What is Public Engagement?

Public engagement is a term that is widely used in a variety of sectors - from arts and heritage to science policy and local government.  The Higher Education Funding Councils and the UK Research Councils use it to express their ambition for a different, more inclusive relationship between the academic and non-academic worlds.

So why is public engagement important for HEIs and research institutes? We are drawing up a framework to help answer this question  - and we would like your thoughts.  You can comment on any of the pages in this section, so please let us know your opinions!

The Draft Framework

Since the NCCPE and beacons project was launched last year, we have had many people ask us questions about public engagement and HEIs. We believe that the answers to these questions should form the basis of our public engagement framework. For this reason the draft framework is divided into a number of sections. Each section provides the answer to one of these important questions.

The sections are: 

1. What is Public Engagement?
   How would you define public engagement? This section provides a draft definition for comment, as well as showcasing definitions from other sources.
2. Which activities count as public engagement?
   This section explores the types of activities that make up public engagement.
3. Who do HEIs engage with?
   This section maps out the different groups that universities engage with.
4. Are all types of community, civic and public engagement the same?
   Explores the distinction between community, civic and public engagement.
5. Why does public engagement matter?
   Do you think that public engagement is important to HEIs or do you think it is a distraction to a university's core function? This section provides a draft rationale as to why public engagement matters to HEIs.
6. How do you measure the impact of public engagement?
   Explores how impact can be measured, and details a framework to help think this through.
7. What would an engaged university look like?
   Suggests some of the key features that might inform an engaged university approach.

We have launched an online questionnaire to gather feedback on the framework. Alternatively you can add your comments on each section of the website, or send them to Sophie Duncan. Please feel free to comment on any part of the framework. You can also download the draft framework as a word document (372kB). We will then revise our framework based on the comments that we have received.

We have been inspired and helped by a number of different frameworks that others have created. We have included these in the frameworks section. We have also invited people from across the UK to share their views about why public engagement matters to universities and research institutes, and have included their views in our viewpoints section.