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  1. Home
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  3. Developing a Strategy For Your Public Engagement Support Programme
Guides

Developing a strategy for your Public Engagement support programme

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  1. Breaking the challenge down
  2. Assess your institution
  3. Involve people
  4. Learn from others
  5. Articulate your theory of change and build your business case
  6. The best laid plans...

This guide is designed to help you take a strategic approach to building support for public engagement in your institution.

updated on 07 Feb 2024
3 minutes read

Breaking the challenge down

We’ve broken the challenge down into four steps.

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.

Paul speaking and gesturing with his hands

There are three key things that a good strategy helps you to achieve. It helps you to build a shared sense of purpose with colleagues. It takes account of the context in which you work, as this will shape what it is possible to achieve. And it defines clear goals and success measures to help you to judge your progress and share your success.

Paul Manners
Co-Director, NCCPE

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.

Guides

Assess your institutional culture: Introducing the EDGE tool

Explore the EDGE tool and how to use it to self-assess your support for public engagement.
woman in purple jumper on blue laptop
Page

EDGE Tool survey

This survey, based on the NCCPE's EDGE tool, explores institutional support for public engagement across nine dimensions: Mission, Leadership, Communication, Recognition, Support, Learning, Staff, Students and the Public.
Karen sitting at a wooden desk, smiling

As a PVC and more recently as a vice-chancellor of two universities, I have found the NCCPE’s EDGE tool an incredibly powerful framework to use with colleagues to take stock of our support for public engagement and to work out where to focus our precious time and resources to make the biggest difference

Karen Stanton
Vice Chancellor, Solent University

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.

The Tools for Talking guide contains some practical tools to help you lead productive discussions about public engagement.

Tools for talking about public engagement

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.
Reports and reviews

Pathways to culture change

Lessons for culture change from the 10 universities who participated in RCUK's Catalyst Seed Fund project from 2015 - 2018.
27 September 2023
Reports and reviews

Change Makers: Lessons from SEE-PER

Lessons for enriching and embedding cultures within HEIs where excellent public engagement with research is supported, valued, rewarded and integrated.
19 June 2023
Reports and reviews

The engaged university: turning words in action

This report examines the state of play in strategic support for public engagement, not just in the UK, but within an international context too.
19 June 2023
Guides

A Field Guide: Public engagement and culture change

A guide to supporting culture change, based on lessons learned by the University of Bath.
19 June 2023

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.
Guides

Using a logic model to develop your strategy

This guide by Mary-Clare Hallsworth, from 2020, is intended to help your logic modelling in developing your plans
06 November 2020
Guides

How to develop indicators and KPIs

This guide provides a set of indicators which could be adapted to help you track change, linked to the EDGE tool categories.
19 June 2023
Guides

How to write a business case for public engagement

This guide explains how to create a compelling business case for your support programme, to help you secure funding. It shows how you can structure your case, and how developing[...]
19 June 2023
Guides

How to evaluate your support for public engagement

This guide explains how you can develop an evaluation plan to track the effectiveness of your support programme. It shows how having a ‘theory of change’ provides a helpful focus[...]
19 June 2023

The best laid plans...

Anyone who has sought to develop a support strategy for public engagement has learned that flexibility is vital – always be prepared to adapt your plans to seize opportunities or to divert around round blocks.

David Amigoni

Culture change is a lengthy process. Within the time it takes to make progress, landscapes shift, personnel change and new challenges and opportunities emerge. Taking stock of these shifting facets regularly and having the opportunity to adjust our plans and spend has been critical for our work

David Amigoni
PVC Research and Innovation, University of Keele

Where next?

Blog

Engaged Futures – work in progress

NCCPE Co-director, Sophie Duncan and Project Manager, Sian Aggett reflect on the themes that are emerging from our three horizon process, and invite you to contribute.
Blog

The Engage Summit 2026: imagining an inclusive future for higher education

The Engage Summit 2026 is one year away! Taking place in Central Birmingham on Wednesday 29 - Thursday 30 April 2026, Engage Summit will bring people together to collectively imagine [...]

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