Investing in Engagement
How long term-funding leads to impactful research
Well-funded engagement enables the development of long-term, mutually beneficial relationships which are essential for continually improving, progressive programmes that result in an engaged research culture and impactful research.
Long-term, mutually beneficial relationships
Long-term relationships between researchers and audiences are crucial for research that aims to have a significant impact on society. Such relationships, which allow for genuine dialogue and are based on trust, need to be fostered at an institutional level, rather than relying on individual researchers to maintain them.
Establishing relationships requires careful consideration of the mutual benefits for all parties. As a result, while engagement activities may be based on the same research, the key messages should always be carefully tailored to each new audience and should evolve with repeat engagement with the same audience. Crucially, this process should happen together with the audience or partners.
Often, partner organisations link us to potential audiences, and they are essential in translating our key messages into something that works for their audiences. For instance, the original Brain Diaries exhibition, which was created for an Oxford audience, was entirely overhauled together with the Banbury Museum and Gallery curators to become ‘Your Amazing Brain’, an exhibition that their very different audience could relate to. When the exhibition was then picked up by Discover Bucks Museum in Aylesbury, the programme of activities alongside the exhibition was tailored to their audiences, for example adding lecture style activities that their audiences enjoy.
The first strategic partnership we created was our external advisory board. This board included representatives from each audience category we wanted to engage with, including primary schools, secondary schools, patients, and museums. They helped us to think about our strategic objectives for the audiences they represented and were a sounding board and source of feedback for activities we proposed to do with those audiences.
Over the last several years, we have developed long-term institutional partnerships with museums (Banbury, Discover Bucks Museum, Rumble Museum), schools (Sarah Bonnell School in East London, and various Oxfordshire schools), and community organisations (African Families in the UK, Oxford Asian Cultural Centre, Football Beyond Borders).
Partnership development needs time
For partnerships to be mutually beneficial and strategically relevant for both us and our partner organisations, sustained relationship-building time is required, ideally encompassing multiple years and not reliant upon the availability or capacity of a single staff member. This development time allows for trust-building (particularly important for partnerships with historically under-served communities or those who are wary of medical research) and encourages greater mutual understanding of the respective expertise involved. While we recognise that each partner’s needs, priorities, and strengths are different, the experience we have gained in managing such partnerships is a strength that the Engagement team uses to inform new partnership development.
Mutually beneficial
Academia can be myopic about the expertise held by partners outside its walls, to the detriment of potential collaborations. Through our partnerships, we came to understand how much better the engagement becomes when each partner’s distinct expertise is identified and valued. It is essential that proposed collaboration activities fit the strategic objectives of each partner, to ensure they feel sufficient ownership of the project rather than serving in a more removed ‘contractor’ role.
‘Mutual benefit’ can take many forms: shared skills, resources, or capacity. Particularly for educational or non-profit organisations, the availability of financial support can be transformative to the collaboration, because they have limited flexibility in their own funding to commit to these types of projects despite staff capacity and willingness. To support developing partnerships aligned with these principles, we create Memorandums of Understanding with our partners as a way to explicitly establish mutual expectations.
Effective engagement depends on the ability to know your audience. Building strong partnerships with organisations who are already engaged with the audiences you want to reach can help forge trusting relationships more quickly and effectively. In addition, partners will help you understand your new audience and allow you to design engagement activities that will speak to those audiences.