
Developing a strategy for your Public Engagement support programme
This section is designed to help you take a strategic approach to building support for public engagement in your institution.
1. Assess your institution
It really helps to know where you’re starting from and where you’d like to get to, and to benchmark your institution. The NCCPE’s EDGE tool can help.
2. Involve people
A good strategy is ‘owned’ and understood by the people who will implement it, and we offer tools and techniques to help you lead those conversations.
3. Learn from others
There’s lots of experience you can draw on to help you plot your course. We point you to some great guides to help you get a head start.
4. Articulate your theory of change and build your business case
A good strategy has a clear rationale and realistic goals. A ‘theory of change’ approach helps you achieve this – and we show you how.
This work will take time and a lot of negotiation, so expect to be working on it for many months. We provide links to all the resources and guides below.


Assess your institution
A great way to engage and involve people is to use the NCCPE EDGE tool to invite colleagues to reflect on the current levels of support for support for public engagement at your institution. It can help to build an evidence base for your strategy.


Involve people
A strategy needs a lot of buy-in – from senior staff, professional services and academic colleagues to external partners. You need to stimulate lots of discussion as you work with colleagues to plot your course.
Tools for talking about Public Engagement
The Tools for Talking guide contains some practical tools to help you lead productive discussions about public engagement. Below is an example of one of the tools you can use to invite people to discuss why they think public engagement matters.

Learn from others
Explore learning from universities that have established support for public engagement. These resources provide comprehensive accounts of lessons learned by others, and practical examples of what they have done as a result.

Articulate your theory of change and build your business case
All of the above will help you to build a robust platform to create your plan for culture change and make your case for investment. These guides take you through a step by step process to develop your strategy, make your business case and work out how to evaluate your progress.
The best laid plans...
