Stuart Laing

Stuart Laing is the Pro Vice Chancellor (Academic Affairs) for the University of Brighton, and has been at the University since 1991. He was previousy a Dean at the University of Sussex, having been first appointed there as a lecturer in English in 1973. He was closely involved in the launch of Media Studies at Sussex in the late 1980s. He ha published over thirty major books, chapters and articles in literary and cultural studies and cotinues to undertake regular undergraduate teaching and research supervision.

Why University Community Engagement? 

My subject is the nature of community university engagement, or more particularly what I will call radical community university engagement, the kind which the University of Brighton has been concerned to develop through the Community University Partnership Programme (CUPP) project.

And I want to start by emphasising its difference, by pointing to the radical break it is making (or can make) with many inherited or looser conceptions of both what community engagement is and of what universities are for.  I want to begin then with some propositions that may make some feel uncomfortable and challenged - eight propositions about what such radical community university engagement is not.

First it is not fundamentally a matter of philanthropy, although it will have many alliances and common purposes with philanthropic and charitable organisations.

Secondly it is not a branch of Corporate Social Responsibility. Universities, like all large public and private sector organisations, have an obligation to address this issue, but radical community university engagement goes far beyond this and stems from a quite different root.

Thirdly it is not the same as the university being a good neighbour to the adjacent communities within which it is physically placed.  Although if a university attempting radical community university engagement does not also seek to be a good neighbour it will rightly stand accused , at best , of being inconsistent and, at worst,  of cynicism and hypocrisy.

Fourthly it does not have as its primary purpose the rectification of social or economic inequalities.  This is the area where I am most at odds with many of those in the field.  Let me put the point like this. If, or rather when, we do come to live in a society where such inequalities no longer exist this will not remove the need for radical university community engagement. This activity is not a matter of making good a deficit; it is much more wide-ranging and fundamental than that.

Fifthly it is not to be justified by an appeal to the historic purposes of universities.  It may or may not be true that community university engagement has a long history. That debate is undoubtedly worth having, but even if it were the case that there is no historical precedent whatsoever for radical community university engagement, this would not weaken one iota the case for undertaking it now and in the future.

Sixthly it should not be primarily undertaken in order to provide an addition to the student curriculum.  Undoubtedly it can be hugely beneficial for students, and students can be a major resource for its delivery, but that must never be its primary purpose.

Seventh. It should not be primarily defined as an extension of the university's research mission; the links to research will be strong and extensive, but it must not be put in a position where it repeatedly has to apologise for, explain away or defend its difference from the dominant research paradigms in order to justify its existence.

Finally it is not a marginal addition or afterthought to a university's engagement with business, although the methodologies and paradigms developed for such services to business will have much to offer to the development of community engagement. The position must be one of equality of esteem and of priority for social engagement and economic engagement.

Having cleared away all that conceptual clutter I want now to argue for the place of radical community university engagement right at the heart of the core purposes of the twenty-first century university. 

These purposes centre on knowledge - its development and discovery, its preservation and conservation, its transmission and its application. This may be achieved through teaching, through research, through economic and business engagement or through public and community engagement.  It is through the identification of relevant knowledge, the creation of new knowledge and the application of such knowledge to specific areas of social and community life that radical community university engagement operates.  In concerning itself as much as does economic and business engagement with the achievement of wealth, welfare and well-being, it will touch on massive and omnipresent  areas of our actual social life - areas which are at the heart of the fabric and the material base of our society - matters which affect all of us every day of our lives.

These will include:

• The activity of caring and the practices of carers
• The whole voluntary and community organisational sector and its role in civil society
• Citizenship and sustainable development
• Citizenship and issues of equality and diversity
• The public understanding of science (in which I include social science)
• Public health and its collective and individual self-management
• Ethical issues (eg medical) of public significance.

My focus here is on the why and not the how, but I would like to note some of the typical features of such activity.  Radical university community engagement works through both knowledge transfer and knowledge exchange. Knowledge transfer because there are times at which university expertise - specialist expertise -  has something unique to offer (if it were not so then universities would not be doing their job).  And there are times when this works wholly the other way, when universities are recipients of established or embedded social and community sector knowledge. But the dominant mode is collective knowledge development and exchange - an active and fluid process, whose characteristics are often: 

• Profoundly practical in aim
• Pursuit of the development of skills and competences for very specific purposes
• Low flying rather than high minded
• Having tangible outcomes
• Tactical
• Pragmatic
• Thorough
• Temporary
• Bite-sized
• Being undertaken for mutual benefit

Again let me comment on what its dominant characteristics are not:

• Education for leisure
• Spreading civilised values
• Charity work
• Approval seeking or reputation management

My answer to the question 'why university community engagement?' is then very simple - because it is a fundamental part of our core purpose. What then would a university look like which did fully adopt this view? I will make two observations on this by way of conclusion.

First it would radically extend our sense of who the university is for.  There is still, just about, a goal in the UK of 50% participation in higher education - a figure derived from an amalgam of the supposed number of graduate jobs and of the proportions of the population which have the qualifications for entry.  The recognition of radical community university engagement as a core purpose of the university enables this profoundly divisive goal to be entirely bypassed and for all citizens to be seen as having an entitlement, should they so wish,  to participate, but often in exploratory and entirely different ways to those of an accredited curriculum.  A vision then of 80 to 90% participation - a vision which recognises that all those things we do to maintain and enhance our lives outside the domains of paid employment and monetary exchange are as important and as formative of the real material base and the experiential quality of our social life as those which are inside.

Secondly there is a matter of the balance of activities within the university itself. Perhaps a well balanced university would look something like this - teaching around 50% of effort; research around 30%; economic and social engagement around 20%.  Taking parity of importance between the economic and the social as a point of departure, it might be reasonable to see radical community university engagement as around 10% of such a university's activity. 

I do not expect to see this achieved during my professional lifetime but looking ahead from the perspective of a citizen and a community practitioner, I do not see why it should not be for all of us a serious political demand.

You can find our more about the University of Brighton Cupp project here.