Penny Wilson

Penny has worked at the University of Cambridge since 2003 and manages Cambridge's Community Affairs team. Her office supports University departments, Colleges and student groups to work with the community. The team also co-ordinates the Cambridge Science Festival, the Festival of Ideas and 'Open Cambridge'. Previously, Penny worked for a number of years in the voluntary and community sector, for organisations including the British Red Cross, the Association of Charity Shops and Barnet Voluntary Service Council.

Public engagement - is culture change enough?

So we all agree that public engagement is a fabulous thing for universities to be doing. Marvellous, let's get on with it then...

If only it were that easy.

In fact, most academics are fully occupied teaching and researching.

And academic staff are generally not experts in child protection, marketing, event management (why should they be?) and, even when they are, they don't usually have the time to organise complex, quality public engagement activities.

Clearly, for the quality and quantity of public engagement by universities to increase, academic staff are going to need to feel that it might help rather than hinder their career prospects and that it's something that their institution actively encourages. But this kind of culture change is simply not enough.

If we want a large scale shift in the quality and quantity of public engagement, universities will first have to provide the infrastructure to enable this to happen.

What kind of support is necessary? As a minimum, each university should have a central officer who can give information and advice to academics and students who want to organise engagement activities themselves. At Cambridge, we regularly answer questions about, for example, useful local contacts with whom to establish an activity, how to work with schools, how to communicate technical subjects to non-specialists, how to encourage members of the public to come along to an activity and how to raise funds for public engagement.

However, for public engagement to become an integral part of University life, our institutions need also to provide opportunities for academics to engage with the public, as well as support for academics to find or create the opportunities themselves. Otherwise, only the most committed academics will engage with the public.

At Cambridge we are lucky to have specialist outreach officers in some of our departments, Colleges and museums as well as a central Community Affairs team, Cambridge Admissions Office and the Institute of Continuing Education. Between us, we create a wide variety of opportunities for academics and students to engage with the public. Usually, academics plan and deliver the activities which will engage the public in their discipline and we take care of practicalities such as room bookings, marketing, stewards, etc.

This year, Cambridge academics could have chosen to provide engagement activities, for example, for the Festival of Ideas, the Cambridge Science Festival, hands-on activities for young people on Cambridge recreation grounds, a science roadshow for primary schools, "Ideas in the Community" community festivals, talks at the Hay Festival, a project to create new educational models with a local museum and a wealth of other initiatives which we advertise through our networks.

And how do we encourage universities to not always cast themselves in the role of 'expert'? When you've spent a lifetime pursuing your passion for a subject, and worry that a younger generation isn't pursuing particular courses of study, perhaps the most natural forms of public engagement to turn to are shows, exhibitions, talks etc which demonstrate why your subject is fascinating and important. These activities are in high public demand - some members of the public want to hear an informed view and don't want to enter into dialogue with us.

But we're missing a trick if we don't organise a wide variety of public engagement activities which will appeal to different audiences and which are organised with community partners on an equal footing. Such partnerships take a good deal of time and effort to nurture. Public engagement infrastructure officers can catalyse a shift towards increased dialogue with the public by organising new such opportunities in which academics and students can get involved.

Culture change and improved public engagement infrastructure go hand in hand.

www.cam.ac.uk/communityaffairs