emissions from flying for international conferences, research, internationalisation agendas and student field trips making up much of 8 9

 https://indigenous.ubc.ca/longhouse/ (accessed 21 June 2022).  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-48233548 (accessed 9 June 2022).

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this international travel. Higham and Font (2020) term this ‘climate hypocrisy’, whereby academia is aware of the impacts of flying but fails to act upon this knowledge. The impacts of flying can undermine the discursive civic commitments that many universities articulate, for instance, in relation to social justice. The practice of flying puts many academics in a privileged category, meaning that they fall into the 4% of the global population who take an international flight in any one year (Anderson et al., 2022). Furthermore, flying is ‘the activity that most clearly embodies the links between inequality and ecological breakdown’ (Roelofs, 2019, p. 268), representing a particularly concentrated form of privilege enjoyed by a thin slice of the world’s population (Anderson et  al., 2022), including aero-mobile academics. It is estimated that more than 80% of the world’s population has never flown (Gurdus, 2017). Within the UK, 15% of the population are frequent fliers (taking more than three flights per year) representing almost 70% of flights, whereas 70% of the population do not fly at all (Roelofs, 2019). Nevins et al. (2022) similarly argue that the intensity of emissions that result from a single trip, in addition to the profound inequality of the social distribution of flying, raises serious questions for those embedded in such practices. Therefore, the geography of attendance at large international conferences involving air travel further reproduces inequalities, power imbalances and the highly uneven geography of global wealth and income (Nevins et  al., 2022). Thus, academic flying offers a significant opportunity to reconfigure socio-ecological relations and power dynamics, while also reducing GHG emissions. Flying has become deeply woven into the fabric of academic practice, despite recognition of an intensifying climate crisis (Nevins et al. 2022). Exploring why many academics fly frequently has become a focus of much research recently (Roelofs, 2019). Such work has drawn attention to the hypocrisy of hypermobile academics who are acutely aware of the climate crisis and the contribution of air travel, yet continue such practices (Higham & Font, 2020; Whitmarsh et al., 2020). Moreover, flying is embedded in institutional cultures. Criteria for academic promotion are frequently linked to international travel and thus high carbon aeromobility practices (Hopkins et al., 2019). However, practices of flying and the associated carbon emissions are not uniform across or within departments, institutions or indeed the sector, but vary by researcher and purpose of travel. Moreover, it is suggested that academics can reduce travel-related emissions without reducing research quality (Wynes

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et al., 2019). Reflecting the statistics for the UK population, some scholars do not fly for their research, while others can take up to 50 flights per annum. Whitmarsh et al. (2020) suggest that professors tend to fly more than most, but are more likely to offset their emissions, although the process of offsetting can cause more damage than it resolves (Anderson, 2012) and reproduce relations of coloniality and inequality (see e.g. Sultana, 2022). While some universities and research centres have tried to reduce aviation emissions in recent years, this is not happening fast enough or widely enough. Where institutions have incorporated policies to curtail flying, some exciting approaches have emerged. For instance, Higham and Font (2020) note Concordia University’s Flying Less initiative, which includes commitments such as individual disclosure of flights taken in a year; promoting travel-free meetings; and financial support for students and staff who attend academic activities where air travel is not necessary.

Discussion—Escaping Climate Hypocrisy? Having examined three areas of university activity, it is now time to ask how these practices could be changed to move towards a more grounded and sustainable model. Teaching, buildings, and flying can all reinforce existing systems of inequality and historical legacies of colonialism, relying on the labour and materials from countries in the Global South, while causing such countries further harm through climate change. Addressing these issues systemically and collectively, universities can tackle systems of privilege and inequalities, and deliver a more socially and environmentally just higher education. Despite a long history of committing to sustainability, universities remain committed to hegemonic neoliberal ideals through their leadership, management, and daily practices. This makes it harder to achieve radical changes in relation to community engagement and sustainability, yet without such change it is unlikely that the current, unsustainable paradigm will be transformed. O’Neill and Sinden (2021) argue that this represents a missed opportunity for universities to create a bridge between critical research and their institutional sustainability practices. As Malm (2018) suggests, the climate crisis lays the conditions for a possible revolution against the continued reproduction of capitalism: to what extent can universities help enact this revolutionary future and refocus their grounding within their local communities?

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Carbon is embedded in universities’ practices, yet a business-as-usual approach will not achieve global climate change targets. There is limited evidence of real change: universities, like others, tend to focus on the ‘quick wins’ or to reproduce narratives that future innovations will provide solutions (O’Neill & Sinden, 2021). This approach has been employed to avoid severe emissions cuts now while also leaving inequalities intact, representing a lightly greenwashed status quo (Anderson et al., 2022). Some scientists are recognising their own culpability in failing to challenge high-­ carbon behaviours and practices, and argue it is time for change (Dyke et al., 2021). But popular policy tropes like decarbonisation and net zero are perpetuating a belief in technological salvation and diminishing the sense of urgency to curb emissions now, which Dyke et al. (2021, p. 40) suggest is akin to ‘gambl[ing] civilisation on no more than promises of future solutions’. The process of decarbonising is complex and challenging, in a world dependent on fossil fuels for approximately 95% of energy needs. Like all organisations, universities, and the departments that constitute them, are enwoven in complex networks involving a myriad of institutions and actors. Williams and Love (2022) question the extent to which responsibility should be attributed to individual departments and what degree of agency they have, but such reasoning favours the status quo. Thus, following Anderson et al. (2022), I suggest some actions that could be adopted as a starting point towards transformation, even at the departmental or institutional scale. These could help facilitate a more sustainable university, and could complement institutional ambitions around research excellence: • Field work in local areas should be placed on an equal footing with that undertaken overseas, including student field trips; • Make flying less socially and institutionally acceptable; • Reorient curricula to place critical sustainability education centrally, across all disciplines; • Offer Continuing Professional Development and other part-time courses that focus on topics of interest to local populations, such as climate change, just transitions, decarbonisation; • Make sustainability intrinsic to all university business, especially building design and travel, in a way that moves beyond tick-box certification schemes; • Extend promotional criteria to better encapsulate community engagement, impact, and efforts to improve access by marginalised groups—and remove expectations of international travel;

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• Rethink measures of research ‘quality’ to prioritise open access outputs; • Engage local communities in debates about climate change and the future.

Conclusion In conclusion, universities are responsible for GHG emissions, their business is and will be affected by GHG emissions, and they are seen as potential leaders for the climate emergency era. Yet, there are inherent tensions in universities’ sustainability governance. Universities embody contradictory sustainability discourses and reproduce narratives of technological optimism (O’Neill & Sinden, 2021). Incremental responses to climate change will not deliver urgently needed transformative action: business as usual threatens our collective social and environmental wellbeing. The choices we make, as individuals, collectively, or through our institutions, are not only political but also political-ecological (Nevins et al., 2022). However, Nevins et al. (2022) argue, reining in hyper-­consumption such as flying (and arguably the construction of new buildings) is not generally evident in the discussions of decolonisation or decarbonisation in higher education. This raises important questions about power, equality, and human-environment relations: as Roelofs (2019) concludes, who gets to use this power, for what ends, and who suffers the consequences are key debates to address if we are to live responsibly in the climate emergency. Addressing climate change is central to being a ‘good’ university (Connell, 2019). There is increasing interest in how universities can be active participants in civic life and social justice, at multiple spatial scales. For example, the campus could become a space for activism and civil disobedience, and a breeding ground for the kinds of ‘dangerous ideas’ (cf. McNeill et al., 2021) that might just be necessary in the climate emergency epoch. Neary (2020) notes that Henri Lefebvre suggested a subversive university in 1986: examples of more radical thinking already exist. This might encompass leading local climate assemblies, engaging local populations in debates about living with climate change, and the types of adaptation initiatives necessary in the here and now. What is clear, echoing Hoolohan et al.’s (2021) argument, is that systemic material and cultural change toward decarbonisation is much needed.

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CHAPTER 5

How Universities Can Help to Build a Healthier Society Liz Mear and Paul Johnstone

Health, wealth and power are inextricably linked, yet wealth and power are not equitably distributed throughout society. An imbalance of power is at the core of health inequalities. The lack of power to take control often leads to poor mental health, poor motivation and low attainment in education and can result in reduced future life choices and job prospects (Marmot et al., 2008; Johnstone, 2017). Put simply, if an individual has a satisfying job role which provides a good income, they can make healthier choices in terms of food, exercise and living arrangements. If they live in poverty, which on many occasions is due to the system around them, these healthy choices are not open to them and they have little ability to control resources and grasp

L. Mear (*) Leeds, UK P. Johnstone University of Manchester, Manchester, UK Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, UK © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Dobson, Ed Ferrari (eds.), Reframing the Civic University, Rethinking University-Community Policy Connections, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17686-9_5

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opportunities to overcome this social imbalance (Townsend et al., 1992; Marmot & Wilkinson, 2005). This chapter brings together examples of promising or emerging practice within universities that may help to address this imbalance, supporting the health and wellbeing of local communities. It maps these examples against the different progression levels set out in the Civic Impact Framework (Dobson & Ferrari, 2021) to show how, with sufficient will and dedication, universities can maximise their health and wellbeing impacts. If such examples are synthesised and the learning applied systematically, there is potential to offer new opportunities, brighter futures and ultimately, better health through greater security of income and more equal power relationships. Non-graduates typically earn less than graduates. The Institute for Fiscal Studies quoted by the Department for Education (2020) https:// www.gov.uk/government/news/graduates-­enjoy-­100k-­earnings-­bonus-­ over-­lifetime (accessed 12/7/22) outlines how male graduates will be £130,000 better off on average by going to university after taxes, student loan repayments and foregone earnings are considered. For women this figure is £100,000, due to time out for maternity leave and child rearing. Universities educate and train people for well-paid roles and for roles that can benefit society. For students who are the first generation in their family to attend university and are part of the Widening Participation programme across universities, being educated to degree level gives an opportunity for an increased income, improved life chances and enhanced personal choices to support health and wellbeing. Living near a university can enable people trapped in cyclical multi-­ generational poverty to take more control and grasp new opportunities, which can improve their health and wellbeing, if sufficient openings are available to them.

Widening Participation Some universities have viewed their civic responsibilities as an opportunity to spread their services into areas that do not have university provision— highlighting the multiple connections with ‘place’ in higher education. The example below shows how Coventry University widened participation to a deprived seaside town, leading to learning and development in both directions.

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Coventry University Group (n.d.) expanded course provision to Scarborough in North Yorkshire, with the aim of making higher education accessible to more people through flexible study options. It is one of a number of universities to do this: it is currently involved in an Office for Students project, securing around £250,000 with the aim of improving graduate outcomes in health and social care programmes on the North Yorkshire coast. The project aims to deliver a radical increase in the number of students entering the health and social care sector. Through its Widening Participation programme, Coventry University noticed that there was no higher education provision in Scarborough. The university established a facility there to cater for 1000 students. It invested in a building, and as there are no halls of residence, students are mainly attracted from local communities. There was an assumption that curricula that were successful in Coventry would be transferrable to the Scarborough campus, but this wasn’t the case. The area had no schools assessed as outstanding and this resulted, generally, in lower levels of ambitions among students. Courses, including nursing and health care, were subsequently tailored to the student cohort. The nursing programmes have been very successful and made a difference to the community. All 130 nursing graduates in 2021 were employed into vacancies in  local hospitals, who gave precedence to Scarborough students for placements. Some students acknowledge that they would not have a career in nursing if the course had not been local to them. The cohort included mature students, often with families who would have found it difficult to travel for study. The Scarborough campus also runs a nursing return-and-retrain programme for local people, bringing much-­ needed staff into the healthcare system, in an isolated area where recruitment can be problematic. The area around the campus has developed as the courses have progressed. There is now a University Technical College next to the site, from which students are drawn onto courses. There is also a sports campus nearby, which has resulted in expansion into sports-based courses. The university works closely with the local community, including the town council and local institutions such as the Stephen Joseph Theatre. An acting course was established with placements into the theatre. All the students who took part in this programme now work in roles that are related to this experience. The town is also becoming a prominent centre for cyber security businesses and, partnering with these companies, the

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university is adding to its offer in the area by establishing a cyber degree programme. The partnership with the town council has had an interesting outcome. The council was struggling to recruit senior staff and its recruitment package now offers the opportunity for a funded course of study with the university as one of the benefits of employment. This example demonstrates benefits for both local residents and the university, in a long-term partnership which needed to adapt and learn as it progressed. Its focus is on improving local health and wellbeing through participation in higher education, especially nurse training. Other universities are embarking on similar projects.

The Civic Impact Framework The Civic Impact Framework developed by the Civic University Network (see Chap. 1) can be used as an aide memoire for universities that wish to widen participation. The sections of the framework (Dobson & Ferrari, 2021) are outlined in Fig. 5.1 below, along with the accompanying progress measures. In the following sections we use these progress levels to explore examples of activity that support widening participation with health and wellbeing impacts.

Mapping Networks, Data and Assets for Universities’ Civic Role in Health and Wellbeing Many universities are building on existing networks and engage with local NHS data teams to share and benefit from health and wellbeing data. All areas in England have published a Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA), Joint Needs Assessment and a local health plan. There may also be voluntary sector plans which include studies on the aspirations and needs of smaller communities or at-risk populations such as asylum seekers and refugees. Some areas may also have a local asset plan, which maps the area’s assets and opportunities for improving health and wellbeing rather than deficits and needs. University data science departments may also hold their own health and wellbeing data. Data may also be held on the health status and challenges for the area including wellbeing, mental health and inequalities, which shape plans for Integrated Care Boards (ICBs). National database resources may also be helpful in supporting universities

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Fig. 5.1  Domains of civic activity and progress cycle

to assess the health and wellbeing needs of their area. For example, the Department of Health’s Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) produces an updated Fingertips profile, which summarises the main determinants of health and wellbeing, and analyses can be drilled down from national to local authority levels (Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, n.d.). To be fully effective there needs to be a common understanding of the data, needs, assets and priorities of a place and whether these match the university’s priorities and skill sets. Each locality will have assets and skills that may benefit the university. This two-way partnership is important as successful partnerships should be a shared process with both parties gaining and contributing.

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Universities could also be considered a local asset if they are recognised as a resource by communities. Universities that are aware of the health characteristics and demographics of their communities can fulfil their duty to promote and prioritise inclusivity in their areas. This may mean working with local communities so that young people understand their routes to higher education and employment. To give power back to local communities and create the conditions to reduce poverty, the university may promote degree apprenticeships, foundation courses, and partnerships with further education to recognise courses such as T levels (courses following GCSEs with content designed to meet the needs of industry and prepare students for skilled employment), and medical apprenticeships. They can also do more to highlight existing opportunities to atypical students who may not usually access them (NHS Confederation and Civic University Network, 2021).

Partnering (Where Do We Want to Go and with Whom?) Partnership working is a journey with many facets. Some examples are given in this chapter, but areas will have different working arrangements and there will be a range of opportunities. It is essential that universities decide who their partners are for health-related activities. For example, partnerships can be formed with health and care organisations such as NHS Trusts, or at a community level. Scale is important too: do universities want to work within a town or conurbation, across a local authority area or across a combined authority with an elected mayor? As a starting point, there should be partnerships with the local authority public health team and the local NHS system. The individual link person will vary: it may be the chief executive or director of public health, or the director of informatics or their team. However, other partnerships are also important. These may involve primary care practices, mental health outreach teams  or  psychological services.  There may be partnerships formed with some local private firms, which can play a significant role in supporting employees’ wellbeing, or through entrepreneurial projects aimed at developing skills with a wellbeing component. One such partnership was forged between Well North and the University of Manchester, with the University of Manchester evaluating a number of Well North sites (see the Evaluation section in this chapter ).

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Entrepreneurial activities such as supporting innovative businesses or university spinouts to develop products and services can also have wellbeing impacts. New products or services can be developed and produced, often using university testing and production facilities, that would be too expensive an investment for a new company or entrepreneur. One example of a community-campus partnership is Leeds Beckett University’s School of Health & Community Studies, which developed a partnership to foster strong relationships with community-based organisations and develop joint action on health inequalities. The strapline CommUNIty (a play on community at the heart of the uni) reflects how the partnership aims to bring community and academic know-how together. Over time the initiative developed longer-term partnerships as well as short projects focused on health equity. An annual community learning taster course for higher education, recruiting students via community organisations, was established in 2016 and has recruited at least one participant a year into a degree course, with graduations now taking place (Leeds Becket University, n.d.). A key point of learning is the need to build long term partnerships with less advantaged communities based on dialogue, trust, and mutual respect. A number of universities, including Newcastle, Manchester and University College London, have units dedicated to researching health inequalities. These can present opportunities to get involved in community partnerships, which can attract new investments and income and in the longer-term address health inequalities. Many of these partnerships will be established through the voluntary or faith sectors. All such partnerships need careful and appropriate encouragement and support. Through partnerships with health and care organisations in their immediate areas, universities can hear directly from their local system partners and incorporate their needs into research, business development and future education and training provision. In many areas further education and voluntary sector partners will also be involved in these collaborations so there can be shared planning for the future health and care workforce. Swansea University, for example, has worked with the NHS Boards serving the population of South Wales to form ARCH, a regional collaboration to improve the health and wellbeing of local communities. This partnership focused on achieving a mix of public and private sector investment totalling £1.3bn into the city and surrounding area to improve local health and economic prospects. Nine funded programmes were

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established which included skills and talent, digital infrastructure and life science, wellbeing and sports campuses. Leeds Academic Health Partnership brings health, care and university partners together across a city region to work on programmes to improve community health and wellbeing. Leeds City College is a member of the partnership, so the supply of skilled workers from the college and three universities can be planned and coordinated into the health and care sector. This workforce planning and skills function is managed through a spin-off function, Leeds Health and Care Academy.

Agreeing (Who Will Do What and When?) The ‘Reimagining the Relationship’ report (NHS Confederation and Civic University Network, 2021) poses a series of questions to support agreements on next steps. These include: • Does the university sit on the local Health and Wellbeing Board? • Are universities informing and supporting decisions about the health and social care workforce, including skills and development needs? • Are they supporting their health and social care systems to measure impact and use robust evaluation methods to ensure that health is improved at a place-based level? Arguably, the most important part in reaching agreement on roles is to build understanding between different professional cultures of how things work and to develop realistic expectations. Time spent building relationships is key to this endeavour. There is a huge difference in the working of a local government-led health and wellbeing board and the steering group of a locally led community initiative. Setting agreed goals will help, but this shouldn’t be all-consuming. Digital tools can be useful in establishing a few easy-to-measure processes to test out the partnership work. For many universities, health and wellbeing partnership agreements are arranged with support from their local Academic Health Science Network (AHSN). All universities are part of a local AHSN network. AHSNs were established by the Department of Health and Social Care’s innovation, health and wealth policy in December 2011. This policy set out how AHSNs would build collaborations between NHS, universities, and industry to drive health and care innovation and embed it into health and care organisations and their local communities. Part of the policy outlined how

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innovation should be ‘hardwired’ into training and education for health and care managers and clinicians to embed it into their everyday duties. It also set out how the health and social care system would need to plan and improve together. Fifteen AHSNs were formed in England and partnerships were established with local universities. In many areas universities are commissioned by AHSNs to evaluate new products, services and ways of working that could improve local health outcomes. Funding was gained from NHS England, NHS Improvement and the Department for Business, Energy, Innovation and Skills (BEIS). Most AHSNs are heavily involved in their Local Enterprise Partnerships or combined authorities to support health and life science businesses to access support, advice, and resources. This complements the role of universities in a practical way by working with the organisations that can support and fund innovative approaches. During their development AHSNs established several national programmes, including the identification and treatment of atrial fibrillation to prevent strokes, preventing cerebral palsy in preterm babies (PReCept), and group rehabilitation for people with osteoarthritis (ESCAPE-pain). Many programmes run by AHSNs have been developed with input from universities and evaluated by academics at key points to ensure that there is robust evidence of efficacy and improved outcomes. As AHSNs are integrated into their local health and care systems, their knowledge of local needs and capabilities means that they are well placed to identify health needs where universities can be part of the response. Many AHSNs have public involvement functions, listening to communities to understand what improved health and wellbeing looks like to them. This can inform future research and activity.

Resourcing (How Are Activities Supported?) With a clear understanding of the needs of local populations, effective partnering and an agreed plan, there are several ways to resource activities. Here we provide some examples which illustrate the variety of ways to enable action. a) Research Some universities have taken a direct, proactive, and resourced approach to improve physical and mental health by carrying out research and

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producing bespoke wellbeing products and services, and have dedicated staff and financial resources to support community wellbeing. One example is Leeds Beckett University’s More-Life programme. Leeds Beckett University has a strong track record in improving population health and aims to maximise local benefits from health research. MoreLife is a university-developed children’s weight loss programme, which also benefits adults (MoreLife, n.d.). It brings together a healthy lifestyle service plus weight and obesity management. Part of a business spun out of Leeds Beckett University, it started as a collaboration between the population health and psychology departments. The surplus received from the rollout of MoreLife funds ongoing research into tackling obesity. Other examples include the university’s School of Education, which has developed a mental health charter for schools which has been taken up by 4000 schools. The Building Performance and Sustainability Research Unit is researching ways in which insulation and green buildings can improve the wellbeing of hospital patients and improve staff productivity. More widely, the Public Health Research programme invites directors of public health working in  local authorities to be research active. The Public Health Intervention Responsive Studies Teams (PHIRST) scheme, for example, enables evaluation of schemes that local authorities already have in place, providing research evidence to meet local government needs. This research aims to help identify in real time the effects of local authority programmes on local health and health inequalities. The Public Health Practice Evaluation Scheme (PHPES) provides an opportunity for people working in public health to evaluate the cost-­ effectiveness of health improvement initiatives. The scheme helps address the challenges faced by ‘front line’ public health staff in the NHS, local authority public health teams, other local authority departments including social care, schools and transport, and in the third sector. The scheme aims to produce high quality evidence for public health practice. b) Building on community assets New Wortley Community and Housing Association (NWHA) in west Leeds is an example of an asset-based approach to health and wellbeing (see also Chaps. 3 and 7). The association manages a community-led health project and community centre providing a range of services, many through volunteering (New Wortley Community Association, n.d.). It was set up as a charity 20 years ago and now helps train staff and

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volunteers, and works with GPs and nurses who lead the way services are developed. Local universities’ students have volunteered for the project and have evaluated health and wellbeing outcomes. Their research has helped to build the project’s confidence to attract new resources: it has brought in more than £2 million of direct investment into the area, creating 20 jobs for local people and seeing 36 volunteers go into work. Clinical and health evaluations have reported high-quality care and outcomes on mental health, self-management and social isolation. Further guidance on asset-based approaches to health and wellbeing is available from national healthcare sources (e.g. Johnstone, 2017; NICE, 2016; Public Health England, 2018). c) Anchor Institutions Universities can make a direct impact on health as anchor institutions. This term is used to describe organisations, connected to their local area, that use their assets and resources to benefit the communities around them. They can use their influence and resources to improve the social determinants of health, health outcomes and reduce health inequalities (NHS Confederation and Civic University Network, 2021). They are large organisations with the potential to employ local people in well paid roles. By tendering contracts which can be won and delivered by local suppliers to support local jobs, they can directly contribute to health and wellbeing. Prompt payment of small local suppliers to keep businesses afloat and jobs secure directly supports local health and wellbeing. Most universities recognise their responsibility as anchor institutions in their local community, and have systems to monitor promptness of payment. d) Nurturing talent Through their teaching, universities create a pipeline of talent into the local workforce. This includes health and social care providers, where continually evolving training and innovation are essential to keep skills and capabilities up to date. Innovative medical schools have been commissioned by Health Education England in five universities: Anglia Ruskin; the universities of Kent and Canterbury Christ Church; the University of Lincoln; Sunderland University; and Edge Hill University. As post 1992 ‘new’ universities, their medical training courses offer access to a wider group of students than the traditional medical school intake.

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The Selecting for Evidence Report (2014) found that students from a lower socio-economic background are underrepresented in medical schools. The report outlines how the proportion of students from these backgrounds is lower than the equivalent proportion of people from these backgrounds in the UK population as a whole. It states that more work should be done to ensure that outreach projects have a UK-wide reach and that people from across the UK have access to opportunities, rather than only those who live near a medical school. It also noted that potential applicants to medical school are confused as to what is required in terms of work experience. To address this issue the project team developed guidelines for applicants on work experience. These guidelines place emphasis on the importance of applicants gaining caring experience, whether through volunteering or paid employment. The report found that four fifths of medical students in the UK came from one fifth of secondary schools and that, between 2009 and 2011, half of schools did not produce a single applicant for medicine. Pupils may attend schools that do not offer the opportunity to study single science subjects at GCSE, or may not have been told about the importance of chemistry at GCSE, so traditional routes to medicine can be blocked by choices made at the age of 14. Many prospective medical students did not know about the need for medical work experience before applying. This created a situation of selecting by background rather than ability. Edge Hill University in Liverpool has developed an integrated foundation year to prepare local young people to gain the skills and requirements to apply successfully for a medical degree. In addition to academic requirements the course sets the range of entry criteria. Applicants must be resident in north-west England (which contains many areas of high deprivation), attend a non-selective state secondary school where attainment is below the English average, or live in a postcode with a high level of multiple deprivation. In addition, the applicant must come from a household with a combined income of below £35,000, or have parents who did not go to university or do not have a higher education qualification. Applications are also open to students who have been or are in local authority care, are the sole carer of a parent or sibling, have refugee status, are without family support, or are from a military family. After running the first foundation year seventeen students progressed to the new medical school in October 2020, out of a total intake of 31 students. This initiative also includes a medical apprenticeship scheme. The intention is to create a new cohort of medics with a different

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understanding of local people and their issues, leading to more appropriate treatment choices and greater wellbeing among patients and service users.

Evaluation (How Are We Doing?) It is important for evaluation to be rolled out in partnership. This will often be with the local director of public health (and an analytical team—a depleting and scarce resource!). Universities can bring considerable expertise and resource to evaluation. A good evaluation can strengthen the partnership and bring benefits to local communities, as long as local communities have been involved in design and implementation. The case study below highlights the work of Well North (2019) which aims to ‘unleash healthy communities and inspire lasting, positive change’. It has worked with 10 disadvantaged northern ‘Pathfinder’ communities and asked the University of Manchester to evaluate its work. The evaluation took place over a five-year period and aimed to provide real time support for Pathfinders to develop their action plans and train community researchers. A rapid cycle approach allowed the evaluation team to provide feedback that influenced the programme, highlighting the positives and teasing out negatives. This approach allowed the evaluation findings to be used within the lifetime of the project, rather than after the programme had ended. The evaluation enabled the team to understand what worked, why, how, and if it would work elsewhere. Through in-depth interviews and evidence reviews the team gained insights into the setting, objectives, and expected results of the activities. These also highlighted any unintended consequences, positive or negative. Working with the University of York, the University of Manchester evaluation team also considered the use of resources and calculated the return on investment of all activities to assess the programme’s cost-effectiveness. Interviews with local leaders revealed a real enthusiasm for grassroots community change. Key success factors in their areas included engaging with local people, co-creating plans and helping them reach their full potential. Well North executive chair Lord Mawson highlighted the importance of ‘critical change moments’ or ‘eureka!’ moments that make the difference between a project failing or succeeding. The Well North team developed a tool to collate identified critical change moments that demonstrated real engagement and an impact at a community level. For

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example, the Well North team supported a female entrepreneur in Bradford to organise community bike rides that coincided with the Tour de Yorkshire passing through the area. The events aimed to build confidence, ignite people’s interest in cycling by breaking barriers to participation and increase the uptake of cycling, particularly among Pakistani-heritage women. This intervention succeeded in supporting cycling as a health and wellbeing activity in a community that hadn’t previously been involved in this type of exercise.

Learning (What Will Change and How?) Universities have an important leadership role in capturing and sharing learning across the university and with key partners. If this is approached sensitively, it will help partners to agree and work on areas of improvement. The university may well ask if its own curriculum needs adjusting. Good leadership starts with knowing yourself, which may mean a university considering the health and wellbeing of its own staff and students alongside that of its local community. Alongside this is the health of the environment and planet. Are universities implementing education for sustainable development across their curricula? Do they listen to local communities and make local adjustments? Are communities of practice being supported?

Health of Students and Staff All universities run mental health support services for their students, which are managed in partnerships with local health services. Students, their progress through their studies and on some occasions their  mental health have been massively impacted by the Covid-19 crisis. Universities UK (UUK), which provides a collective voice for 140 universities across the UK, developed and launched the University Mental Health Charter in 2019 in collaboration with Student Minds. This charter provides a set of evidence-informed principles to support universities in making mental health a university-wide priority. It sets out how universities should provide adequately resourced, effective and accessible mental health services and proactive interventions. Their culture and environment must be conducive to support good mental health and enable staff and students to develop understanding and skills to manage their own wellbeing.

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This charter has been enhanced by UUK’s updated strategic framework, Stepchange: Mentally Healthy Universities (2022). Several practical actions are recommended including visible leadership and senior ownership of mental health as a priority, access to student and staff-developed mental health and wellbeing support, inclusion of mental health in staff performance discussions, clarity on the role of academic staff in supporting students’ mental health, and commitment to assessments and coursework that do not impose unnecessary stress. Scottish universities have taken a proactive approach to understanding student mental health and have developed an action plan to support students. The Thriving Learners study by the Mental Health Foundation and Universities Scotland (2021) was funded by the Robertson Trust. It is the largest study of mental health and wellbeing of students in Scotland, with 15,128 students (5.9% of the Scottish student population) from all 19 universities responding. The study revealed that 74% of university students have low wellbeing; 36% reported moderately severe or severe symptoms of depression; and 45% outlined that they had experienced a serious psychological issue where they felt needed professional help. Each university is responding with an action plan for its own students, and mental health is now a priority for every university principal. A sector-wide support model is now being developed so that all students receive consistent support.

Conclusion Using the Civic Universities Framework, this chapter provides a resource for engaging with communities in long-term partnerships to improve health and wellbeing. Such arrangements must involve a long-term commitment to partnering as equals to enable learning and shared benefits. As the examples above show, these can be highly rewarding journeys with many unexpected twists and turns. Coproduction and shared learning are key and sometimes the best lessons are learnt when both sides volunteer rather than depend on external funding. Such ‘asset-based and place-based approaches’ i.e., building on the strengths of local communities and universities rather than trying to plug deficits, are increasingly recognised as an effective way to tackle inequalities, particularly in health and wellbeing. The 2022 Health and Care Act in England builds on this emerging place-based approach and points to real opportunities to make a difference

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to lives. It focuses on health and care commissioners sharing decisions with local health and care providers about how to use resources, design services and improve local people’s health. This emphasis on improving health and wellbeing in communities provides an ideal opportunity for universities to reach out and support the system through evaluation, product development and deployment and support for service design. As the case studies in this chapter outline, some universities have already begun a journey of working with residents and organisations in their communities to support long-term improvements in health and wellbeing. However, in gathering this material we were conscious that this approach has not been adopted in all universities. Some have started to engage with communities but have not taken action, others are making plans but not seeing tangible progress. Continuous evaluation and learning, shared appropriately, will be key. If all universities wrap support around improving the health, wellbeing and economic growth of their local populations, much will be achieved. The question is whether they have the appetite, willingness and interest to rise to this challenge. Acknowledgements  The authors are grateful for the assistance of the following people in researching and compiling the examples featured in this chapter: Dr Peter Leadbetter, Senior Lecturer in Medical Education, Edge Hill University Jackie Mathers, Associate Pro Vice Chancellor, Coventry University Lord Andrew Mawson, OBE, Executive Chair, Well North Enterprises John de Pury, Assistant Director of Policy, Universities UK Abdul Razzaq, Director of Public Health. Blackburn with Darwen Council. Professor Jane South, Leeds Beckett University Michael Wood, Head of Health Economic Partnerships, NHS Confederation

References Coventry University Group. (n.d.). Widening participation and outreach. Retrieved June 30, 2022, from https://www.coventry.ac.uk/cus/study/outreach/widening-­participation/ Dobson, J., & Ferrari, E. (2021). A framework for civic impact: A way to assess universities’ activities and progress. Civic Universities Network. Retrieved June 6, 2022, from https://www.shu.ac.uk/centre-­regional-­economic-­ social-­research/publications/a-­framework-­for-­civic-­impact-­a-­way-­to-­assess-­ universities-­activities-­and-­progress Johnstone, P. (2017). Realising the potential of community assets to improve our health and wellbeing. UK Health Security Agency. Retrieved July 6, 2022,

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from https://ukhsa.blog.gov.uk/2017/09/27/realising-­the-­potential-­of-­ community-­assets-­to-­improve-­our-­health-­and-­wellbeing/ Leeds Beckett University. (n.d.). Community. Retrieved July 6, 2022, from https://www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/community Marmot, M., Friel, S., Bell, R., Forde, I., Houweling, T., et al. (2008). Closing the gap in a generation: Health equity through action on the social determinants of health. World Health Organization. Marmot, M., & Wilkinson, R. (Eds.). (2005). Social determinants of health. Oxford University Press. Medical Schools Council. (2014). Selecting for evidence. Retrieved July 11, 2022, from https://www.medschools.ac.uk/media/1203/selecting-­for-­excellence-­ final-­report.pdf Mental Health Foundation and Universities Scotland. (2021). The thriving learners study. Retrieved July 7, 2022, from https://www.universities-­scotland. ac.uk/thriving-­learners/ More Life. (n.d.). Retrieved June 30, 2022, from https://www.more-­life.co.uk/ National Institute for Clinical Excellence. (2016). Community engagement: Improving health and wellbeing and reducing health inequalities. Retrieved July 6, 2022, from https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng44 New Wortley Community Association. (n.d.). Retrieved June 30, 2022, from https://www.newwortleycc.org.uk/ NHS Confederation and Civic University Network. (2021). Reimagining the relationship between universities and the NHS: A guide for building and sustaining local place-based collaborations. Retrieved July 6, 2022, from https://www.nhsconfed. org/publications/reimagining-­relationship-­between-­universities-­and-­nhs Office for Health Improvement and Disparities. (n.d.). Fingertip Public Health Data. Wider Determinants of Health. Retrieved June 30, 2022, from https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile/wider-­determinants/data?redirectHash=page/0/ gid/1938133262/pat/6/par/e12000007/ati/102/are/e09000002 Public Health England. (2018). Health matters: Community centred approaches for health and wellbeing. Retrieved July 6, 2022, from https:// www.gov.uk/government/publications/health-­m atters-­h ealth-­a nd-­ wellbeing-­c ommunity-­c entred-­a pproaches/health-­m atters-­c ommunity-­ centred-­approaches-­for-­health-­and-­wellbeing Townsend, P. B., Whitehead, M., & Davidson, N. (1992). Inequalities in health: The black report and the health divide (3rd ed.). Penguin. Universities UK. (2022). Stepchange: Mentally healthy universities. Retrieved July 12, 2022, from https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/sites/default/files/field/ downloads/2021-­07/uuk-­stepchange-­mhu.pdf Well North. (2019). Well North: Unleashing Health Communities. Inspiring lasting change in our communities. Retrieved July 6, 2022, from https:// wellnorthenterprises.co.uk/wp-­c ontent/uploads/2019/05/Well-­N orth-­ Legacy-­Report-­2019-­FINAL.pdf

CHAPTER 6

Civic Universities and Culture: A Tilted View Amanda Crawley Jackson and Chris Baker

In this chapter, we will think critically about the complex forms of connectedness that structure relations between universities and the places, organisations and communities with whom they work. We are particularly interested in how this connectedness plays out in terms of universities’ cultural contribution to their locales and will examine the role of universities in the field of culture. While acknowledging the capabilities, energy and value universities bring in terms of amplifying cultural vibrancy, we also want to face up to the inequalities that networks of institutions with inherited status, assets and influence create and reproduce. Rather than foregrounding what we, as universities, might do for communities and culture, we propose to use this space for critical self-reflection and to imagine a set of ethical principles for engagement.

A. C. Jackson (*) University of the Arts London, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] C. Baker Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Dobson, Ed Ferrari (eds.), Reframing the Civic University, Rethinking University-Community Policy Connections, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17686-9_6

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We will begin by sketching a view of the field, taking our cue from Jean-­ Paul Sartre’s exhortation in a 1965 lecture series entitled A Plea for Intellectuals (Sartre, 2008) to put critical perspective-taking—or what we will call a tilted view—at the heart of our civic praxis. Secondly, we will present a short case study of the Sheffield-based occursus project—an informal coalescence of academics, artists, writers, scientists and journalists that came together in 2011 with a view simply to explore what working together and sharing resources and insights might look like. We will describe how occursus was supported and enabled by the university, but also experimented with new forms of sociality and practice, giving rise to further collaborative initiatives. At the end of the chapter, we present the first iteration of a reflexive tool that we hope might help embed critical self-reflection as an essential step in growing more equitable cultural praxis.

Universities and Culture The Civic University Network asks its membership to reflect on the following question: ‘How does our university celebrate and enrich the cultural life of our localities and communities? How do we create vibrant, creative and playful places?’. In two webinars in 2021 curated by the network on the theme of culture, speakers from a variety of backgrounds shared perspectives on the positive role played by universities in collaborative, cross-sector endeavours to promote the cultural vibrancy that in turn fosters economic recovery, inclusive growth and the creation of better places to live, work and play (Civic University Network, 19 May 2021a; Civic University Network, 22 April 2021b). Representatives from a variety of sectors, including local authorities, cultural organisations and funding bodies, described how partnering with universities provides access to cutting edge research, fresh insight, creative talent, facilities and networks with local, national and international reach, thereby leveraging impact and value. Catherine Richardson, director of the Institute of Creative and Cultural Industries at the University of Kent, suggested that universities are particularly adept at augmenting projects. They are ‘sticky’ and relatively stable environments where cultural initiatives can accrue the contacts, resources and funding needed to deliver sustainably and at scale (Civic University Network, 22 April 2021b). Others foregrounded the expertise universities can bring in using data to design and evaluate cultural projects; their capacity to act as mediators and critical friends; the training they provide for future cultural leaders; and the platforms they

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create for cultural and artistic activity. A plethora of case studies and evidence demonstrates the positive impacts of universities working collaboratively in the cultural space, and it is not our intention to reiterate or interrogate those further here. The National Centre for Academic and Cultural Exchange (NCACE) is doing excellent work to celebrate and share learning from cultural initiatives jointly led by universities and a variety of partners and communities. Equally, further case studies and evidence can be found in universities’ submissions to the Research Excellence Framework (REF, 2014 and REF, 2021) and Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF, 2021), as well as reports on that and other data by Sigal (2021) and Rossi et al. (2021). Our approach in this chapter is to engage with both the possibilities and the problems that inhabit universities’ engagements with culture in their locales and communities. We want to confront the power that is inherited by—and arrogated to—universities, as well as the affective, discursive and material impacts this power enacts in the cultural field. We realise, however, that performing a uniquely negative critique may have the ‘unintentionally stultifying side effect’ (Sedgwick, 2003: 124) of disavowing our critical agency to imagine and realise more equitable creative partnerships and practices. On the other hand, wholly affirmative analyses of the role played by universities in the cultural life of their locales may downplay or erase critical imbalances of power, wealth, capacity and influence. We therefore follow Ruez and Cockayne in adopting ambivalence as a critical tool (Ruez & Cockayne, 2021, p.  93). On the one hand, we interrogate how the power of universities and their institutional partners reproduces and naturalises existing structures of inequality within the cultural field. On the other, however, we suggest that through critical self-­ reflection, universities have the capabilities to unlock ‘effective creativity and change’ (Sedgwick, 2003, p. 13). It is not within the remit of this chapter to dwell on definitions of culture, which have been extensively rehearsed elsewhere. However, the ways in which we talk about culture’s function and value—in other words, our discourse—has a performative impact on what culture is. Sellars summarises Foucault’s definition of discourse as a form of power: ‘each historical period’, she writes, ‘developed and legitimized select knowledge systems and beliefs as socially acceptable “truths” whilst simultaneously ignoring or rejecting other “epistemes” as lacking in value or acceptability’ (2020, p.  20). If we take a moment to consider how the ‘truth’ of universities’ cultural mission has evolved, we will see that as

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recently as forty years ago the notion that the university should participate in the cultural development of regions was a new idea (Chatterton, 2000, p. 167). Previously, universities ‘trained specialists in high culture, established and renewed canons in several art forms, and inculcated in students an awareness and respect for the products of high-culture worlds’ (DiMaggio, 1991, p. 148). On the other hand, as May 1968 reminded us, there has long been a radical academic engagement with culture as a site of resistance and dissent. In more recent years, we have seen the rise of an enduring tension between ‘cultural and creative practice as being fundamentally linked to social good, at the same time as being an individualising and entrepreneurial force for self-management and economic opportunity’ (Moreton, 2016, p.  106). Each of these strands have given rise, within universities, to specific forms of practice, pedagogy and partnerships. It is Moreton’s view that ‘in actuality, the competitive, consumption led model of creativity has been more dominant’ (2016, p. 106), reflected in the policy-level adoption of the term ‘creative economy’, rather than culture, to describe the ‘variety of activities of which cultural outputs are their focus’ (Moreton, 2016, p. 105). This is echoed by Gerald Raunig, who sees New Labour as having effectively stripped creative practice of its social-critical potential, promoting instead the cultural industries as ‘a pure and affirmative function of economy and state apparatus’, and ‘[doing] away with the remainders of cultural production as dissent, as controversy, and as the creation of public spheres’ (Raunig, 2013, p. 113). The current Conservative government, in its 2022 Levelling Up white paper (HM Government, 2022), decouples the ‘creative industries’ from ‘culture’, collocating the first term with economy and the second with social capital and pride in place. What this shows is that discourse changes with time and with prevailing political winds. Although this means change is not only possible but inevitable, the ways in which change happens are not. Universities, as a collective network, are endowed with various forms of capital and as a result find themselves in close proximity to power which, paradoxically, means it is harder for them to instantiate change that is not indexed to current political thinking. If universities want to use their status to bring about the kind of change that truly matters to them, such as the change championed through the aspirations of the Civic University Network, they are going to need to engage and organise better. There is an urgency to this. For example, at the time of writing this chapter, the news is full of stories about university leaders deciding to close

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arts and humanities degrees due to declining student numbers. This disquieting trend almost certainly reflects anxieties within the sector about the consequences of having degrees on their books that are described in the current policy space as ‘low-value’. In a discursive environment that construes ‘low-value’ in terms of graduate salaries and the capacity of students to repay their loans, and when universities, in their proximity to power, fail to challenge that discourse, they not only lose their arts and humanities programmes but they fail to imagine other, more equitable futures. Programme closures will impact disproportionately on students from groups underrepresented in higher education, very many of whom enrol on courses that fall below the proposed numerical thresholds (Office for Students, 2022). They also demonstrate that the institutions and agencies closest to power simply don’t have the nerve endings (or the will?) to understand what change needs to look like in a GenZ world (see Grant, 2021). The current discourse around value for money disavows the positive, longitudinal impact on civil society of graduates trained in creativity, collaborative working, perspective taking and communication in all its forms. Its powerfully narrowing function also generates paradoxical contradictions, disjointedness and short-termism. Many of the graduates from so-­ called ‘low-value’ degree programmes go on to work in the creative and cultural industries, which were worth £104bn to the UK economy in 2021 alone (Creative Industries Council, 2022) and generate a variety of spillovers, including ‘the development of social cohesion, the branding of a city or place, and the development of a creative environment that fosters entrepreneurship’ (Metro Dynamics, 2020). Furthermore, graduates from creative arts subjects are more likely than others to be self-employed or freelancing (Prospects, 2022, p. 7). According to IPSE (Association for Independent Professionals and the Self-Employed), the self-employed contributed around £316bn to the UK economy in 2020 (Prospects, 2022, p. 7). Like Thompson, we are not making a case here for either the ‘instrumental’ or ‘intrinsic’ value of the arts (see Andrew Thompson, preface to Crossick & Kaszynska, 2016, p. 5). What we are saying, rather, is that the unhelpful narrowing of possibilities generated by discourse can lead to anomalous outcomes and negative impacts for those whose lives that same discourse purports to ameliorate. If universities want to bring about meaningful, coherent change, they need to reconfigure the field in which they operate and their own position within it. Let’s explore this idea. According to Pierre Bourdieu, fields are

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characterised by ‘a specific code of conduct and expression’ (Bourdieu, 1996, p. 235). When we take a position within a field, we tacitly agree to an accepted grammar of behaviours, thought processes and values. However, fields are also agonistic. Within each field, there is a ‘struggle between those who seek to conserve or transform the structure of the field’s distribution’ (Bourdieu, 1996, p. 234). Thus, each field also holds a ‘space of possibles’, a scene of agitation in which change might feasibly come about (Bourdieu, 1996, p. 234). To what extent the space of possibles is realised, however, is inescapably restricted by our situatedness within the field, because this determines how we construe the world, our place, role and allowable actions within it. What we perceive as ‘choices’ in this context are often not really choices at all; instead, they are merely ‘acceptable solutions within the limits of grammaticality’ (Bourdieu, 1996, p. 236). At the time of writing, the field of cultural collaboration in which universities participate has a grammar that dictates behaviours and norms: university leaders sit around a table with other leaders from local authorities, anchor institutions, funding bodies, cultural organisations and so on, talking about things that they’re comfortable talking about. While these are no doubt the right people talking about broadly the right things, the configuration of the field, and the table around which actors sit, can be all wrong. There is a risk that dominant institutions and networks develop cultural policies and strategies based on their own social understanding and, in particular, their understanding of their own social experiences (Fricker, 2006). We need to shift to a position where people feel able to sit around different tables, in different places, in ways that don’t discriminate against those furthest from power. This new configuration will empower all those affected by cultural collaborations to play to their strengths. The Civic University Network acknowledges on its website that its impact framework is ‘designed to inform universities’ internal processes and strategies in the first instance—but we recognise that this can and should be developed further by understanding what “place” means to local partners and communities’. It is crucial to accelerate this work. But we won’t get where we need to be by endlessly rehearsing vague mantras around inclusivity. What matters is not who else we should invite to our table, but understanding who would like to join us but can’t—and why. Otherwise, all we will create is a ‘facsimile that does not stand up to scrutiny and that advocates more for inclusion into a system predicated on

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inequality rather than the creation of new systems or parallel institutions’ (Dabiri, 2021, pp. 21–22). The AHRC Common Cause report of 2018, which was co-funded by the Arts Council, explores important issues around equity in arts and humanities research collaborations between universities and underrepresented communities, and is a much-needed example of what we call the tilted view. Indeed, in his foreword to the report, Baron Victor Adebowale describes it as an ‘excuse remover’ (Bryan, Dunleavy et al., 2018, p. 7). ‘What is becoming clear’, the report’s authors observe, is that the current move toward ‘what is variously described as “co-produced” research, “knowledge exchange”, “public engagement” or “impact enhancement” […] risks intensifying existing inequalities’ (Bryan, Dunleavy et al., 2018, p. 21). This insight emerges from their survey of more than 300 projects funded by the AHRC’s Connected Communities programme, in which they detect a substantive bias towards partnerships forged through ‘informal social connections, privileging those groups and networks already connected with universities’ (Bryan, Dunleavy et al., 2018, p. 21). What is more, those partnerships ‘tend to be built around the identification of common interests between university and community partners, requiring a degree of shared interest or common culture’ (ibid.). Once again, we see that the configuration of the field tends towards reproducing itself. Reports such as this one, which sets out ten valuable principles for non-­ extractive, ethical collaborative engagement, can serve as important circuit breakers, but only if we engage meaningfully with them and make time for critical self-reflection.

The Role of Self-Reflection in Making Change Bourdieu was criticised for allowing insufficient space in his field theory to account for the role of political agency and the potential for change (see Pelletier, 2009). Certainly, dismantling old systems (particularly those in which we have a vested interest) and creating new ones is an intimidating prospect. ‘It seems to be easier for us today,’ Fredric Jameson once famously observed, ‘to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism; perhaps that is due to some weakness in our imaginations’ (Jameson, 1994, p. xii). What Jameson’s quote demonstrates is that while we can see the harm they cause, we continue to invest in the systems and structures that are familiar to us because it is so hard to imagine what the alternatives might be (see

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Fisher, 2014, p. 228; Berlant, 2011). Berlant, however, makes a point that isn’t so far away from the one Foucault made about discourse. They write: ‘what we commonly call “structure” is not what we usually call it, an intractable principle of continuity across time and space, but is really a convergence of force and value in patterns of movement that’s only solid when seen from a distance. Objects are always looser than they appear. Objectness is only a semblance, a seeming, a projection effect of interest in a thing we are trying to stabilize’ (Berlant, 2016, p. 394). If Bourdieu’s ‘space of possibles’ is diminished by the structures of perception naturalised within a certain field, here, for Berlant, the act of taking a step back is presented as a means of looking differently at the structures in whose stability we ordinarily invest. We would like to stay a little while with this idea of stepping back. To step back is to retire, or withdraw a short distance to the rear (Oxford English Dictionary), perhaps to make place for something or someone else. It can also mean withdrawing emotionally and/or mentally, in order to consider something more objectively. Jean-Paul Sartre, using a metaphor that could not be timelier in the current context, called upon the cultural elites of the 1960s, in his essay A Plea for Intellectuals, to step back and think critically about their position in the social order and of their own role in reproducing oppression. They need to adopt, he argues: a tilt shot angled from below, in which they appear not as cultural elites but as enormous statues whose pedestals press down with all their weight on the classes which reproduce the life of society. Here there is no mutual recognition, courtesy or non-violence (as between bourgeois who look into each other’s eyes at the same height), but a panorama of violence endured, labour alienated and elementary needs denied. If the intellectual can adopt this simple and radical perspective, he would see himself as he really is, from below […]. He would abandon what few reformist illusions he has left, and would become a revolutionary. (Sartre, 2008, pp. 256–257)

In film, the tilt shot is a camera angle that reproduces the point of view you have when you tilt your head to one side. Used by German Expressionist film directors such as Robert Weine in The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920) and by Alfred Hitchcock in Vertigo (1958) and Psycho (1960), the tilt shot has the effect of making a scene seem strange, tense and unsettling. It is designed to make the viewer feel uncomfortable (see Danieau et al., 2014) insofar as it shifts the ground that ordinarily anchors us. We become

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suddenly attuned to things we might normally hear, notice or imagine. In Sartre’s eyes, done properly, the tilted view, as radical self-reflexion, prevents things from settling back into their former equilibrium. Although in the quote above he is focusing on class-based positioning, his insight can be also applied to what Berlant describes as ‘racial, sexual, and gendered styles of composure’ (2011, p. 6). What kind of questions might we, as networked institutions, ask of ourselves if we are to perform this tilted view? The civic impact framework sets out some useful prompts, encouraging us to consider whether we have consulted with communities to hear what they think of our activities and programmes; the extent to which we have mapped our cultural strategy against local needs and demographics; whether we are engaging sufficiently diverse audiences, partners and stakeholders; and how far we solicit, learn from and embed feedback from communities. Might we also open up some bolder provocations? For example, what would it mean to flip our thinking and interrogate our role in cultural life not as enablers, but as barriers? What if we shifted our discourse around cultural collaboration from one of enabling to one of trust? What if we were to step back and think about what a ‘network’ actually implies? From the networks of partnerships that we tend towards reproducing (as per the observations of the Common Cause report) to the ones we co-constitute with other institutions, such as local economic partnerships, cultural compacts, the Civic University Network and the like? Do these networks introduce anything new or are they reimagining previous formations, leaving underlying structures of power, extraction and influence unchanged? We pose these questions not to paralyse, but to prise open new possibilities that otherwise tend to remain beyond the purview and imagination of our institutional positionality. Social anthropologist Tim Ingold has distinguished networks, which he describes as configurations of connected points, from meshworks (Ingold, 2011, p. 63), which are characterised by interconnected, entangled lines— ‘the trails along which life is lived, which include histories, stories, and trajectories that are full of loose ends and are always on the move’ (Klenk, 2018, p.  316). Meshworks describe the messiness, textures, inflections and embodied histories of social life, in which (it is useful to remember, for our purposes here) culture is produced, consumed and shared. They are made of ‘lines of movement and growth […] which, while they follow no consistent direction, are continually responsive to environmental variations’ (Ingold, 2015, p. 82). Networks, on the other hand, tend towards

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stasis and the (re)production of ‘predetermined types of differences’ (Klenk, 2018, p. 316). They comprise a delimited constellation of ‘dots’, through which it is ‘not possible to account for the friction, disruption, and uncertainty’ that characterise social life (Klenk, 2018, p.  317). Networks fail to account for the texture and granularity of relationships as they occur in time, and at different stages of each line’s journey. As Klenk aptly observes, ‘Life is lived not within the perimeter of a network’ (Klenk, 2018, p. 316). On the one hand, the network mindset arguably leverages resource, impact and value. But what does it exclude? What are the opportunity costs? Which shared futures are foreclosed when the paths forged by underrepresented groups remain at the mercy of an invitation to join (and thus amplify the being of) the network? What happens when networks do not expose themselves to the generative reality of the meshwork? Ingold writes: ‘For the things of the world are their stories, identified not by fixed attributes but by their paths of movement in an unfolding field of relations. Each is the focus of ongoing activity. Thus in the storied world, [...] things do not exist, they occur. Where things meet, occurrences intertwine, as each becomes bound up in the other’s story. […] It is in this binding that knowledge is generated. To know someone or something is to know their story, and to be able to join that story to one’s own’ (Ingold, 2011, pp. 160–161).

Experimenting with Different Forms of Sociality in the Cultural Field In 2011, an informal coalition of students and researchers from Sheffield’s two universities came together with artists, writers, photographers, journalists and filmmakers under the provisional banner of occursus—the Latin term for meeting, or bumping into each other. This loosely organised, shape-shifting collective met weekly for more than two years to read and walk together; to create exhibitions, residencies, invited talks and all manner of fleeting urban interventions. The aim was to experiment with new approaches to collaborative working, which deliberately sought to forge extra-institutional relationships ‘off campus’. Indeed, none of the group’s initiatives was ever based solely in the university environment. The occursus reading group found a number of provisional homes—in pubs, people’s living rooms and coffee shops all over Sheffield, as well as a former workshop at 7 Garden Street, then Bloc Studios and Site Gallery. The

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group hosted artist residencies, both at 7 Garden Street and Site Gallery, with artists including The Underground Painting Liberation Movement, Christine Arnold, Hondartza Fraga, Maud Haya-Baviera and Jérôme Grivel. The aim of the residencies was, quite simply, to provide artists with time and space to think, make and engage in conversation with the wider occursus community. Artists participated in the weekly reading group and sometimes gave talks on their work. These four-week residencies also inspired further encounters and projects, such as Nice-based Grivel’s collaboration with the Sheffield Trans/Human collective. While occursus productively explored spaces and forms of sociality beyond the university, in many ways it could not have happened without the University of Sheffield’s involvement. The project had its roots in the University of Sheffield: it was loosely initiated by Amanda Crawley Jackson and Laurence Piercy, among others, and the reading group started life in a university seminar room (though participants quickly noted how spaces owned, managed and designed by universities can feel uncomfortable and even intimidating to those not employed by them). Amanda Crawley Jackson was able to do some of the organising and heavy lifting as part of her university role. The university also paid for certain activities, including venue and studio hire, exhibition and production costs. What was important, though, was that the university adopted a light-touch, high-trust approach, supporting the organic nature of the project and its focus on process, rather than outputs. The occursus project ecology was thus nourished but not wholly shaped by the institutional lines that ran through it, bringing value to residencies and exhibitions. The relationships fostered were reciprocally beneficial, as occursus brought international connections, critical discourse and public events involving artists, writers and filmmakers both to the university and to the other spaces in which it was invited to work. In many ways, occursus was a methodology, rather than a group or project. As its name suggested, it was about bringing people together, improvising and finding the resources to make good things happen. The energy and learning from different projects and experiments informed and energised what happened next. Ingold observes how Bronislaw Malinowski defined social life as ‘a long conversation, a toing and froing that carries on indefinitely’ (Ingold, 2015, p. 32), and there is something of the occursus ethos in this. Although occursus dissolved as group, the conversations and connections it sparked were generative, leading to projects such as plastiCities (2012–2013), which included a series of exhibitions, talks and a

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24-hour magazine co-produced with Article (see Article, 2012) about the rapidly changing landscape in Sheffield’s Kelham Island and Shalesmoor areas; and Furnace Park (2013–2016), a three-year, arts-led initiative to turn a tract of council-owned derelict land in Shalesmoor into an outdoor community arts space. These projects benefited from University of Sheffield funding and being able to leverage other institutional capabilities, including expertise from within the estates and health and safety teams, as well as the knowledge and experience of colleagues from the schools of architecture and landscape. Similarly, participating colleagues from Sheffield Hallam University were able to draw down expertise from their interdependent communities of professional practice (see Bennett & Crawley Jackson, 2017). Other organisations, such as arts charity Ignite Imaginations, connected their ecosystems with those of the project team (see Ignite Imaginations, 2014), brokering community and creative practitioner engagement. As Bennett and Crawley Jackson said of Furnace Park, the project was as much about ‘making common ground with strangers’ as it was co-designing an open ‘possibility space’, a ‘type of non-­ economic neighbourhood space’ (Bromberg, 2010, p.  224, cited in Bennett & Crawley Jackson, 2017, p.  96). Through the pragmatics of bringing together the right expertise and creativity to deliver a complex live project and re-imagine what public art spaces can look like, ‘stakeholders become less strange to each other and ambitions become more focused on the achievable and the communicative, for to be sustainable a project like this has to be made meaningful to wider communities’ (Bennett & Crawley Jackson, 2017, p. 105). Interrupteur (2018–2021) saw the meshwork principle activated in the open foyer spaces of Jessop West and the Diamond building at the University of Sheffield. In French, ‘interrupteur’ describes a switch (as in a light switch), or an interrupter. Three Sheffield-based artists—Rachel Smith, Emma Bolland and Otis Mensah—were invited, in successive years, to be artists in residence in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. Each artist invited up to ten other creative practitioners to join them in the space on different days, generating rhizomatic conversations and connections. University staff and students passing through the foyers were struck by the unfamiliar sight of artists at work and tables full of materials with which to play and experiment. They joined the artists at their tables and, while drawing, typing, painting or printing, shared thoughts on their own work and discussed possibilities for future collaboration.

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As Rachel Smith writes on her residency blog, Interrupteur conveys notions of ‘exchange, shift, or transformation’ (Smith, 2018). In a day working in Jessop West with artist Louise Finney, Smith used different drawing techniques, ‘archaeological mapping methods, rhizomatic mapping, and notations of interruptions experienced while working in the foyer’, resulting in ‘a record of the space that is beyond the expectations of the traditional map or territory’ (Smith, 2018). Ashley Holmes, who came for a day during Emma Bolland’s residency, brought in decks and speakers, inviting university staff and students to play their favourite records and, in a listening circle, tell others the story of why the music they had chosen was meaningful to them. Interrupteur reconfigured (and for some, disrupted) Jessop West, in terms of the foyer’s layout, soundscape and atmosphere. The focus of the Interrupteur residencies was not to produce artworks per se (although works of various kinds were made), but to interrupt the everyday habitus (Bourdieu’s term to describe the social norms that govern thought, behaviour and practice) associated with university space and activate new perspectives on working creatively together.

The Tilted View: A Reflexive Tool Given the complexity of relationships as they play out across intersecting fields of power and the intersectionality of human and institutional identities, our proposition isn’t about establishing simple guidelines for ethical engagement. Instead, we propose a cycle of self-reflection and learning that highlights how the commitment to ethical practice is, of necessity, ongoing in nature. What we have developed here is the first iteration of a reflexive tool that we hope will help us to move beyond networks towards the discovery of meshworks; building trust as opposed to introducing another ‘enabler’. This reflexive tool, which we refer to as The Tilted View, seeks to provide us with a means to embed critical self-reflection as an essential step in growing more equitable cultural praxis. The first iteration of The Tilted View as presented here is made up of the following steps (Fig. 6.1): . Step back for a tilted view and learn. 1 2. Step forward and grow through doing. 3. Step aside and observe the tilted view evolve. 4. Repeat.

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Fig. 6.1  The tilted view: A four-step process towards critical self-reflection

To illustrate how The Tilted View could be adopted, let us consider how we might apply it to support our engagement with the Civic University Network, and the civic impact framework in particular. The civic impact framework aims to help universities ask the right questions about their civic activity, such as: ‘Is our heritage and history perceived as positive or problematic by our communities?’. Through Step 1 of The Tilted View, the step back, we are encouraged as academic communities to self-reflect. To what extent do universities propagate or enshrine the histories that are told about our cities? Which stories and which archives are we collectively failing to engage with? To what extent do our methodologies shore up epistemic and hermeneutic injustice (see Fricker, 2006)? Which places do we occupy in the telling of heritage stories and should they be occupied by others? How does our positionality affect what we see and tell, and the languages we use?

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The conversations that we share in Step 1 will inform the ways in which we can move on to Step 2, the step forward, where our aim is to learn through doing and considering further questions posed by the Civic Impact Framework such as, ‘Do we have capacity to respond to new ideas and initiatives from our communities?’. The step forward is about sharing the experience of doing with our partners and growing together as a result. Here, we are encouraged to consider whose voices need to be better listened to; which communities and which individuals have perspectives on what the answers to this question might look like. As institutions, we need to think about who would like to be at the conversation table, but can’t be—and why this is so. If the right people—let’s say creative freelancers— can’t be there, then how do the structures of engagement need to change? Who is chairing the meeting(s) and why? When and where should the conversations take place? Are the people who come to the table being fairly paid for their time? Which commitments need to be made for the work to be equitable and generative? Have our strategies and evaluation frameworks been co-designed with the communities with whom we would like to work? What are the feedback mechanisms for communities to tell us how we did and how we could do better? Can we usefully leverage our capabilities for those communities we would like to work with, without assuming control and curatorship? Is it possible to move away from the discourse of ‘enabling’, which maintains the grammar of power, towards (what could be imagined as riskier) relationships grounded in trust? Even if this means having less control over the outcomes and their alignment with our own institutional metrics? By learning through doing we arrive at Step 3, which is a step aside from our shared actions to a point from which we can reflect on them. What have we learned? How have we grown? How has our tilted view evolved? Step 3 of The Tilted View helps us to consider questions such as, ‘What has worked well in engaging new groups and places?’, and ‘What do we need to do better?’ It calls upon us to pause and reflect critically on our work. Crucially, Step 3 might raise the question of whether the work we are doing is the right work; whether we should be the ones leading this strategy, committee or initiative; and to what extent we may actually be inhibiting the change that is needed.

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Conclusion In this chapter, we have sought to put self-reflection at the heart of universities’ missions to support culture in their communities and locales. We have presented short case studies to illustrate how more equitable forms of creative sociality might be imagined and initiated through long-term relationship building and working beyond and between established networks. We have called for universities and their institutional partners to be attentive to the power they have inherited and the perspectives that derive from their place in the political and social order. However, this critical self-­ reflection, the tilted view, must be accompanied by a proactive commitment to systems and culture change, which may (and should) lead to relinquishing power and privilege. It is in this spirit that we present our reflexive tool. Disclaimer  The views and opinions expressed in this chapter are the authors’ own. Acknowledgements  Amanda Crawley Jackson would like to express her thanks to Zelda Hannay and Alex Mason for insights shared over the years. From them, she learned a great deal about doing knowledge exchange more equitably and more creatively. In particular, she acknowledges her conversations with Alex around the problems of ‘enabling’ and the invaluable work he did as part of the Arts and Humanities Knowledge Exchange team at the University of Sheffield on decolonising knowledge exchange.

Bibliography Article. (2012, June 26). Don: A magazine in 24 hours. Retrieved July 18, 2022, from http://www.articlemagazine.co.uk/2012/06/don-­a-­magazine-­in-­ 24-­hours/ Bennett, L., & Crawley Jackson, A. (2017). Making common ground at Furnace Park. Social and Cultural Geography, 18(1), 92–108. Berlant, L. (2011). Cruel optimism. Duke University Press. Berlant, L. (2016). The commons: Infrastructures for troubling times. Environment and Planning D, 34(3), 393–419. Bryan, D., K.  Dunleavy, K.  Facer, C.  Forsdick, O.  Khan, M.  Malek, K.  Salt, K. Warren (2018). Common Cause Research Building Research Collaborations between Universities and Black and Minority Ethnic communities. University of Bristol and the Arts and Humanities Research Council Connected Communities Programme. Retrieved July 1, 2022, fromhttps://cpb-­euw2.

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wpmucdn.com/blogs.bristol.ac.uk/dist/a/358/files/2018/09/CC_ Enablers_Barriers_final_sp-­2c2f4bh.pdf Bourdieu, P. (1996). The rules of art: Genesis and structure of the literary field (S. Emanuel, Trans.). Stanford University Press. Bromberg, A. (2010). Creativity unbound: Cultivating the generative power of non-economic neighbourhood spaces. In T.  Edensor et  al. (Eds.), Spaces of vernacular creativity: Rethinking the cultural economy (pp.  214–219). Routledge. Chatterton, P. (2000). The cultural role of universities in the community: Revisiting the university-community debate. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 32(1), 165–181. Civic University Network. (2021a, May 19). The art of place: The civic role of universities and the cultural sector beyond the pandemic, webinar. Retrieved July 18, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XSWhYZxmvk Civic University Network. (2021b, April 22). The art of the civic, webinar. https://civicuniversitynetwork.co.uk/the-­art-­of-­the-­civic/ Creative Industries Council. (2022, May 4). Positive trend in economic recovery of UK creative industries from pandemic. Retrieved May 29, 2022, from h t t p s : / / w w w. t h e c r e a t i v e i n d u s t r i e s . c o . u k / f a c t s -­f i g u r e s / positive-­trend-­in-­gva-­of-­uk-­creative-­industries-­from-­pandemic Crossick, G., & Kaszynska, P. (2016). Understanding the value of arts and culture: The AHRC Cultural Value Project. Arts and Humanities Research Council. Dabiri, E. (2021). What white people can do next: From allyship to coalition. Penguin. Danieau, F., Guillotel, P., Mollet, N., Christie, M., & Lécuyer, A. (2014). Toward haptic cinematography: Enhancing movie experience with haptic effects based on cinematographic camera motions. IEEE MultiMedia, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Retrieved July 18, 2022, from https://hal.inria.fr/ hal-­00918074 DiMaggio, P. (1991). Social structure, institutions, and cultural good: The case of the United States. In P.  Bourdieu & J.  S. Colman (Eds.), Social theory for a changing society (pp. 133–167). Westview Press. Fisher, M. (2014). Ghosts of my life: Writings on depression, hauntology and lost futures. Zero Books. Fricker, M. (2006). Powerlessness and social interpretation. Episteme: A Journal of Social Epistemology, 3(1–2), 96–108. Grant, R. (2021). The New Power University: The social purpose of higher education in the 21st century. Pearson Education. HM Government. (2022). Levelling up the United Kingdom. Retrieved May 29, 2022, from https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/ system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1052708/Levelling_up_the_UK_ white_paper.pdf

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Ignite Imaginations. (2014, June 24). Microhabitats. Retrieved July 18, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWvqEv1666c Ingold, T. (2011). Being alive: Essays on movement, knowledge and description. Routledge. Ingold, T. (2015). The Life of Lines. Routledge. Jameson, F. (1994). The seeds of time. Columbia University Press. Klenk, N. (2018, August). From network to meshwork: Becoming attuned to difference in transdisciplinary environmental research encounters. Environmental Science and Policy, 89, 315–321. Moreton, S. (2016). Rethinking ‘knowledge exchange’: New approaches to collaborative work in the arts and humanities. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 22(1), 100–115. Metro Dynamics. (June 2020). The Impact of Arts & Culture on the wider Creative Economy. Retrieved on July 20, 2022, from https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/media/19371/download?attachment Office for Students. (2022). OfS sets out plans to crack down on poor quality courses. Retrieved May 29, 2022, from https://www.officeforstudents.org. uk/news-­b log-­a nd-­e vents/press-­a nd-­m edia/ofs-­s ets-­o ut-­p lans-­t o-­c rack-­ down-­on-­poor-­quality-­courses/ Pelletier, C. (2009). Emancipation, equality and education: Rancière’s critique of Bourdieu and the question of performativity. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 30(2), 137–150. Prospects. (2022). What do graduates do? 2021/2022. Retrieved July 1, 2022, from https://graduatemarkettrends.cdn.prismic.io/ graduatemarkettrends/8d0f5a43-­fe6e-­4b78-­b710-­4c22baa1db5e_what-­do-­ graduates-­do-­2021-­22.pdf Raunig, G. (2013). Factories of Knowledge, Industries of Creativity (A.  Derieg, Trans.). MIT Press. Ruez, D., & Cockayne, D. (2021). Feeling otherwise: Ambivalent affects and the politics of critique in geography. Dialogues in Human Geography, 11(1), 88–107. Rossi, F., Wilson, E., & Hopkins, E. (2021). How does academic research generate arts and culture related impact? A thematic analysis of Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014 impact case studies’ National Centre for Academic and Cultural Exchange. Retrieved May 29, 2022, from https://ncace.ac.uk/wpcontent/uploads/2022/01/Rossi-Wilson-and-Hopkins-How-doesacademic-research-generate-arts-and-culture-related-impact_-5.pdf Sartre, J.-P. (2008). Between existentialism and Marxism (J.  Matthews, Trans.). Verso. Sedgwick, E. K. (2003). Touching feeling: Affect, pedagogy, performativity. Duke University Press. Sellars, M. (2020). Educating students with refugee and asylum seeker experiences: A commitment to humanity. Verlag Barbara Budrich.

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Sigal, S. (2021). Knowledge Exchange, HEIs and the Arts and Culture Sector: A systematic review of literature in the field. National Centre for Academic and Cultural Exchange. Retrieved May 29, 2022, from https://ncace.ac.uk/ wpcontent/uploads/2022/01/Sigal-Sarah-Knowledge-Exchange-HEIs-andthe-Arts-and-Culture-Sector-2.pdf Smith, R. (2018). Rachel Smith Residency: Interrupteur. Retrieved July 18, 2022, from http://residencyinterrupteur.blogspot.com/p/about.html

CHAPTER 7

More-Than-Civic: Higher Education and Civil Society in Post-Industrial Localities Nicola Gratton and Martin Jones

Introduction The economic impact of civic universities is often easy to imagine in the mind’s eye and popular discourse—they are frequently large employers of local people, with strategic relationships with local authorities, businesses, business associations, and partnerships. These institutions in turn bring investment through campus developments or research and innovation and, of course, contribute skilled graduates to the local labour market (see Frontier Economics, 2019). The economic contribution universities make to their civic regions, however, is often much broader than the direct impact measured by jobs created, business relationships, student spend and graduate jobs (Goddard, 2009). In some cities, where wages are low and multiple deprivation is high, studying or working at a university is still out of reach for some local

N. Gratton (*) • M. Jones Staffordshire University, Stoke-on-Trent, UK e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Dobson, Ed Ferrari (eds.), Reframing the Civic University, Rethinking University-Community Policy Connections, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17686-9_7

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residents. Universities’ positive economic impacts may not be easily felt by people affected by multiple disadvantages. In this chapter we suggest debates and dialogues on the civic nature of higher education would benefit greatly from reflecting on and examining the wider responsibilities of universities in relation to economic impact. We will reflect on how building strong relationships with civil society and creating a civic strategy based on participatory and asset-based community development principles led our institution—Staffordshire University—to support community action to directly challenge issues of hardship and poverty within its ‘civic region’. We deploy the notion of a ‘civic region’ to capture the networked interventions made by Staffordshire University, primarily the territorially bounded Stoke-on-Trent region (see below). By bringing into the equation civil society—defined as ‘the sphere in which social movements are active, and where the popular challenges that sustain democracy’s vibrancy are located; […] also the space within which the political power of unequal wealth is wielded’ (Crouch, 2020, pp. 20–21; cf. HM Government, 2018)—we encourage participants in these debates to think about what we would term ‘being more-than-civic’. The chapter starts with an overview of the economic impacts of universities situated in the context of the civic university narrative. We then introduce a case study of Staffordshire University, exploring how the development of a civic strategy and building partnerships with civil society in the region has ensured an approach to economic prosperity, which provides an obvious economic footprint, but also creates wider opportunities for sustainable change within communities. In concluding, we raise wider implications of these arguments for policy, strategy, and academic exchanges.

The Economic Impact of Universities Universities are typically well connected to their place. Modern universities are particularly well connected by virtue of having large proportions of their students from the locality. In turn, this contributes directly to the government’s ‘Levelling Up’ agenda (see HM Government, 2022) by providing opportunities to acquire knowledges and skills and also social capital, collectively feeding directly into economic growth, rising productivity, and over time seeking to rebalance regional inequalities (see MillionPlus, 2022). There is evidence, for instance, that ‘increases in university presence’, either through the expansion of higher education and/

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or capturing this within cities, are positively associated with faster subsequent economic growth (Valero & Van Reenen, 2019, p.  66). The MillionPlus (2022) report Staying Local to go Far points to the critical economic importance of universities in both larger cities and smaller towns across the UK, through scale of employment, relatively high wages, supply chains and visitor and student spend. A report by Frontier Economics for Universities UK (2021) estimated that the higher education sector in England directly employs 360,000 people and supports an additional 455,000 jobs within universities’ localities, generating above £95 billion of gross output to the economy each year. There is the important question though of how much of this output lands and stays in local areas. Universities build human capital by generating skills, knowledge and competencies, through teaching and learning, and research, enterprise and innovation partnerships within their region, producing skilled graduates for the local labour market (Valero & Van Reenen, 2019) and driving up skills more broadly in their geographical areas. Place-based civic universities with close ties to local business and institutions can be more responsive to, and faster to address, the labour needs of their localities than traditional universities (MillionPlus, 2022). Universities also contribute to the physical capital of a place through campus developments. Where developments are funded to foster enterprise opportunities, this can have a positive impact on engaging communities and strengthening democratic dialogue at the local level, as well increasing the capacity for local innovation through partnerships between universities and businesses (Valero & Van Reenen, 2019, p. 54). The social value of universities can also be seen in their support for public sector skills development, widening participation and finding solutions to complex societal challenges. Understanding the economic contribution of universities to their regions, then, needs to consider all these factors as well as the plurality of their missions and activities. Economic impact ‘straddles different components and missions [which are] hard to fully untangle from one another’ (MillionPlus, 2022, p. 17). MillionPlus further attempts to map out the relationship between economic and social value of higher education institutions. It identified a number of partners, including local small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), larger businesses, local councils, NHS trusts, schools and multi-academy trusts and FE Colleges. Economic and social impacts emerge from relationships with all stakeholders, although there is a tendency to minimise this potential by assuming relationships with one partner will result in only one type of impact, for example,

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economic impact from work in partnership with SMEs (ibid., 2022). The counter-narrative to this is that in helping SMEs with innovation, while levering procurement with companies to ensure social value (environmental standards, local labour, etc.), helps to provide the conditions for a more virtuous economic development environment. Universities’ social capital contributions to their regions are often overlooked, though, in measuring the value of universities to their place, possibly because it is difficult to measure them accurately. This is despite increased emphasis on the civic impact of universities in recent years. The Truly Civic report (UPP Foundation, 2019) raised several important questions. The first asked whether the public were aware of the impact their local university had in their place, and whether they felt ownership or pride in their local university. The second asked how responsive institutions were to the needs of the place. The third was whether there were strategic internal and external approaches and visions for the institution’s civic agenda. Finally, the report asked whether universities were able to achieve and measure the impact of their civic work. It challenged higher education institutions to think more strategically and holistically about their economic impact, calling on them to negotiate ‘Civic University Agreements’ with local civic partners to ensure activity and impact is mutually beneficial to regions and universities. While, as ‘anchor institutions’ (Goddard et al., 2014), universities will benefit local economies by employing people from the area, there may be less analysis of who is being recruited, to what types of role, and which grades they are being recruited to. As the civic framework outlined in Chap. 1 highlights, a civic university needs to address issues of economic inequality and not rest on the fact that it brings income into the region without considering who benefits. So while universities have demonstrable economic impacts, many of these may not be recognised by those in the greatest financial need, or may remain unrecognised by the communities they serve (UPP Foundation, 2019). With the emphasis often on those outcomes that can be most easily quantified, social impacts can be overlooked in favour of more tangible economic impacts. Focusing on the economic impact of a university in isolation from its social, cultural, environmental or wellbeing impacts not only risks undermining its social value (Brink, 2018) but also risks alienating communities most affected by economic inequalities. The remainder of this chapter focuses on Staffordshire University, based in Stoke-on-Trent (Staffordshire), which has adopted a holistic place-based approach to the economic prosperity of its locality. The first

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stage is the development of an approach to civic engagement and impact called ‘Connected Communities’, built on participatory principles in an attempt to span the economic and social value of its interventions. This is a conscious effort to ensure the university’s strategy and intervention projects are formed by people with lived experience of the economic challenges of the region. The second step is to work with and through civil society to build capacity for social and economic transformation.

Stoke-on-Trent’s Economic Context The city of Stoke-on-Trent is an important industrial conurbation in the midlands of England with a population of around 260,000 people. The city was created in 1910 as a polycentric city-regional federation of six industrial towns. Its name is taken from Stoke-upon-Trent—the centre of governance and focus of road and rail transport links, with the other towns being Hanley (the commercial centre of the conurbation), Burslem, Tunstall, Longton and Fenton. In recent years, Stoke-on-Trent has been coined ‘Capital of Brexit’ in light of its status as the city with the largest proportion of voters opting for ‘Leave’ in the 2016 referendum (see MacLeod & Jones, 2018). Stoke-on-Trent is a ‘left-behind’ textbook study, where a historical dependency on ceramics and traditional manufacturing industries has led to a cocktail of interlocking social and economic disadvantages. It regularly features in the bottom 10 UK cities for business start-up rates; number of businesses; gross value added per worker; residents with high qualifications; weekly earnings and low property values (see House of Commons, 2020). Job creation remains concentrated in low skill sectors such as logistics and warehousing, though there are exciting ‘Silicon Stoke’ (Stoke-on-Trent City Council, 2021) jobs growth developments around digital skills and the creative economy. Stoke-on-Trent, then, possesses the characteristics of a deindustrialised ‘low pay low skills’ economy, where the proportion of residents qualified to higher levels is below average, with skill gaps identified by local employers at both higher and basic employability levels. The local authority ranks 14th (out of 317 districts) in the 2019 Indices of Multiple Deprivation, and Stoke-on-Trent North, Central and South constituencies saw child poverty stand at 44.5%, 44.9% and 41% respectively (End Child Poverty Coalition, 2020). There are concentrations of worklessness, particularly among people with disabilities, while youth unemployment is a challenge in some areas. Jobs growth within the local economy is dominated by

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insecure employment, including zero-hour contracts, underemployment and temporary contract working. Low levels of aspiration compound the challenge, engendered by generational unemployment and the failure of employers and successive governments to invest in skills and training (see Jones, 2019). Layered over this, local institutional capacity remains hindered by the legacies of local government reorganisation in the 1970s, experimentation with the model of the directly elected mayor and council manager, the collapse of the traditional working class Labour vote, and the rise of far-­ right populism. Austerity also cuts deep into this narrative: Stoke is in the top six local authorities in England in terms of spending cuts. Between 2010/2011 and 2017/2018 the council reduced its influence and spending power in cash terms by £193 million, impacting on public sector contributions to growth. Leadership and collaboration often depend on the external imposition of formal requirements for partnership working by central government or, in the past, the European Union. Where external frameworks are absent, a ‘parochial localism’, due in part to the polycentric nature of the urban morphology, tends to prevail, hampering partnership working across the city (Griggs et al., 2020, p. 16). At the time of writing (July 2022), the UK faces increasing inflation and rising food and fuel prices, with around three quarters of the population worried about the cost of living (Office for National Statistics, 2022). Adults living with a dependant child, people aged 30 to 49, people with disabilities and women feel most concerned about their financial futures ((ibid, 2022; Etherington et  al., 2022). Staffordshire University’s main campus is in Stoke-on-Trent, with smaller campuses in Stafford, Lichfield, and London. The Covid-19 pandemic of 2020, removal of universal credit uplift and global and domestic factors affecting food and fuel costs have only exacerbated the situation for Stoke-on-Trent residents. During the pandemic one third of the working age population claimed Universal Credit and legacy benefits (Etherington et  al., 2020), with the impact evident in enquiries to Citizens Advice, which saw increased demand since 2020 for services such as advice on debt, benefits and tax credits and financial services (Etherington et  al., 2021). Over 17,000 people in the city received food aid between 2020 and 2021, with one charity alone seeing a 500% increase in food aid between 2018 and 2021 (see Etherington and Harris, 2021).

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The Staffordshire University Approach to Civic Impact Staffordshire University has a long history of civic engagement and impact. In 2019, it worked with independent consultants to assess its economic impact. It was found to be a significant economic driver in its local area, supporting 2750 full-time equivalent jobs and contributing £120 million gross value added to Stoke on Trent and Staffordshire in 2019 (Hatch Regeneris, 2020). Around £11.5 million was spent on local suppliers in 2018–2019 and 72% of graduates were employed in the Staffordshire region. The report indicated that beyond employment, suppliers and attracting students and visitors to the area, the university’s commitment to social mobility, skills attainment, research, innovation and enterprise as a local community asset contribute to its economic footprint. It was relatively easy to identify the economic impacts of being a significant regional employer, recruiting high numbers of local and commuter students, developing graduates’ skills to meet industry needs and developing strong strategic relationships with local employers, and to attribute these to specific areas of university activity. While the economic impact report (Hatch Regeneris, 2020) drew on several areas of work with clear social impacts, these were generally presented as isolated case studies, which stood starkly against the quantifiable numbers, charts and infographics of the economic impacts presented. Therefore, while conducting an economic impact assessment was helpful to understand some areas of impact across Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire, it also raised a series of questions for the institution. Firstly, the logistical effort required to gather the data for the assessment was extensive, as much of the activity was uncoordinated and data gathering was inconsistent, particularly in relation to the role of community engagement in civic impact. It highlighted a lack of definition surrounding ‘civic work’; there was a danger that ‘civic’ was becoming synonymous with everything Staffordshire University did. The broad and disparate activity associated with civic was confusing for staff, with many unable to pin down the specificities of what civic meant for them, particularly when limited to large-scale local government institutions. Furthermore, reporting on some areas of civic activity was clear, while others had no clear reporting process, making a full and meaningful assessment of civic impact difficult. The report implied a distinction between community and civic engagement and more formal business and civic

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sector partners with clear, measurable economic implications. This not only made coordination of our broad civic work challenging but also devalued the social impact of the institution to the communities it serves. As one of the universities committed to developing a Civic University Agreement, coherence, coordination and accessibility were essential to lay a clearer foundation for Staffordshire University’s civic mission. The separation of economic and social activities and impacts was concerning. While Staffordshire University clearly had an economic impact in its civic region it was unclear how much local communities, especially those most affected by financial challenges within the city, were engaged in or benefiting from the work. The questions raised by the economic impact assessment process, therefore, resulted an in extended period of reflection prior to developing a negotiated Civic University Agreement with civic partners. Clarification was needed to support staff engagement with a university-wide approach to civic impact, and to enable external partners to navigate university systems and processes smoothly. Work was also needed to align and coordinate activity that produced both economic and social value, and to assess how impact that was less easily measured contributed to the wider picture of civic impact through collaborative work with Staffordshire University. As a result, the university set out a clear vision for civic impact and outlined its implications across seven themes to support all staff in understanding how their practice informed the university’s civic impact. A clear brand, Connected Communities, further clarified the issues for staff and external partners. Staff, students, partners and communities were consulted in the development of Connected Communities. The rest of this section outlines the process of developing a civic strategy that pulls together activity for intentional economic and social impact that cannot be untangled, that also gives local people a say in the economic changes they want to see locally. The strategy uses participatory principles, placing people at the centre and ensuring a wide reach across university activity. From a Place of Abundance, Not Deficit Given current economic challenges in the UK, it is tempting to understand a university’s role as addressing the problems faced by people in their civic region. However, in early conversations with civic society partners in Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire, it became clear that such a deficit approach would be unhelpful, and indeed contradictory, to the

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asset-based approaches that underpinned much of the civil society activity in the city. Any civic strategy therefore needed to start from a place of strengths, not weaknesses of a place. These values reflect an approach to participatory action research (PAR), Get Talking, that has been developed and embedded into Staffordshire University’s work with communities since 2004 (see Emadi-Coffin, 2008). Get Talking has engaged over 100 community researchers to involve over 2000 community members in research and consultation exercises focused on addressing issues of social justice within community spaces or organisations (Gratton & Reynolds, 2022). The ‘co-production’ (see Bell & Pahl, 2018) approach encourages active participation by community members and partners as community researchers, through which the academic researchers adopt a facilitation role, challenging power differences between researchers and those often considered subjects of research. Bringing together a range of stakeholders also ensures the issues at the heart of the research process are viewed from many different lenses, offering rich insights and analysis and finding solutions based on a collective understanding of the issues being researched. While Get Talking often focuses on issues of social justice, the process itself also aims to address issues of inclusion, identifying gaps and actively reaching out to communities ‘who are typically excluded from the research process, or those frequently identified as research subjects, by engaging people most affected by the subject in question at the centre of the research process’ (Gratton & Reynolds, 2022, p.  4). The emphasis on forming long-term relationships with community partners and adopting flexible approaches to research keeps the process inclusive. Finally, the approach is focused on action, motivated by collectively identified needs for change. Between 2004 and 2019 Get Talking, which was originally developed as a short course for a public sector partner, evolved into a community based participatory action research methodology which formed the foundation for community-university partnerships and identified and addressed shared research priorities. The model was often commissioned by community, voluntary, charity and public sector partners for short-term, localised projects. Given the growing reputation of the Get Talking approach with local community organisations and members of the public it felt appropriate that any attempt to grow a university-wide civic strategy should be built on its participatory and inclusive principles. Gratton (2020a) outlines how Staffordshire University used principles derived from youth work practice, asset-based community development and Get Talking to inform the early

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iterations of Connected Communities. Several factors were important in embedding the core principles underpinning Get Talking into a civic strategy, including grassroots expertise within the institution and coordinated and supportive strategic leadership. The resulting approach not only encapsulated the university’s civic activity and intentions but also attempted to place stakeholders’ participation centre stage. Staffordshire University engages with a range of stakeholders in its civic work, including past and present students, staff, members of the public, community sector partners and private and public civic partners. The relationships with local councils across Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire are important, not least to enable both parties to align long-term plans for placemaking and attract potential regeneration and redevelopment income (MillionPlus, 2022). However, the university also places equal emphasis on its relationship with civil society. For Staffordshire University, civil society encompasses community and voluntary sector organisations and charities as well as residents and members of a broad range of geographical, interest and identity-based communities. Get Talking projects over a number of years have helped the university to build a long-term relationship with a network of community researchers, with extensive knowledge of their region and an intricate understanding of the issues affecting them. Members of the community are often unattached to community sector partners and so bring a range of independent perspectives. A strong relationship with civil society provides a unique insight into the realities of living, working or studying in a region. Within Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire civil society is knowledgeable, well connected and, in many cases, experienced at living with the challenges impacting communities. Using a participatory action research and asset-based lens it is clear that this collective understanding is a strength through which action can be taken. Get Talking, then, has illustrated how pulling together a range of community perspectives around a single issue can result in unexpected insights and meaningful solutions. A network of stakeholders with differing but relevant perspectives are involved in the governance of the Connected Communities approach via a Staffordshire community Advisory Network, or ‘Staffs CAN’. Following several years of establishing informal networks and sustained relationships with members of the pubilc, civic and civil partners, and alumni, Staffs CAN builds social capital in our civic region by collectively identifying and addressing areas of concern for civil society. Together with Staffordshire University staff and students, the network

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Fig. 7.1  The Connected Communities model

advises our civic mission, shapes our collaborative response to local need and informs understanding of our collective impacts. The network underpins Staffordshire University’s approach to Connected Communities illustrated in Fig. 7.1. Reflecting Values Through Priorities To aid clarification of Staffordshire University’s vision for Connected Communities, the plethora of activity that was considered under the civic engagement and impact banner was condensed into three priorities: co-­ creation, community-giving and place-shaping. Co-creation Co-creation recognises that solutions to societal challenges faced by communities require creative and collaborative thinking, and change is only achievable through partnership and co-ownership of solutions. The participatory and inclusive principles of Get Talking can be observed here. Universities could be criticised for over-emphasising their own expertise over those with more practical or real-world experience. Embedding co-­ creation into the strategy has challenged Staffordshire University to resist leading initiatives and dominating how knowledge is developed and

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shared, and instead use its own power to elevate the voices of others. The case study of the Hardship Commission below is a prime example of this. Community Giving While the financial challenges facing universities in 2022 cannot be ignored, universities are often relatively well resourced compared to their civil society partners. They are in an excellent place to share resources, knowledge and facilities to benefits their civic regions. Staffordshire University’s commitment to community giving as a priority area was the aspect of the model that was most welcomed in consultations with community partners, who recognised it as a commitment to acknowledge and address inequalities within the region. Place-Shaping Universities’ contribution to placemaking is often reduced to buildings, facilities and their role in regeneration projects. The deliberative shift towards Staffordshire University’s role as a place shaper illustrates its commitment to a more holistic approach to shaping communities through economic, social, cultural, health and wellbeing and environmental interventions (see also Chap. 8). While this might include access to facilities, retaining skilled graduates and supporting business start-ups, it may also involve supporting communities to enact and campaign for the changes they want to see within their place. The term placemaking comes with connotations of top-down change, whereas being a place shaper gives space for Staffordshire University to work in more collaborative ways, influencing and supporting change but not always leading it. Plurality of Impacts MillionPlus (2022, p.  17) highlights the plurality of university missions and the implications this has for clearly identifying and articulating economic impact. They argue ‘there is considerable overlap between different parts of a university and … the economic value of the constituent parts is interconnected’. It can also be argued that the economic value of an intervention is interwoven with social interventions and impacts. Staffordshire University’s relationship with civil society and the value it places on asset-­ based development, social connections and collective action means disparate approaches to impacts could potentially isolate a significant proportion of the people who are vital to a civic mission. So while Staffordshire University aspires to generate economic, social, health and wellbeing,

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environment and cultural impacts, it encourages all initiatives to maximise their impacts across all five areas by collaborative working both across the institution and externally with civic and civil partners, recognising social benefits may result in economic impacts and vice versa. To aid this, the approach needed to be embedded across all parts of the university, and a clear framework for monitoring and evaluation introduced. Embedding the Approach As mentioned above, a significant challenge for Staffordshire University staff was understanding what ‘civic’ meant for their own practice. Therefore, once a clear vision and brand was established, this was mapped against seven different priorities of the university strategy as outlined in Fig. 7.2. While embedding the approach across the seven themes will take some time to implement, the introduction of this framework has made it easier to understand how the broad Connected Communities strategy translates into practice. Work at a strategic level includes a review of policies and structures to ensure the experience of community partners working directly with us was streamlined and seamless, to provide a positive and consistent experience. In addition, ways were outlined to strengthen partnerships with civil, civic

Fig. 7.2  Embedding Connected Communities

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and internal stakeholders around the civic agenda, and identify how co-­ creation can feed into both our Connected Communities activity at a strategic level through the Staffs CAN, and at service and school level. The framework also outlined clear priorities for Connected Communities within three of the university priorities of teaching and learning, research and service and knowledge exchange, with a range of opportunities, training and mentoring to support staff and student engagement. Indeed, the university’s academic strategy recognises the value of creating and securing these connections for the benefits of student recruitment, reputations, and undertaking applied research with impact. Understanding the Impact The challenges of measuring the true value of civic work have been noted (MillionPlus, 2022) as well as the implications for softer outcomes for civic engagement. Given the participatory foundations of the Connected Communities approach it was important that any evaluation framework reflected these principles and enhanced Staffordshire University’s aspiration to embed co-creation throughout its civic work. The framework (Fig. 7.3) embeds participation in its methodology, while recognising the plurality of missions and impacts as well as the need for Connected Communities to be informed by collective learning and shared ownership.

Fig. 7.3  Evaluating Connected Communities

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Participatory dialogue is an essential stage of the process and therefore links well to the introduction of a Community Advisory Network model, ensuring members of the public, civic partners, civil society and students and alumni are core to how we understand our progress.

Taking Connected Communities Beyond the Civic The Connected Communities approach to civic engagement and impact recognises that universities’ social and economic impacts cannot be easily separated into neat piles of data. The impacts within civic regions may be long term, and therefore reporting impact immediately after a project may not capture the full picture. Equally it recognises the challenges of understanding causality, especially where collaborative and co-created projects result in impacts. While some impacts can be neatly presented in an infographic, others will be softer and need a different methodology to effectively measure and demonstrate. Finally, it recognises that impact cannot, and should not, be understood in isolation from those most affected by the outcomes of university civic work, and places local actors, in particular those with less economic power in the city, at the centre of the approach and evaluation methodology. By setting firm participatory foundations for Connected Communities, Staffordshire University has been able to build on both the strengths of university engagement and the strengths of its place. Valero and Van Reenen (2019) argue that universities can strengthen local institutions by creating spaces for democratic dialogue. The inclusion of civil society partners within Staffs CAN and specific projects as part of its civic engagement and impact activity enables the university to facilitate meaningful conversations from the partners’ perspective, drawing on collective understanding to shape locally relevant solutions. The need to bring several voices into this dialogue has been highlighted by a recent case study, outlined below, through which Staffordshire University has played a significant role in challenging economic hardship in Stoke-on-­ Trent by supporting and galvanising civil society, including community and voluntary sector partners, to raise awareness and connect with civic actors to create change. As the case study (see Gratton, 2020b) illustrates, Staffordshire University’s work on hardship with civil and community partners extends the realm of social and economic impacts as envisioned by MillionPlus (2022). It uses socially engaged and participatory methods to work

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directly with people with lived experience of hardship and poverty, and the civil society partners working with them, to directly challenge economic inequalities and demand action. Addressing Hardship and Poverty Work Through Lived Experience The Hardship Commission in Stoke-on-Trent has members from third sector organisations, education providers and local authority representatives. Staffordshire University has been represented on the commission since 2015. In 2019, the commission asked Staffordshire University to conduct a participatory action research project, underpinned by Get Talking, to help it understand people’s lived experiences of hardship and poverty. The Hardship Commission recognised it had an abundance of statistics highlighting the levels of hardship and poverty in Stoke-on-Trent but little evidence of how the statistics translated to the real-world impacts on people’s lives. Get Talking Hardship attracted 43 community researchers to help understand hardship from the perspective of over 240 people. The community researchers were from a range of backgrounds, including people who had current or past experience of extreme poverty or homelessness. The community research team included several civil society partners who helped the Get Talking Hardship team reach people with lived experience of hardship, as well as contributing their own unique experience and perspectives of supporting others to the research findings. Over the course of six months, the community research team collected stories from each other and reached out to their community networks to ensure the voices of a broad range of communities were included. They also defined the research questions for the project, conducted interviews and analysed findings as a team. The data collection included world café style focus groups, semi-structured interviews using creative consultation tools and a survey, through which people could share their own anonymous stories with the group. Because 43 local people were involved in delivering Get Talking Hardship, the research caught the attention of the local newspaper which partnered with the university to produce a week of reports on hardship and poverty in the city. This included some of the community researchers’ stories and interviews with the three Stoke-on-Trent MPs. The project report highlighted experiences of people claiming Universal Credit, and

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the impact of delays in receiving this on people’s financial stability, mental health and wellbeing. As a result, the MP for Stoke Central raised the report in the House of Commons during Prime Minister’s Questions, firmly highlighting the issues of hardship in the city at a national level. Locally, the Hardship Commission rewrote its terms of reference to ensure people with lived experience of hardship were represented on the steering group. It also extended the invitation for the Staffordshire University civic lead, who led the Get Talking Hardship research, to sit on the Commission. This was the start of a more strategic link between Staffordshire University and the Hardship Commission. When the global Covid-19 pandemic broke out a couple of months after the end of Get Talking Hardship, commission members had to pause this work to respond to the immediate effects of the national lockdown and wellbeing needs of service users. However, in December 2021, Staffordshire University was asked to conduct a follow-up project with local people to build a campaign and create better connections between the Hardship Commission and local communities. The Hardship Commission recognised that its work was not common knowledge in the city, and communities most affected by hardship were generally unaware of its role or, in some case, existence. To solidify their commitment to working more closely with people with lived experience of poverty, the commission agreed a new tag line: Raising Voices, Changing Minds, Ending Poverty, and this was adopted as the title of the new campaign project. Raising Voices was delivered over four months and included two civil society partners, Expert Citizen CIC and All the Small Things CIC, with a steering group of community researchers from Get Talking Hardship, Expert Citizen volunteers and community organisers supported by All the Small Things. The project used creative methods to tell the story of hardship in Stoke-­ on-­Trent, building on findings from Get Talking Hardship and using the interests of the steering group, including photography, poetry and podcasting, to gather stories from people in the city. These were assembled into a physical and online exhibition and accompanied by a Manifesto for Change which outlined how the Hardship Commission and Raising Voices steering group would work together and their priorities for action. The Hardship Commission and the Raising Voices steering group negotiated its content and members from each group signed the manifesto at the exhibition event in March 2022.

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Staffordshire University, in reality, led both Get Talking Hardship and Raising Voices but was guided by the Connected Communities participatory principles to elevate the voices of the community researchers, the steering group and the civil partners involved above its own. Staffordshire University has challenged its own power base and opened the conversation for others to do so. Equally, it has challenged the power base of the Hardship Commission to extend its membership to those with lived experience of hardship, making the forum more inclusive and encouraging an asset-based approach. Crucially, the university has made connections between civil and civic sector partners and brought community partners with experience of hardship into discussions with civic leaders about how to develop an anti-poverty strategy for the city. The relationship between Staffordshire University, the Hardship Commission and the Raising Voices Steering group is a long-term one that will continue to build on the social connections and capital of people most affected by poverty to change the economic landscape in Stoke-on-Trent.

Conclusions John Goddard (2009, p. 5) describes the civic university as: …one which provides opportunities for the society of which it forms part. It engages as a whole with its surroundings, not piecemeal; it partners with other universities and colleges; and is managed in a way that ensures it participates fully in the region of which it forms part. While it operates on a global scale, it realises that its location helps to form its identity and provide opportunities for it to grow and help others, including individual learners, business and public institutions, to do so too.

This chapter has sought to draw out these parameters and we would add that achieving such a process on the ground in Staffordshire University is an iterative and developmental activity. We have suggested that notions of being ‘more-than-civic’ could capture these academic and policy concerns more accurately. This gives a heavy nod to the importance of engagements with and the dynamics of civil society, as well as more formalised civic interrelationships. Long-term relationships though are vital to anchor and deliver all this. The UKRI-funded project, undertaken by Gratton (2020b), on ‘Keep Talking’ highlights the need for sustained involvement

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by community researchers, based on a ‘community connector’ principle of clear communication, defined and understood purpose, and inbuilt flexibility where and when needed. Notions of being more-than-civic are not without contradictions. When universities seek to influence the field known as the ‘foundational economy’, i.e. health services, education, and other services areas that support ‘everyday life’ (MillionPlus, 2022; Russell et al., 2022), there is the obvious complexity of being embroiled in local politics and policy-failure that forms the ‘new contradictions’ (Lefebvre, 1976) of local state intervention through higher education. This is despite the foundational economy’s importance in developing a pipeline of students to support the local and regional economy. But this is where the civic and civil responsibilities of Staffordshire University matter and where there is potential to transform people, places, and society. We would advocate future research in these spaces and places and returning to previous debates on the ‘local state’ (see Duncan & Goodwin, 1988) to understand the rich tapestry of civic and civil society.

References Bell, M., & Pahl, K. (2018). Co-production: Towards a utopian approach. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 21(1), 105–117. Brink, C. (2018). The soul of a university: Why excellence is not enough. Bristol University Press. Crouch, C. (2020). Post-democracy after the crisis. Polity. Duncan, S., & Goodwin, M. (1988). The local state and uneven development: Behind the local government crisis. Polity. Emadi-Coffin, B. (2008). Get talking: Community participation and neighbourhood learning. Widening Participation and Lifelong Learning, 10(3), 30–34. End Child Poverty. (2020). Child Poverty in your area 2014/15–2019/20. Retrieved June 19, 2022, from https://endchildpoverty.org.uk/ local-­child-­poverty-­data-­2014-­15-­2019-­20/ Etherington, D. & Harris, S. (2021). Post Covid-19 crisis and its impact on poverty and destitution in Stoke-on-Trent. Staffordshire University and Citizens Advice. Retrieved from  https://eprints.staffs.ac.uk/6937/1/Post%20 Covid-­19%20Crisis%20and%20its%20Impact%20on%20Poverty%20%26%20 Destitution%20in%20Stoke-on-Trent%20-%20Final.pdf Etherington, D., Jones, M., Harris, S., & Hubbard, S. (2020). A disappearing safety net: Post Covid-19 crisis and its impact on poverty and disadvantage in

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Stoke-on-Trent  – Report to the Stoke Hardship Commission. Staffordshire University. Retrieved July 22, 2022, from https://eprints.staffs.ac.uk/6403/ Etherington, D., Jones, M. Harris, S., & Hubbard, S. (2021). ‘Powering Up’ or reducing inequalities? Assessing the impact of benefit cuts and withdrawal of employment support (Furlough) on Stoke-on-Trent. Staffordshire University. Retrieved July 22, 2022, from https://eprints.staffs.ac.uk/7031/ Etherington, D., Telford, L., & Jones, M. (2022). The pending poverty catastrophe in Stoke-on-Trent: How benefit cuts and the cost-of-living crisis impacts on the poor. Staffordshire University. Retrieved July 22, 2022, from https://eprints. staf fs.ac.uk/7270/3/The_Pending_Pover ty_Catastrophe_in_Stoke-­ on-­Trent.pdf Frontier Economics. (2019). The economic contributions of the higher education sector in England. Summary report prepared for Universities UK. UUK. Goddard, J. (2009). Re-inventing the Civic University. NESTA. Goddard, J., Coombes, M., Kempton, L., & Vallance, P. (2014). Universities as anchor institutions in cities in a turbulent funding environment: Vulnerable institutions and vulnerable places in England. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 7(2), 307–325. Gratton, N. (2020a). From engagement to strategy: The journey towards a civic university. In E.  Sengupta, P.  Blessinger, & C.  Mahony (Eds.), University-­ community partnerships for promoting social responsibility in higher education. Innovations in higher education teaching and learning (Vol. 23, pp. 105–120). Emerald Publishing. Gratton, N. (2020b). Keep talking: Impact and recommendations. Staffordshire University. Retrieved July 22, 2022, from https:// b l o g s . s t a f f s . a c . u k / c o n n e c t i o n s / p r e v i o u s -­w o r k / k e e p -­t a l k i n g / keep-­talking-­impact-­and-­recommendations/ Gratton, N., & Reynolds, J. (2022). Participatory evaluation for large-scale arts programmes: Challenges, adaptations and unexpected shifts in culture. Research for All Journal, 6(1), 1–14. Griggs S., Hall, S., & Jones, M. (2020). Levelling up or pushing down? Municipal Journal. Retrieved June 21, 2022, from https://www.themj.co.uk/ Levelling-­up-­or-­pushing-­down/218943# HM Government. (2018). Civic society strategy: Building a future that works for everyone. HM Government. HM Government. (2022). Levelling up the United Kingdom. CP 604. HMSO. House of Commons. (2020). North Staffordshire Potteries Towns: Levelling Up. Vol. 685. Retrieved December 12, 2022, from  https://hansard.parliament. uk/Commons%2F2020-12-01%2Fdebates%2F20120137000001%2FNorthSt affordshirePotteriesTownsLevellingUp Jones, M. (2019). Cities and regions in crisis: The political economy of subnational economic Development. Edward Elgar.

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Lefebvre, H. (1976). The survival of capitalism: Reproduction of the relations of production. Allison & Busby. MacLeod, G., & Jones, M. (2018). Explaining “Brexit Capital”: Uneven development and the austerity state. Space and Polity, 22, 111–136. MillionPlus. (2022). staying local to go far: Modern universities as placemakers. MillionPlus. Office for National Statistics. (2022). UK economy latest, June. ONS.  Retrieved July 22, 2022, from https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/economicoutputandproductivity/output/articles/ukeconomylatest/2021-­01-­25 Hatch Regeneris (2020). Civic report: Economic and social impact assessment of Staffordshire University. Manchester, Hatch. Russell, B., Beel, D., Jones, I.  R., & Jones, M. (2022). Placing the foundational economy: An emerging discourse for post-neoliberal economic development. Environment and Planning A. https://doi.org/10.117 7/0308518X22109874 Stoke-on-Trent City Council. (2021a). Silicon stoke prospectus: Establishing Stoke-­ on-­ Trent’s plan for a gigabit connected city. Stoke-on-Trent City Council. Retrieved July 22, 2022, from https://www.stoke.gov.uk/info/20012/business/445/silicon_stoke UPP Foundation. (2019). Truly civic: Strengthening the connection between universities and their places. UPP Foundation. Valero, A., & Van Reenen, J. (2019). The economic impact of universities: Evidence from across the globe. Economics of Education Review, 68, 53–67.

CHAPTER 8

Placemaking for the Civic University: Interface Sites as Spaces of Tension and Translation Julia Udall and Anna Wakeford Holder

In this chapter we examine the role of place within the emerging civic agenda for universities by exploring ‘interface sites’. We conceptualise interface sites as physical places at the boundary of the university, where institutional resources, structures and employees come together with civic stakeholders and communities, to engage in shared concerns through programmes of research, teaching and knowledge exchange. The instances we explore—an urban room, a law clinic, and a natureculture lab—build on historic precedents, but extend and refine them in relation to their institutional and civic context and aims. Their successful operation requires consideration of how to make a space where collective agency may be achieved among diverse groups and interests, often in the face of complex societal problems. They become locations that allow relationships to become durable, and meaningfully directed towards tangible common purpose.

J. Udall (*) • A. W. Holder Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Dobson, Ed Ferrari (eds.), Reframing the Civic University, Rethinking University-Community Policy Connections, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17686-9_8

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These sites are interesting to consider in relation to placemaking because they must function for diverse publics and hybrid programmes, and are continually recalibrated and reconfigured both through, and in support of emerging relationships and activity. We argue that their scale and necessary responsiveness allows for feedback that not only results in better spaces in relation to their particular civic agenda, but also can support broader institutional learning in ways that can transform the university. Even without an intention to impact beyond their walls, universities contribute to shaping the urban realm; their physical, social and economic impacts will be manifest spatially. When considering the contribution of the university to the city, and the responsibility of universities as urban actors, we might initially picture distinct spaces of the university and those outside it, be that through a clear separation of out-of-town campuses, or cloistered dreaming spires inside yet apart from the city. In such a conception, placemaking is confined to the aesthetics and qualities of the architecture, the dominating urban impact of estate expansion, or how the edges of a campus or digital infrastructures contribute to the public realm. While these factors are of importance, rather than conceive of placemaking as civicness, we want to explore placemaking for civicness: we wish to speculate on how places are produced in ways that enable civic university activity to flourish. The reason for this is to establish a civic agenda not as something a university does to a place, but rather as something that must emerge in collaboration, and which offers the potential to change the university as much as it changes the world ‘outside’. We therefore offer three instances that seek to permeate hard institutional borders and examine them both as places that support outward facing civic activity, but that also seek, through producing porous, heterogeneous and critical spaces, to make the university otherwise.

The University as Urban Actor The university has shaped urban development in ways which enact and perpetuate a divide between ‘town and gown’, and in this first section of this chapter we reflect on the distinct spatial typologies of this legacy, and efforts to move beyond it, by drawing out a history, primarily in the UK and also elsewhere in Europe. The university is a powerful actor, and important architectural patron. It can be understood as an instrument of, and produced by, the dominant logics of society at any point in time. As William Whyte suggests in his social and architectural history Redbrick;

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‘there is not, and never has been, a single idea of the university’ (Whyte, 2015, p.  16). Their architectural style, spatial organisation and urban composition are intimately tied to the tastes and agendas of those who instigated and funded them, as well as the influence of local elites and communities, and the contingencies of their changing use. Architectural historian Tom Wilkinson points out that the university is not an architectural or urban typology, but ‘[…] rather it is a community of students and teachers requiring a variety of functions, usually in a number of separate buildings. These originated piecemeal, occupying existing structures and spreading out through urban settings with which they co-existed in a state of semi-permanent conflict’ (Wilkinson, 2015, p. 38). Initially modelled on religious buildings, the aristocratic students, considered to be ‘unruly youths’, were literally cloistered; in the colleges of Oxford, the quadrangle formation protected but also contained them. Historically universities’ role was to train the feudal elites as political leaders, to oversee the masses, and later, to administer the colonies, and this inevitably led to class and racialised conflict and struggle. The St Scholastica Day riots in Oxford in 1355 started as a tavern brawl and erupted into days of fighting that led to the deaths of over thirty townspeople and sixty scholars. This battle between the scholars and the townspeople is noteworthy, because judges sent to inquire into the incident by the King decided in favour of the university over the town and significantly expanded its power and responsibilities and its ability to impose taxes through Royal Charter (Cobban, 1992). The Humboldtian conception of the university as a secular and autonomous institution that would support scientific education took hold and grew to shape institutions in Europe and the United States, and in the case of the latter, through the development of the campus university, in mediaeval and classical architectural styles. From the early nineteenth century the university was already considered to be ‘an institution rooted in its locality’ (Kelsall, 1814, p. 18). In the late nineteenth century UK there was an expansion of universities to the provinces, driven by a political aim to expand access to higher education. Taking an explicitly stated civic role, the red brick university buildings were located close to public transport, and took their name from the cities in which they were located. During the post-war period out of town campuses developed in the UK, and became known as the plateglass universities. Architectural historian Michael Hebbert notes the rejection of municipal pleas from Coventry, Norwich, and York, to the University Grants Commission for these new

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universities to be located near or in urban centres, potentially to reinvigorate the historic fabric. He goes on to say that; ‘[The view was taken] that spacious settings of parkland were more conducive to creative thinking than urban street-blocks’ (Hebbert, 2018, p.  4). Decisions were also driven by a concern around how to accommodate the significant increase in student numbers (Wilkinson, 2015), and a belief students and staff would be more likely to own a car. The result, Hebbert suggests, was ossification into disciplinary silos, and a lack of density: ‘It had been hoped that physical segregation would encourage collegiality, interdisciplinarity and a more holistic pursuit of knowledge […] it had rather the opposite effect. The powerful dynamic of academic specialisation found expression in building complexes dedicated to separate disciplines. Deans exerted a baronial sway over campus territory […]’ (Hebbert, 2018, p.  6). In France, in 1968 the Paris University in Nanterre saw student rebellion against what was seen as an authoritarian institution, within the context of wider civil unrest and strike action. Post May 68, the French government’s response was to disperse universities into the suburbs (Merlin, 1995). While suburban campus universities suffered issues of isolation and fragmentation, inner city campuses, under pressure to expand, and using funding to support urban renewal in the context of central government-­ led programmes, encountered their own particular challenges. Many contributed to the demolition or gentrification of low-income areas and then turned their backs on those who remained on their outskirts. As the marketisation of the university continued, through the removal of block grants and the introduction of student fees in the UK, the university campus, which had always been seen as an attractor for students, became increasingly dominated by large landmark buildings. Such projects were often developed for the wealthier disciplines, such as business schools, and designed by prestigious architectural firms, with tendering frameworks where only the largest could afford to compete. Through their estate programmes, universities often actively contribute to gentrification, displacement and exclusion, altering the city in ways that can be understood to be to the detriment of civil society (Chatterton, 2010; Millington, 2016). Multinational developers produce student housing at massive scale that gives little back to the urban realm, and displaces existing activities, businesses and people (Hubbard, 2009; Sage et al., 2013). The impetus for universities to be run as businesses and engage in constant growth leads to the buying up of land, and the ability to engage as powerful players in urban regeneration, either separately or in public-private partnership

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arrangements (Chatterton, 2010; Goddard & Vallance, 2013). Ehlenz (2019) discusses the role of planners to try to mediate the negative impacts for neighbourhoods associated with the neoliberal turn in universities. Yet, in the context of austerity, continual budget cuts and savaged planning and urban design departments, there is pressure on councils to allow anything to go, both because development is seen as inward investment, and councils lack the resources to challenge wealthy developers. Universities are often located in city centres where land prices are high, particularly in the case of the major cities. In Ground Control, Anna Minton shows how the rapid and scaled privatisation of land in the UK, and the consequential demand for risk reduction from financers, has led to increased surveillance and exclusion of groups and activities (Minton, 2012). The concept of ‘studentification’ seeks to acknowledge the homogenising cultural impact of university developments in the urban realm (Moos et al., 2019). Since the 2000s there have been moves for universities to have a better relationship with their neighbourhoods; large institutional masterplans seek permeability with adjacent residential areas. A recent RIBA report into standards for professional practice, authored by Australian architect Tom Kvan in 2016, argues for increased connectivity between universities and neighbourhoods. In his recent exploration of the relationship between the campus and the city, Hebbert cites Janne Corneil and Phillip Parsons of Sasaki Associates, who suggest that ‘in a healthy knowledge society the university becomes the city and the city becomes the university’ (2007, pp. 114–127). While we recognise and value the ethical intention of this statement, we argue that such an urban aspiration does not pay sufficient attention to the power dynamics at play and forms of enclosure produced by a university as a private or public institution. These either work to exclude, or only include outsiders in a subordinate position. We therefore wish to explore approaches that actively engage in such challenges, through their programmes and spaces, as an ongoing process of learning.

Three Instances of Placemaking for Civic Action In the following section we explore three examples of interfaces between the university and civic society. These experimental approaches could be understood as prototypes for how the university can engage in placemaking in ways that are collaborative, emerge from their context, and are produced with care and an orientation towards social and ecological justice. They are spatially and socially located in ways that make the university

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more porous, because they pay attention to the situation in which they work and allow spaces of learning for the public, civic and institutional stakeholders. Each has been initiated through teaching programmes and/ or a research centre, and brings together critical questions for society with innovative pedagogical approaches or research methods, and particular constituencies of civic society. The first, the Refugee Rights Hub, is based at the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice at Sheffield Hallam University and is located within a university campus. It brings members of the public into the university, together with undergraduate and postgraduate students in order to offer free legal advice and support for refugees who want to be reunited with their families. The second is Live Works, an ‘urban room’ that forms part of the Sheffield School of Architecture Live Project programme, located on a pedestrianised city centre high street in Sheffield. The urban room provides a consultation space for architecture students to work with community clients, and is nestled among other social enterprise and community focused businesses, as well as independent shops and government offices. The third is CSM Rural,1 an emerging remote campus at Dalby Forest, developed in partnership with Forestry England and others, which, through creative and scientific programmes on site, uses learning from the land as a key way to develop climate and biodiversity literacy. There is a historical and intertwined legacy for universities’ involvement in such spaces for non-profit groups and citizens to access technical and professional knowledge and services in relation to urban and legal problems. Law Clinics that offered pro-bono advocacy grew up in the United States during the 1960s as a result of the civil rights movement, and in response to criticisms emerging from university law schools that learning by case did not embed students in the complex realities of how the law operated in society (Hardie et  al., 2020). Law Clinics thus became an important model that informed university activity in the UK. This advocacy model also went on to inform the community design centre movement in the United States. In the 1960s Community Design Centres provided a space for architecture and planning students and staff to address some of the growing challenges of urban centres, supporting tenants with housing problems, opposing urban renewal plans and enabling citizen participation in neighbourhood proposals. The University of California initiated a Community Design Centre in San Francisco in 1967 as both a 1

 This is a working title for the new campus.

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learning resource and a service to the community, which, among other projects, provided supporting evidence to legal action against the city opposing commercial redevelopment plans which would displace local residents (Toker, 2007). In the UK the University of Strathclyde established ‘Assist’ in the early 1970s. This research and development unit addressed housing problems by providing free technical services to enable voluntary improvement of tenement housing by residents, a project which began as a pilot from a student thesis project and grew to result in a partnership between the university and local and national institutions that improved around 12,000 tenement flats (ibid., p. 105). In examining these three instances, we chose examples where universities are engaging with some of the biggest issues that we face as a civil society: population displacement, rising inequality, exclusion and climate crisis. In this context, civicness and civic rights are understood as a process of actively engaging in questions of who the city is for, and who is included in the idea of ‘citizen’. They operate with an inclusive understanding of citizenship that brings within its purview all those who make up a city, seeing citizenship not limited to those meeting legal requirements of state. This approach addresses the need to pay particular attention to the needs of marginalised groups, and the added barriers they may face in accessing the resources of the university in its civic role. If civicness is an orientation to engage with a wider world, both human and more-than-human, and to measurable impact in countering social inequality and environmental degradation, then to be civic, universities need to continually reflect upon who matters, and is present, and their sense of agency within that context. For example, in No Love Found, Samatar et al. explore the experience of black female students on campus as surveilled by the white gaze, leading to detachment and withdrawal (Samatar et al., 2021), and this offers sharp lessons in terms of how deep this work must go. Similarly, in the context of intertwined ecological crises around climate, species loss and pollution of land, air and seas, the imperative is clear: place cannot be considered just as a human concern. Places are not merely a resource, or pleasant backdrop for our day-to-day human activities. Place and civicness should be understood in relation to more-than-human others; our social relations must be considered in their fullest sense, as necessary to our continued survival. In what follows we consider how engaging in these bigger societal questions also requires and offers nourishment to produce space differently at the local level.

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The Refugee Rights Hub: Placemaking for Care and Justice The Refugee Rights Hub2 (Fig.  8.1) is based at the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice at Sheffield Hallam University and was fully established in 2018 (Refugee Rights Hub—Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice, 2022). The Hub’s aims and approach are set within the centre’s wider missions around social justice, which are achieved through live casework, research and scholarship, global engagement, policy impact and professional training and advocacy. Undergraduate and postgraduate students, (including from the MA in Applied Human Rights and graduates from the LLB Law) work as interns within the Hub. This clinical work supports students’ training and development, working alongside qualified Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner (OISC) registered immigration and asylum specialists, helping refugees navigate the often-complex processes and procedures for making family reunification applications. Students thus broaden and deepen their understanding of refugee rights and develop and hone skills through active casework, and work beyond traditional law subjects. Given the political controversies around asylum and migration, and recent rise in hate crimes, the making

Fig. 8.1  Refugee Rights Hub. In a contemporary university building, on a neighbourhood campus, set within green space. This location has the drawback of requiring two bus trips for most clients to access. Image © the authors 2  Our understanding of this project has developed through conversations with Liz Dew, Refugee Rights Hub Project Officer; Professor Sital Dillon OBE, Head of Department of Law & Criminology and Director of the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice; Clare Tudor, Director of the Refugee Rights Hub, and through a visit to site, and we would like to extend my thanks to them for their generosity and insights.

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of such a space must entail a careful management of visibility and presence within the city (Migrant Help, 2022). The focus of the Hub is support for reuniting refugee families— acknowledging that you cannot settle fully in a place when your family is prevented from being there with you, together with an awareness of the inaccessibility of legal support for many. ‘The Hub was established in recognition of the fact that there were major gaps in legal advice and assistance following the withdrawal of Legal Aid that made access to essential immigration services impossible for large numbers of potential applicants’ (Wilding, 2022). Family reunion cases are often shorter in duration than full asylum claims, which can take many years to conclude, and therefore they are more likely to be processed during the student’s degree, enabling them to ‘see the case through’. While the key role of case workers is to represent their clients and submit their family reunion application to the Home Office in a manner that is most likely to be accepted, there is also an acknowledgement that their work goes well beyond this, and also involves relationship building and advocacy. The Refugee Rights Hub strives for justice through the legal system, but also crucially is a space of care. People who come through the doors may have been traumatised, and are often fighting complex and draining legal battles over extended time periods in precarious circumstances. This requires a sensitivity to how places are created so that people who are or may become clients can recognise themselves and feel welcome there. They may have been incarcerated or interned in small cell-like spaces, or taken dangerous journeys in confined circumstances, so the Hub is designed to avoid inadvertently replicating such spaces. Addressing such concerns requires consideration of the physical space and its aesthetics and organisation, its cultural and social qualities, and the structures that shape its production. The sensitive way the clinic’s founders have approached these issues of inclusion and civic role, and been alert to the importance of context, offers insights for university placemaking at a much broader level. The university estate is designed to inspire confidence in students, and aesthetically what can be quite formal and polished may be in tension with the need for a warm and relaxed space to discuss emotive and complex issues. Staffing may fluctuate due to changes in funding and the nature of the projects in which they are engaged. The ability to adapt the spatial organisation, décor and furniture can be slow within an institution that has to manage health and safety and ensure durability and ease of maintenance at scale across a large estate. For staff at the Refugee Rights Hub,

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spending on refurbishment or redesigning the space must be balanced with investing money on working directly with the clients. So those using and managing key public-facing spaces that support civic activity should be involved at an early stage in estate redevelopment at a granular level to enable institutional resources to be directed to make the most meaningful impact. This needs to be supported by creative and experienced design advice, perhaps in addition to formal consultation processes with the appointed architects or design team. In this instance, the pending relocation of the Refugee Rights Hub from a neighbourhood-based campus to the city centre will improve public transport links and accessibility and offers an important opportunity to work with clients and interns to rethink the design of their clinical spaces. Those managing the Hub must balance its function as a professional ‘clinical’ space of confidential documents and formal procedures with the need to offer a space of care and welcome, and as a site of learning for students. Some case workers and interpreters share a refugee background, and while their journeys and experiences are varied, they are likely to have encountered similar barriers or formal procedures to those using the service. This offers a connection to people already living in the city. Students carry out work as part of their curriculum and need supervision and support. Crucially, clients can connect with academic staff from different backgrounds and nationalities; this is possible due to wider structural work around recruitment and retention within the department and the Helena Kennedy Centre. Many clients have (multiple) degrees but depending on the country in which they gained their qualification could struggle to have it recognised in the UK, so bringing them into the university campus can be an opportunity to support them to convert their existing qualification or gain new ones. Liz Dew, a manager at the hub, also works on the New Beginnings mentoring scheme in partnership with Voluntary Action Sheffield, matching mentees to trained mentors from Sheffield Hallam University who can support refugees and asylum seekers into higher education. As a University of Sanctuary, within the first City of Sanctuary, Sheffield Hallam also offers three Sanctuary Scholarships annually to support talented students who have sought asylum in the UK. The scholarships are jointly funded by the university and through generous donations from former students. This can connect the university internationally, which can be of significant value in terms of learning, research, and culture beyond the Hub itself.

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The challenge of getting across the threshold is addressed through regular drop-ins, social events, and outreach activities, both on the threshold of the campus and elsewhere in the city with community and anti-racist organisations. The hosting of events in the university’s central Hallam Square next to its main entrance during Refugee Week gave the clinic a public presence in the city. A refugee choir, speakers and musicians performed in the amphitheatre beside a main pedestrianised public thoroughfare, and food was provided for all who wished to join. People who were homeless or precariously housed were able to join and share food. This work offers some important prompts in terms of who is included as a citizen within the practices of the civic university, making space for people to interact as equals, even if the state does not treat them as such. Live Works: Placemaking for Community Co-design The next typology we wish to explore is that of the ‘urban room’; sites within the city that host and support citizen engagement with, and participation in, its urban development. It has a particular focus on forms of development that may operate outside the market, or within the voluntary or community sector, shaping the spatial infrastructures of the everyday. The ideas of the urban room intersect with ‘live project’ pedagogy in architecture, which recognises the value for university students in learning through engagement with real world briefs or design problems, and co-­ production of knowledge by interacting with project clients and stakeholders. While live projects may involve commercial partners, there is an emphasis on working with non-profit organisations, or on projects with a social agenda. They also offer professional design services to those who may not usually be able to access them. ‘Urban rooms’ as a specific typology and function were a recommendation of the 2014 Farrell Review of Architecture and the Built Environment, a national independent review commissioned by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, looking across education and public engagement with place, planning and design quality, cultural heritage, the economic benefits of good design and built environment policy and leadership. Drawing on international examples, the review advocated for spaces of display and meeting within towns and cities where citizens can engage with the past, present and future of that place, with the aid of physical or virtual models, produced in collaboration with colleges or universities (Farrells, 2014). Tewdwr-Jones et  al. (2020) find echoes in this

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recommendation of the planner Patrick Geddes’ 1892 Outlook Tower in Edinburgh, an ‘urban observatory’ functioning as both museum and laboratory which included a ‘designated “Civic Business-room” as a discussion hub for “practical civic work”’ (ibid., p. 3). They note that exhibitions as a mode of engaging communities with proposed urban planning changes have a longer history, from the birth of modern planning and the early decades of the twentieth century. In these early presentations of urban futures, there was a decided split in the roles of planners and public, with people and places to be surveyed and planned for, then informed of these plans using visual tools to share the imaginaries of professional planners or government officials and to solicit ‘support, with political intent, for often far-reaching interventions intended to enhance the efficiency and liveability of urban regions’ (ibid., p. 3). The making of an exhibition within an urban context can be understood as the production of a specific form of temporary place that convenes particular publics. Live Works,3 (Fig. 8.2) established by the University of Sheffield School of Architecture in 2014, is a permanent university-funded urban room, and provides a spatial infrastructure to support and expand the forms of engagement, collaborative working, exchange of ideas and information and co-production of architectural and urban design projects that have been developed over nearly two decades through the School of Architecture’s live project programme (Sheffield School of Architecture Urban Education Live, 2018; 2019). The first location for the initiative was in a co-working space in Union Street in the centre of Sheffield, which also hosted start-up and non-profit businesses, and placed students among people active in cultural and creative work in the region. Between 2014 and 2016 students and staff from the university used the space for teaching and engagement, through workshops, a design studio in residence, urban walks, exhibitions and networking events. In 2018 Live Works moved to occupy a former shop unit on a key pedestrianised shopping street and here it can be seen to extend the university into the high street, hosting teaching and research workshops as well as local community activities.

3  Live Works operates within a national network of urban rooms which involves universities, local councils, civic societies, community groups and arts organisations. It is also a part of the campaigning organisation Place Alliance promoting design of buildings, streets and urban spaces to enhance quality of life.

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Fig. 8.2  Live Works. A permanent urban room in a high street shop unit. The project also hosts residencies and exhibitions in suburban spaces such as local libraries and supermarkets. Image © the authors

The spatial and material form of Live Works in its current incarnation at 108 The Moor combines the makeshift or transitional and the intentional. Traces of its former use as a retail unit are present in the glazed shop windows facing the street and suspended plastic ceiling tiles. Bespoke timber display furniture and tabletops printed with maps of the city speak a different language—that of the museum, gallery or design office. The white shell of the shop unit is flexible in allowing the configuration of the space for different uses: stools grouped around tables for design workshops, moveable seating for presentations to larger groups, with the walls papered with project examples and visuals, or a more formal and curated display for an exhibition. Live Works shares the space with social enterprise organisation Aalfy, who operate a maker space with laser cutters, 3d printer and hand tools and deliver enterprise training for vulnerable and socially excluded learners. Organisations that have been involved as Live Project clients valued the university’s role in hosting different community projects in the same space at Live Works and the opportunity to build understanding across the range of projects (Urban Education Live Sheffield Team,

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2020). Creating a space and time for people and organisations to come together allows strategic connections to be formed, and builds a sense of understanding between different projects. Alternative futures can be imagined through the common aims of envisaging changes to spaces in the city and communicating different communities’ concerns. CSM Rural: Placemaking in Climate Crisis Our third experimental typology is that of a landscape lab; a campus or site that operates to bring research and teaching into critical relation with the crisis of the Anthropocene through interdisciplinary fieldwork and creative pedagogy. Several UK universities are currently developing these large-scale, often rural or peri-urban sites for climate and biodiversity focused research and teaching programmes.4 While their teaching and research programmes and disciplinary emphasis vary, what links them is that they are an interface between the natural world (at scale), and public and third sector stakeholders who are focused on climate, biodiversity and rewilding goals, and civil society. The university acts as custodian or facilitator, sometimes through ownership of the site, or through a long lease agreement, or working in partnership with other landowners with civic responsibilities. The landscape lab can be understood as a complex and evolving site of experimentation that has a role in hosting and supporting developing interconnected areas of knowledge. These initiatives have arisen in recognition of complex civic challenges such as the climate crisis, which require interdisciplinary approaches to research, the development of field-based skills, and the mobilisation of civic society. UK Research and Innovation, which coordinates academic research funding in the UK, recognises that ‘many of the most pressing research challenges are interdisciplinary in nature, both within the social sciences and between the social sciences and other areas of research’ (ESRC, 2022). Interdisciplinarity in these contexts is driven by issues emerging from the relationships between place, civic actors and critical knowledge production, brought together with existential crisis at 4  Key examples include; The Architectural Association’s Hooke Park, a woodland campus in Devon that is ‘an educational facility for design, workshop, construction and landscapefocused activities’ (“AA Hooke Park”, 2014); and Sheffield Hallam University’s Langsett Living Landscape Laboratory which seeks to develop a Lakeland landscape partnership to support knowledge exchange, research and community engagement, and Lancaster Landscape Lab.

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planetary scale. In developing such programmes, there is a recognition that in responding to and working with climate emergency and climate collapse we are in new territories of knowledge uncertainty. Such challenges require responsiveness and commitment over extended periods of time, often working to a different rhythm than the academic year, and one which is informed by natural processes, stakeholder capacities and restraints, and the longer duration required for meaningful public engagement (Barnett, 2011). The physical extent of landscape labs is often driven by issues such as land ownership and ecological territories (for example the scale of a water catchment area), as well as the needs and requirements of the university’s programmes. Central St Martins is commencing a five-year pilot project with a working title of CSM Rural (Fig.  8.3), a programme of placemaking that engages well beyond the institution’s immediate geographic context in central London.5 The initiators describe their ambition to create a dedicated biosphere reserve to construct and explore radical ecological systemic change in creative education.6 While at an early stage of development, it is an interesting example of this typology in relation to the civic university and placemaking. One of the key early partners is Forestry England, England’s largest land manager (Forestry England, 2022). It has recently expanded its remit from focusing on timber growth and sales to include commitments around public health and wellbeing, education and ecological remediation. This nascent partnership has led to the selection of the approximately 100-acre site in Dalby Forest, Yorkshire. Forestry England is a key player in what will become a broader consortium. A driving aim for Central St Martins is to develop eco-literacy skills around living systems, through experiential and transformative pedagogies.7 Andreas Lang wants to develop a context in which students, who will become future design leaders, can build empathy with the natural environment: ‘It is only by having transformational experiences within a  Led by Dr Heather Barnett, Prof Carole Collet and Andreas Lang.  Internal document prepared by Barnett, Collet and Lang, shared with the authors by Andreas Lang during the writing of this chapter, 2022. 7  This project can be understood as allied with, and informed by important non-institutional natureculture programmes such as Floating University (“FLOATING BERLIN”, 2022); Climate Care by Soft Agency (“Climate Care”, 2019), and R-Urban (“R-Urban English”, 2014), which have been at the cutting edge of practice based research on commons, and art and design-led ecological remediation work, and share overlapping protagonists and methodological approaches. 5 6

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Fig. 8.3  CSM Rural. Bringing students from central London to North Yorkshire poses a challenge but will also offer an immersive complex and evolving site of experimentation. Image © the authors

living system that this empathy can be nurtured. There is also a move back to the city or dialogue with urbanised areas where hopefully that new understanding or empathy to and with nature can inform placemaking practices’.8 The CSM Rural pilot programme will initially take the form of workshops, one-day field trips, short forest stays, and medium to long-­ term residencies. Year one will bring students from the MA Art and Science and the M.Arch Architecture together on site through experimental briefs that support the first stages of collaborative placemaking, as well as research-led activities. The proposal is organised around three intersecting spheres: climate and ecology, commons and publics, and identities and equity. The programming explicitly opens space to collaboratively navigate

8

 In conversation with Andreas Lang during the writing of this chapter, 2022.

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different approaches to activities such as rewilding and biodiversity, inclusion, and more equitable economic models. This proposal signals an important commitment to long-term engagement with site and stakeholders, predicated on experiential and situated design practices. What placemaking is in this context, and how it develops, is driven by pedagogical, ecological and social justice aims, but is allowed to emerge through an iterative process where mutual learning emerges between students, academics, civic partners and the site itself.

Spaces of Learning: Tension, Transition, Translation We have introduced these examples because in their careful attention to issues of social justice, climate care and collective agency, we consider that they each make places in ways that could benefit the wider university, both within and beyond its civic agenda, and also the city. To understand and feedback ongoing learning from these sites into the university placemaking strategy requires careful labour, sometimes in ways that will challenge existing structures and ways of doing. Each site must navigate tensions and complicities as they act from within a large and powerful institution, often with grassroots organisations or vulnerable communities. Each site hosts actors with a combination of civic, pedagogical and employability goals. Shaping a spatial infrastructure for these heterogeneous needs requires a constant attention to how the space might need to be adapted as these requirements evolve. This must happen in relation to changing programmatic needs, and a fluctuating community of students, researchers, members of the public and wider civic stakeholders, and a responsive civic agenda informed by situated contingencies and politics. The granular detail and fluidity such spaces require can be at odds with university estates programmes planned at scale and far into the future, often driven by top-­ down and quantifiable understandings of spatial requirements. We argue that these examples show approaches that can better attune universities to issues of justice, equity and inclusion throughout their campuses, generating an understanding of how universities’ structures and programmes of placemaking could adapt to changing civic contexts. These instances demonstrate how a permeable boundary rather than a fixed border can be a useful site of transition, neither wholly determined by the institution, nor a fully public space. Those entering these sites from the university and the city can each gain an awareness of differences, tensions and opportunities. The interface can be a site of translation, where meaningful relations and coproduced knowledge practices can emerge.

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References AA Hooke Park. (2014). Hooke Park – AA School’s woodland campus. Retrieved May 27, 2022, from https://hookepark.aaschool.ac.uk/ Barnett, R. (2011). The coming of the ecological university. Oxford Review of Education, 37(4), 439–455. https://doi.org/10.1080/0305498 5.2011.595550 Chatterton, P. (2010). Commentary: The student city: An ongoing story of neoliberalism, gentrification, and commodification. Environment and Planning A, 42(3), 509–514. Climate Care. (2019). Retrieved May 27, 2022, from https://climatecare.s-­o-­f-­ t.agency/ Cobban, A. (1992). The medieval English universities: Oxford and Cambridge to c.1500. University of California Press. Corneil, J., & Parsons, P. (2007). The contribution of campus design to the knowledge society: An international perspective. In K. Hoeger & K. Christiaanse (Eds.), Campus and the city  – Urban design for the knowledge society (pp. 114–127). GTA Verlag. Ehlenz, M. M. (2019). The university and its neighborhood: A study of placemaking and change. Journal of Urban Affairs, 41(6), 776–794. https://doi. org/10.1080/07352166.2018.1530568 ESRC. (2022). Impact, innovation and interdisciplinarity expectations. Retrieved May 27, 2022, from https://www.ukri.org/councils/esrc/guidance-­for-­ applicants/impact-­innovation-­and-­interdisciplinarity-­expectations/ Farrells. (2014). Our future in place: The Farrell review of architecture and the built environment. Retrieved July 21, 2022, from http://www.farrellreview.co.uk/ FLOATING BERLIN. (2022). Retrieved May 27, 2022, from https://floating-­ berlin.org/ Forestry England. (2022). Retrieved May 27, 2022, from https://www.forestryengland.uk/ Goddard, J., & Vallance, P. (2013). The university and the city. Routledge. Hardie, L., Mcfaul, H., & Ryan, F. (2020). 50 years of clinical legal education: Looking back to the future. In L. Claydon, C. Derry, & M. Ajevski (Eds.), Law in motion: 50 years of legal change (pp. 212–227). The Open University Law School. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://oro.open.ac.uk/74342/1/50% 20Years%20-­%20Hardie%20McFaul%20Ryan.pdf Hebbert, M. (2018). The campus and the city: A design revolution explained. Journal of Urban Design, 23(6), 883–897. Hubbard, P. (2009). Geographies of studentification and purpose-built student accommodation: Leading separate lives? Environment and Planning A, 41(8), 1903–1923.

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Kelsall, C. (1814). Phantasm of a university: With Prolegomena. White, Cochrane, and Company. Merlin, P. (1995). LʼUrbanisme Universitaire à lʼÉtranger et en France. Presses de lʼécole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées. Migrant Help. (2022). The hate that they are forced to bear. Retrieved May 21, 2022, from https://www.migranthelpuk.org/news/the-­hate-­that-­they­are-­forced-­to-­bear Millington, S. (2016). Universities and place making. American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, Conference Report 3. Retrieved July 29, 2022, from https://e-­space.mmu.ac.uk/608469/ Minton, A. (2012). Ground control: Fear and happiness in the twenty-first century city. Penguin. Moos, M., Revington, N., Wilkin, T., & Andrey, J. (2019). The knowledge economy city: Gentrification, studentification and youthification, and their connections to universities. Urban Studies, 56(6), 1075–1092. https://doi. org/10.1177/0042098017745235 Refugee Rights Hub—Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice. (2022). Retrieved June 4, 2022, from https://refugeerightshub.shu.ac.uk/ R-Urban. (2014). Retrieved May 27, 2022, from http://r-­urban.net/en/ Sage, J., Smith, D., & Hubbard, P. (2013). New-build studentification: A panacea for balanced communities? Urban Studies, 50(13), 2623–2641. Samatar, A., Madriaga, M., & McGrath, L. (2021). No love found: How female students of colour negotiate and repurpose university spaces. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 42(5–6), 717–732. https://doi.org/10.1080/0142569 2.2021.1914548 Sheffield School of Architecture Urban Education Live. (2018). Sheffield live works: The UK’s first permanent university-funded ‘Urban Room’. Retrieved July 21, 2022, from https://medium.com/urban-­education-­live/sheffield-­live­works-­the-­uks-­first-­permanent-­university-­funded-­urban-­room-­f f11191aaca2 Sheffield School of Architecture Urban Education Live. (2019). UEL and SSoA collaborate on exhibition of student work. Retrieved July 21, 2022, from https://medium.com/urban-­education-­live/uel-­and-­ssoa-­collaborate-­on­exhibition-­of-­student-­work-­1d1f5a64975c Tewdwr-Jones, M., Sookhoo, D., & Freestone, R. (2020). From Geddes’ city museum to Farrell’s urban room: Past, present, and future at the Newcastle City Futures exhibition. Planning Perspectives, 35(2), 277–297. https://doi. org/10.1080/02665433.2019.1570475 Toker, Z. (2007). Recent trends in community design: The eminence of participation. Design Studies, 28(3), 309–323. Urban Education Live Sheffield Team. (2020). Collaborations between the university and local communities. Retrieved July 21, 2022, from https://urbedu. live/test-­stream/

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Whyte, W. H. (2015). Redbrick: A social and architectural history of Britain’s civic universities. Oxford University Press. Wilding, J. (2022). Beyond advice deserts: Strategic ignorance and the lack of access to asylum legal advice. The Journal of the Society for Advanced Legal Studies, 3(3), 472–489. Wilkinson, T. (2015). Typology: Universities. Architectural Review, 238(1424), 36–45.

CHAPTER 9

Bringing Civic Impact to Life Julian Dobson

and Ed Ferrari

The clarion call of the Civic University Commission was for universities to be ‘truly civic’. Implicit in that call is a form of benchmark or litmus test: that  while many universities adopt a rhetoric of civic engagement, only some, it is implied, are civic in their actions. But defining that test can be as problematic as defining the will of the people; the temptation is to take a shortcut that truncates the question to a single issue (or set of issues) with a binary response. The contributors to this book, in different ways, highlight the impossibility and dangers of such a reductive approach. They highlight, too, the opportunities and potential of civic engagement and praxis across a wide range of issues, in multiple forms, working with partners to weave a dense fabric or meshwork of connections.

J. Dobson (*) • Ed Ferrari Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Dobson, Ed Ferrari (eds.), Reframing the Civic University, Rethinking University-Community Policy Connections, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17686-9_9

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The Relevance of Universities The question of what is at stake in discourses of the civic university is a question both for universities and for the communities they serve. It cannot be resolved within the walls of a vice-chancellor’s office or a governing body’s boardroom, as Jonathan Slater and Farah Hussain highlight in Chap. 2. The question concerns both the relevance of universities and the purpose of universities. Taking the question of relevance first, this is an issue of relevance to places and to populations. The question of place goes beyond the issue of location: who would have expected Coventry University, for instance, to have a special relationship with the Yorkshire seaside resort of Scarborough (Chap. 5)? Place involves both a ‘where’—where are the boundaries drawn around the university’s place, fuzzy and plural as those boundaries may be—and a ‘what’: what does the university understand this place to be? The geographer Doreen Massey describes the ‘throwntogetherness’ of places (Massey, 2005); the poet Kei Miller goes further, insisting that place is the ‘violence’ (Miller, 2019) implicit and explicit in power dynamics. Massey’s throwntogetherness highlights the happenstance and intertwining of place, the co-storied existences that overlay a location with meanings and relationships. Miller’s insistence on the violence of place comes from the disruption of relationships in the making of places through traumatic experiences of colonisation, enslavement and ecological devastation, and highlights the more general truth that places write power struggles and oppression into the landscape. Through both historic and contemporary examples (e.g., France post-1968 and the Helena Kennedy Centre’s Refugee Rights Hub), Julia Udall and Anna Wakeford Holder in Chap. 8 show how universities—both destructively and progressively—are always ‘interfaces’ in the spatialised exercise or translation of power. Just as universities are part of the stories of intertwining and happenstance, they are also imbricated in histories of domination, as often as not curtailing rather than widening civic participation and serving the interests of those who wish to circumscribe academic inquiry rather than expand it. Those tensions are particularly uncomfortable when politicians seek to enrol higher education institutions into culture wars they have no wish to fight. To those outside the academy, it is far from given that universities enter the arena as benefactors or even as neutrals, although this is often how they prefer to portray themselves.

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As universities identify the settings for their civic mission, they need a sense not only of what their relationship with such places could be but also a deeper understanding of what the relationship has been. Much of the work of universities in the United States in developing their role as ‘anchor institutions’ has necessitated a realisation that universities have frequently been detrimental to communities, and to the more disadvantaged groups within those communities. Universities have in many cases perpetuated elitism and fuelled gentrification, pricing out people on low incomes rather than opening doors for them. In the United States there is some evidence that this also perpetuates racial divides (Revington et al., 2021). They also impact on neighbourhood dynamics through regular episodes of low-level antisocial behaviour by students; although local residents may put up with the disruption of partying and rubbish strewn outside houses, they may see the university rather than individual students as culpable (Woldoff & Weiss, 2018). Again, it is often those on low incomes or in poor housing who bear the brunt, being unable to move away from student-dominated neighbourhoods. In proclaiming their civic-ness without reference to their problematic impacts, universities risk reinforcing public perceptions of academic arrogance. So the question of relevance to place also raises the question of which populations universities acknowledge and relate to within a place. A conversation between institutional leaders within a location—the elected mayor or council leader, local authority chief officers, health service chief executives, the chief constable, and so on—can feel as alien to the general public as a theoretical debate at an academic conference. Universities may be entirely genuine in wanting to widen participation but need to ask themselves why more people would want to participate, and what they want to participate in. What is it that universities offer people on low incomes, young people from minoritised communities or disadvantaged postcodes, or adults who feel they have been left behind by the worlds of education and work? For large sections of the population in twenty first century Britain, life is increasingly precarious, with insecure housing, a polluted environment, limited job security and the imminent prospect of cold, hungry winters (Dobson & Atkinson, 2020). A civic university agreement may  mean little to them if it is not accompanied by visible, well-resourced action that addresses some of the basic securities required for contemporary life.

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The Purpose of Universities The concept of the civic university also raises questions about the purpose of universities. These questions are smoothed over rather than delved into in much of the civic university discourse. The public benefits of education and access to labour markets can become conflated with an often-­ unquestioning acceptance of the benefits of competition and selection, in which grades are considered a proxy for merit. League tables that rate universities according to graduate employment prospects (such as the Times Higher Education Global University Employability Ranking) bolster the view that higher-paid jobs are of greater social worth. And while higher-paid graduates can contribute more to the tax take, it does not necessarily follow that their labour produces more socially desirable outcomes. If a university claims to be civic, perhaps it should seek to prioritise different metrics that may more roundly reflect the civic good they do. As well as measuring graduate salaries, for example, perhaps they could also rate their impact in terms of graduates’ job satisfaction, levels of wellbeing, and contributions to public life. As well as celebrating students’ academic grades and job outcomes, a civic university might also celebrate their contributions to the local economy and society after they graduate as indicators of the fulfilment of their civic mission. As we noted in Chap. 1, this is a shift in orientation from being of a place to being for it. A university for Oxford or Southampton or Durham might make different decisions to those that are simply of those places; and of in this case is a preposition that can often be exchanged for in without making any discernible difference.

A Civic Logic What we call for in this book, then, is not only an increase in civic activities within higher education, but more importantly, the adoption of a driving logic that has civic benefit at its heart. This is far from straightforward. While universities might claim to hold to a civic ‘order of worth’ in which public outcomes are valued most highly (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006), this orientation exists in an uneasy symbiosis with the valorisation of individual academic and labour market success—what Boltanski and Thévenot would describe as a polity of ‘fame’ in which worth is equated with the esteem in which an individual is held by virtue of their job, grades, influence or possessions. Universities seek social goods while encouraging

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individuals to outcompete each other to achieve the highest standing. In recent decades governments have emphasised the latter in the belief that the former will happen as a by-product; that the social sorting achieved by individual grading and the alignment of courses with market demand will also strengthen society and communities. Evidence suggests otherwise: in 2021, children of more privileged parents were 60% more likely to be in a professional job than those from a working class background (Social Mobility Commission, 2021). These orders of worth are not fixed in stone, even if they are ingrained within institutions. They are dynamic ways of making sense of the world and prioritising tasks and goals in a complex environment. As Wilkinson (1997, p. 318) stresses: …rules are not prior to action nor are they elaborated from outside the action but emerge within the process of actor co-ordination … they represent a response to problems arising within such co-ordination and should be understood as mechanisms of clarification which are themselves also open to future challenge.

Universities, and the individuals within them, turn to different driving logics at different times. They may frame this as mission or responsibility. In an interview some years ago with one of the authors, Ira Harkavy, a founder of the Anchor Institutions Task Force and the Democracy Collaborative in the United States, stressed that a civic orientation was not simply business as usual: [A]n anchor plays a role of working to improve the quality of life in this environment and being a genuine neighbour … and seeing itself as having a mission that is for the population that they’re part of, the groups they’re part of geographically, and seeing that future as somewhat intertwined with the environment. And we … have consciously given an even stronger tone by emphasising not just intentionality for the anchors, but actually encouraging them to act in ways that advance democracy, democratic practice and collaboration, social justice and equity, and place-based orientation. (Harkavy, 2016)

However apparently monolithic and impenetrable an institution appears to be, we echo institutional theorists in arguing that they are in fact permeable, contestable and able to change, even if such change is usually incremental (Lowndes & Roberts, 2013). Universities are an arena within

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which different orientations and potential futures can be offered, contested and diverted by drawing on different logics and values. Another university, in the words of student activists, is possible. Indeed, many other universities are possible. To be ‘civic’ is to engage with such possibilities.

Beyond Civic Impact In developing the Civic Impact Framework, we sought to build on a movement towards a civic orientation that is already happening across many universities. We wanted to take this further, inviting university leaders and colleagues to extend civic thinking into new or under-explored domains, asking the ‘what if?’ questions that open up new conversations about what kind of universities, and what kind of places, might be possible. In turn we have been challenged ourselves by some of the thinking and critique offered by contributors to this volume. The Civic Impact Framework was never intended as a final word, but documents easily become ossified. So we welcome Nicola Gratton and Martin Jones’s call in Chap. 7 for us to be ‘more than civic’: to put communities right at the heart of conversations and elevate the voices of those with lived experience of the challenges universities frequently consider themselves well-placed to solve. We welcome too Julia Udall and Anna Wakeford Holder’s exploration in Chap. 8 of the effects of the spaces universities create and help to animate, along with their timely reminder that the crises we now face demand a deeper engagement beyond ‘society’ to the more-than-human world. Amanda Crawley Jackson and Chris Baker’s call for a ‘tilted view’ in Chap. 6 is an important reminder that as academics we operate from a privileged perspective that we all too often treat as a norm, while Jonathan Slater and Farah Hussain (Chap. 2) and Kirstie O’Neill (Chap. 4) rightly expose the contrast between well-meaning rhetoric and properly resourced action. Across their contributions, several authors in this volume stress the need to move away from thinking about the ‘needs’ of communities to celebrating and building on their assets. Sue Jarvis makes exactly this point in Chap. 3 when she provides the examples of how academic research projects can bring social impact, but that these projects and their impacts need to be better understood from the community perspective. Liz Mear and Paul Johnstone in Chap. 5 show how the same concepts of asset-based and place-based approaches are an effective way of tackling health inequalities. We agree that building on community assets needs to be integral to concepts of civic impact.

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In different ways the authors gathered in these pages couple an excitement about the potential for universities to make a difference with a frustration at the limited progress made to date. Some of their proposals might seem radical or utopian to some university leaders, but they need to be seen as sparks for engagement and reflection: it is all too easy to default to a self-justificatory pragmatism that, in the end, fails to address the global and local challenges we now face. This highlights the need for a deeper engagement with civic activity that calls into question the orientation and values of an institution. Engaging in civic activity and ‘being civic’ should be seen as different: most universities engage in civic activity one way or another, but few put their place (however defined) on a par with their core activities of teaching, learning, research and innovation. In that sense they remain in their places rather than for them. Our call is for universities that claim to be civic to embrace this mission wholeheartedly: to align their work closely with the aspirations and assets of the communities within their places. This may bring exciting new possibilities that give local people a genuine stake in their higher education institutions, but it is also likely to cause some soul-­ searching and controversy about how best (or whether) to continue or develop existing activities and specialisms. At a time of insecurity and hardship those conversations may be difficult, but they are worth having in order to engage with the greater insecurities and hardships facing our places and our planet.

Bringing Civic Impact to Life How to be civic, and what constitutes the civic, is thus open to argument and evolution. In concluding this book, we hope it will help to take that process forward in three ways. First, we hope to contribute to a broader conversation about what is civic. We do not see government or university leadership as exclusive arbiters of civic value. Following Boltanski and Thévenot, we see the civic as that which constitutes and contributes to the common good as a priority, and to the betterment of individuals as a consequence of its collective force. ‘Civic’ need not be limited to questions of universities’ contribution to the local economy, productivity and social mobility. In line with the Civic Impact Framework, we would argue that it includes every domain in which universities’ activity impinges on wider society, whether that impact is intentional or not.

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Second, we would like to see a more grounded approach to civic activity. The current civic turn within universities has been largely driven by senior leaders and public engagement staff, drawing in those involved in different forms of public outreach and widening participation. The commitment of senior leaders is welcome and needs to be stepped up. But it carries the risk of instituting top-down approaches in which engagement with wider society is decided on universities’ terms; as Jonathan Slater and Farah Hussain note in Chap. 2, this can be a very thin veneer on top of business as usual. Civic university agreements that state what universities want to do, however well-meant, can perpetuate paternalistic attitudes and run the danger of turning civic action into something done to communities rather than with them. The test of a civic university agreement is not only the extent of its ambition but also, and more importantly, how deeply a process of engagement and conversation has informed its development. A grounded approach, building up from respectful and careful dialogue, recognises too the fluidity within communities and the need to calibrate the pace of change in line with communities’ resources to engage meaningfully in co-production at a scale and pace that makes sense to them. Universities can assist that process by setting funds and time aside to engage in conversations with multiple communities on their own ground and on their own terms. It will also involve finding ways of recognising, encouraging, celebrating and learning from the myriad grounded activities that civically minded academics and university professionals co-create with communities, often flying under the radar of ‘formal’ civic university structures or strategies. In a brief internal review of initiatives and activities within the authors’ own College, dozens of examples of genuinely civically oriented activities with local communities were unearthed, none of which had been conceived with the epithet ‘civic’ attached to them or indeed necessarily recognised as civic by university leaders. Finally, we would like to see an approach to civic action that is more open to contestation and debate. Places, and the communities within them, are multi-dimensional and offer multiple identities and voices. Universities, too, offer multiple facets of engagement with the public and multiple forms of identity, which can sometimes be obscured when senior management and external affairs functions colonise an institution’s civic strategy. Often a simple gesture such as the removal of a boundary fence, as happened during the recent redevelopment of the University of Glasgow’s campus, can increase the sense of the university as a public space, rather than being in the public’s space.

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This contestation should willingly include re-examining universities’ problematic histories and how they have reinforced narratives of oppression and exclusion. A university that wishes to proclaim its civic credentials cannot at the same time, in our view, fail to engage critically with forms of heritage that are entangled with practices such as enslavement or child labour. Universities are also in a privileged position to encourage their key partners in the commercial and public spheres to be similarly self-reflective. Civic debate requires, too, an engagement with the difficulty of place as well as the opportunity. As an illustration, many twenty first century British city centres are pockmarked with low-quality student housing (see Chap. 8). Even when these have been the consequence of speculation by private actors rather than by universities themselves, universities should question how their expansion plans impact on property markets and neighbourhood dynamics in the places they claim to serve. Those impacts are often far from positive (Chatterton, 2010). Extending the concept of place to include those localities and even countries that fall within the functional footprint of a university’s activities, Kirstie O’Neill in Chap. 4 shows how universities embed carbon within their buildings, local transport and— most problematically perhaps—the intensive aero-mobility of academics. Recognising and addressing the environmental and ecological impacts of the higher education endeavour demands not only progressive policies governing how universities do their work, but engaging with the core questions of relevance and purpose highlighted at the start of this chapter. In conclusion, it seems clear to us that there are no templates for the ideal form of civic engagement, but there are some very clear principles. Most importantly, the thread that runs throughout is the importance of a critical gaze—questioning and challenging the core purpose of a university, not seeing it as ossified but alive and capable of, and indeed requiring, change. As Jonathan Slater and Farah Hussain warn, institutional autonomy is not guaranteed, and neither is a benign environment in which the sector can be ‘truly’ civic. This makes it all the more important for the sector to develop and amplify genuine civic leadership that defines and pursues a mission of civic engagement collectively, with clarity and with communities to the fore. Throughout this volume we have heard a range of perspectives, albeit not exhaustive and certainly only selective in their coverage. But even across the themes we’ve looked at—sector leadership, community partnerships, the climate emergency, health, culture, economic development, and

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placemaking—it is clear that all action will involve trade-offs between different goals and ambitions, and decisions on who is included and how. Our discourses of civic impact must acknowledge this messiness. The civic university, at root, is not one that flies the flag most visibly but one that, to adapt the words of Donna Haraway, ‘stays with the trouble’ of place (Metzger, 2016), consistently welcoming challenge and critique and being prepared to live with ‘good-enough’ responses in the knowledge that they may be good enough for now, but will inevitably need to be revisited in the near future. Civic needs to be woven into the fabric. It sometimes needs to fly under the radar. The hidden and everyday facets of genuine civic action and engagement, wherever they may be found, should be acknowledged and celebrated. And the sector, collectively and individually, needs to listen, challenge itself constantly and undergo a process of never-ending reinvention to become a force that works for places and communities.

References Boltanski, L., & Thévenot, L. (2006). On justification: Economies of worth. Princeton University Press. Chatterton, P. (2010). The student city: An ongoing story of neoliberalism, gentrification, and commodification. Environment and planning A: Economy and space, 42(3), 509–514. https://doi.org/10.1068/a42293 Dobson, J., & Atkinson, R. (Eds.). (2020). Urban crisis, urban hope. Anthem Press. Harkavy, I. (2016, May 4). Personal communication. Lowndes, V., & Roberts, M. (2013). Why institutions matter: The new institutionalism in political science. Palgrave Macmillan. Massey, D. (2005). For space. SAGE. Metzger, J. (2016). The subject of place: Staying with the trouble. In T. Haas & K. Olsson (Eds.), Emergent Urbanism: Urban planning and design in times of structural and systemic change (pp. 107–116). Routledge. Miller, K. (2019). Sometimes I consider the names of places. PN Review, 46(1) https://www.pnreview.co.uk/cgi-­bin/scribe?item_id=10575 Revington, N., Zwick, A., Hartt, M., & Schlosser, J. (2021). Universities and urban social structure: Gentrification, studentification and youthification in five United States legacy cities. Urban Geography. https://doi.org/10.108 0/02723638.2021.1985306 Social Mobility Commission. (2021). State of the nation 2021: Social mobility and the pandemic. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/

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uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1003977/State_of_the_ nation_2021_-­_Social_mobility_and_the_pandemic.pdf Wilkinson, J. (1997). A new paradigm for economic analysis? Economy and Society, 26(3), 305–339. Woldoff, R. A., & Weiss, K. G. (2018). Studentification and disorder in a college town. City and Community, 17(1), 259–275.

Index1

A Anchor institution(s), 5–8, 22, 27, 41, 48, 56, 93, 106, 124, 165, 167 Asset-based community development (ABCD), 43, 45, 46, 51, 86, 92, 93, 97, 122, 129, 130, 132, 138, 168 Austerity, 36, 51, 126, 147 C Campus, see Estates Carbon emissions, see Climate change CBPR, see Community-based participatory research Children and young people, 47–49, 92, 125 Civic Impact Framework, 2, 3, 12, 29, 30, 56, 84, 86, 106, 109, 114, 115, 124, 168, 169 Civic Universities Network, 2, 3

Civic University Agreement (CUA), 10, 13, 21, 25–29, 31–38, 124, 128, 165, 170 Civic University Commission, 4, 6, 10, 27, 64, 163 Civic University Network, 12, 13, 26, 29–31, 33, 38, 86, 88, 90, 93, 102, 104, 106, 109, 114 Civil society, 105, 121–139, 146, 149, 153, 156 Climate change, 2, 13, 21, 49, 51, 63–77, 148, 149, 156–159, 171 Community-based participatory research (CBPR), 43, 44, 52, 129 Community University Partnership Programme (CUPP), 43, 51 Connected Communities, 43, 107, 125, 128, 130, 131, 133–136, 138 Consultation, 26, 28, 30, 33, 48, 129, 132, 148, 152

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Dobson, Ed Ferrari (eds.), Reframing the Civic University, Rethinking University-Community Policy Connections, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17686-9

175

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INDEX

Co-production, 42, 47, 51–56, 71, 129, 153, 154, 170 Covid-19, 2, 30, 42, 46, 49–51, 53, 96, 126, 137 CUAs, see Civic University Agreements Culture, 13, 22, 54, 65, 68, 74, 90, 96, 101–116, 132, 152, 164, 171 D Deprivation, 44, 45, 50, 94, 121, 122, 125, 135 E Ecology/biodiversity, 2, 13, 29, 63, 68, 74, 77, 111, 112, 148, 149, 156–159 Economy, 5–7, 10, 11, 21, 22, 34, 44, 67, 72, 104, 105, 121–125, 127, 128, 132, 135, 139, 166, 169 Equalities, 77 Estates/campus, 13, 22, 65, 70–72, 77, 85, 89, 112, 123, 144–149, 151–153, 156, 159 buildings, 4, 6, 8, 9, 12, 13, 22, 29, 45, 64, 65, 67, 70–72, 77, 85, 90, 110, 112, 121, 123, 126, 144–153, 148n1, 156, 156n4, 159, 170 Evaluation, 13, 26, 29, 50, 52, 56, 90, 92, 93, 95–96, 98, 115, 133–135 G Gentrification, 72, 146, 165 Governance, 9, 29, 37, 38, 49, 67, 77, 125, 130 Government, 2, 4, 5, 10, 11, 21, 26–28, 36, 39, 42, 50, 52, 56,

63, 64, 73, 84, 92, 104, 122, 126, 127, 146, 148, 153, 154, 167, 169 H Hallam, see Sheffield Hallam University Hardship, 122, 135–138, 169 Health, 13, 21, 44, 49, 50, 53, 83–93, 95–98, 132, 139, 157 mental health, 49, 83, 86, 88, 91–93, 96, 97, 137 I Inequalities/inequality, 11, 21, 22, 34, 42–44, 49, 50, 54, 74–76, 83, 86, 89, 92, 93, 97, 101, 103, 107, 122, 124, 132, 136, 149, 165, 168 Interface sites, 22, 143–159 K Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF), 10, 13, 54, 103 L Leadership, 3, 6, 7, 10, 13, 21, 22, 25–39, 41, 42, 47–49, 53, 54, 75, 96, 97, 126, 130, 153, 169, 171 Levelling Up, 11, 51, 56, 57, 64, 104, 122 Liverpool, 42, 44–45, 47–51, 53, 55, 56, 94 Local government, 9–11, 21, 26, 34, 36, 42, 50, 52, 63, 87, 88, 90, 92, 102, 106, 126, 127

 INDEX 

London, 9, 21, 25, 31, 32, 34, 89, 126, 157, 158 M Manchester, 28, 31, 32, 34, 88, 89, 95 Mapping, 13, 29, 86–88, 113, 133 N National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement, 31 NHS, 11, 27, 33, 34, 50, 86, 88–90, 92, 123 P Pandemic, see Covid-19 Partnership(s), 9, 13, 26–29, 32–35, 43–45, 47–49, 51, 54, 72, 86–91, 95–97, 103, 104, 107, 109, 121–124, 126, 129, 131, 133, 146, 148, 149, 152, 156, 156n4, 157, 171 Placemaking, 13, 22, 29, 130, 132, 143–159, 164, 172 Procurement, 10, 93, 124, 127 Public engagement, 7, 10, 42–45, 47, 52, 54, 56, 107, 153, 157, 170 R Refugees, 86, 94, 148, 150–153 Research Excellence Framework (REF), 54, 103

177

Resources, 2, 10, 21, 27, 29, 41, 42, 51, 53–56, 83, 86, 88, 91–93, 95, 97, 98, 102, 110, 111, 132, 143, 147, 149, 152, 170 S Scotland, 97 Sheffield, 36, 102, 110–112, 148, 154 Sheffield Hallam University, 22, 28, 29, 31, 33, 37, 112, 116, 148, 150, 152, 156n4 Social impact, 13, 21, 29, 41–57, 123, 124, 127, 128, 168 Social value, 44, 54, 123–125, 128 Staffordshire, 31, 34, 122, 124, 126–139 Strategy, 2, 6–8, 11, 13, 29, 30, 38, 45, 54–56, 66, 106, 109, 115, 122, 124, 125, 128–131, 133, 134, 138, 159, 170 Student housing, 70, 72, 146, 171 Sustainability, 47, 64, 66–69, 71, 75–77, 96 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 42, 56 W Wales, 39, 89 Wellbeing, 2, 13, 21, 29, 41, 42, 49, 52, 53, 56, 77, 84, 86–93, 95–98, 124, 132, 137, 157, 166 Widening participation, 6, 41, 45, 84–86, 123, 165, 170