Creating a UK community partner network: building capacity, stimulating change.

The thrust of this project is to contribute to a cultural shift that embeds appropriate and inclusive community engagement in research across academic disciplines, including the arts and humanities. It will improve community partner infrastructure support so that community partner capacity to lead on, and engage with, community university partnership projects is enhanced. Academics, research councils and the higher education policy arena more generally should benefit from the partnerships that then emerge.

This bid has emerged directly from 'Building Community University Partnership Resilience', a current Connected Communities Programme (CCP) project led by community partners, and championed by university academics committed to supporting community partners to build their collective capacity in ways they choose. That project has established a clear long term vision for a community partner network hosted by the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) with support from Principal Investigator Hart and the other academics signed up to this bid. As a result of the current CCP project, there is already an emergent network. Thus far, many of the community partners involved work with social science academics, and a handful with academics from the arts. Consolidation of the network is needed, and it must be expanded to include more community partners working with arts and humanities academics. The new collaborators included will also help the network to be more inclusive, with young people, mental health service users and Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Trans (LGBT) community partners (and their academic partners) on board.

This next phase of development will enable the network to connect more explicitly with community partners and academics from 8 other CC projects, alongside many collaborators new to the CCP. It will also facilitate wider learning from international colleagues from whom the UK has much to learn in relation to community partnership leadership. As with Building Community University Partnership Resilience, there is a clear role for academics from many different disciplines to play in supporting and promoting it, including harnessing the enthusiasm of early career researchers.

The project will seek to develop the network by:

- Encouraging and facilitating a wider range of community partners involved in Connected Communities Programme projects and other community-university partnerships to get involved
- Drawing more fully on arts and humanities perspectives to provide insights into how best to take this work forward (through collaborating with other projects in the Connected Communities Programme)
- Facilitating learning between UK and international organisations already experienced in community university partnership working, particularly those working on arts and humanities related projects
- Developing resources and support infrastructure to provide a platform for community partners working with universities to develop their regional and national voice, adding their experiences and insights to policy and funding debate

Four academic collaborators on this bid are particularly focused on how arts and humanities researchers and their partners can bring fresh perspectives to enabling more equal and effective partnership work, whilst maintaining the rigour necessary to develop research of value. All academic collaborators have partnered with a range of community partners from across the UK, actively seeking to develop effective relationships with universities and keen to see this work develop. This project will ensure that a wider group of community partners, their university colleagues, and the HE policy sector, are able to benefit from and inform this work.

In addition to academics, there are further project beneficiaries: community organisations, local communities and international partners will gain directly, as the project develops outputs that assist others wanting to engage in the community partner network, and indirectly, as the project impacts policy and funding arrangements that support community university working in the future.

Community Organisations: The whole ethos of this project is one run by community partners for community partners. This is exemplified in the current CCP project and has already had positive outcomes for those involved. While AHRC procedures mean that a community organisation cannot formally lead on this proposal (unlike Canada, where they can head up proposals with their academic collaborators to the Social Science and Humanities Research Council), it has been co-written with community colleagues Kim Aumann, Sophie Duncan, and others, from the existing community partner core planning group, who have in effect contributed their in-kind support to this bid writing process.

The project will build on the momentum of the current CC project and provide the opportunity for a larger group of community partners to network, build capacity to develop their working practice, and inform the development of future HEI and Research Council policy and practice. For example, online and face to face conversation and working spaces will enable community partners to: share their learning about the risks and opportunities of being a community partner; make connections between their research and community interests; consider how arts and humanities orientated approaches can mobilize and engage communities; build alliances as they collaborate on output production; refine their skills to communicate and lobby HEI and Research Council policy for improved participation practice. These opportunities will provide community partners with a stronger common voice and increase their capacity to negotiate engagement in partnerships that are mutually beneficial. A working group of community partners will create outputs that are relevant to and informed by community partners, and community sector staff will be commissioned to lead on project delivery and administration.

Local Communities: A significant driver for community partners engaged in partnership working is the potential these ventures have for promoting social cohesion and social justice. Partnership working can transform communities and institutions because they tap into different knowledge sets to generate and expand new understandings of social problems and solutions. While community partners will collaborate to embolden the role of communities in partnership working, it will also broadcast the need for universities to act as a resource for their local communities. In addition, it will ensure that outputs are translated in accessible ways for local community consumption.

International Community Colleagues: By linking with international partner networks, the project aims to generate connections and synergies that will enthuse and deepen community partner understanding of ways to foster collaborations that are effective and sustainable. Study visits and online conversation and debate will facilitate the sharing of experiences and hopefully stimulate collaborative interaction and co-operation in the future. By connecting UK community partners with others undertaking similar work in different countries, including community partners who are associated with arts and humanities focused partnerships, the project will provide opportunities to also make connections between specific research and community interests. The international networks identified have strong and successful track records in the field of community-university partnership working, are keen to learn from the UK context and will be able to access the materials produced on the NCCPE website for their own learning and practice development.