Friday 30 August 2024
Taking a look back at 2 years of Co(l)laboratory’s work.
During August, while most university colleagues take a well deserved break for the Summer, the Co(l)laboratory team have been preparing for the start of the programme’s 3rd year of activity. To acknowledge just how far Co(l)lab has come since its inception, we’ve put together our first annual Impact Report which pulls together some the programme’s highlights from years 1 and 2.
While the report above gives just a snapshot what we’ve been doing over the last 2 years, we believe this showcases just how influential Co(l)laboratory’s approach to community engagement and research has already been, both within the university sector, and in the local civic and community space.
Our community centred research projects, which sit at the core of our work, have attracted a lot of interest from collaborators, candidates, and beyond. As a programme dedicated to finding new ways to embed Nottingham and Nottinghamshire community voices in local research, we’ve been developing and trialling community engagement initiatives that empower local communities to tell us what matters to them and what challenges our research projects should address. From these activities, professionals and individuals from a wide range of local community groups and sectors have so far helped us identify 17 themes of local priorities on which to focus our research.
Our co-creation approach, which has so far brought 30 community supervisors (part of a wider network of 79 local community organisations working with us), together in collaboration with 56 NTU and UoN academic staff, has resulted in us funding 28 exciting and pioneering projects which operate across at least 16 subject specialisms. We’ve also been working with our programme partners at the NCCPE to create and refine resources and activities to support project teams through the co-creation process.
When it comes to recruiting talented local candidates to carry out the work of our research projects, we’ve received 190 applications over 2 project cohorts. We’ve developed multiple initiatives that aim to make our researcher recruitment more inclusive. From applicant support workshops, and launching our job advert-style project ads, to our competency-based recruitment framework, based on the latest work by The EDEPI Project.
In our first 2 years, we’ve been honoured to welcome 28 passionate and highly competent research candidates onto the programme, all of whom are from Nottinghamshire or the surrounding counties. We’re exceptionally proud of our research candidates, who bring a wealth of unique skills, knowledge and perspectives to Co(l)laboratory. We’re grateful for the trust our candidates have placed in the programme and each other, and the commitment they’ve shown to working with us in continuing to develop key areas of our work, such as our unique Civic Leadership in Research training module.
Looking beyond the county, as Co(l)lab has grown and garnered wider attention, we’re pleased to have been approached by colleagues from 10 different Higher Education Institutions from across the country who are keen to learn from the work we’re doing and to use to make their own programmes more engaged and inclusive. In this coming year, we’re excited to be building our 3rd cohort of research projects and research candidates, and look forward to be being able to share even more updates from our PhD Projects.