Our People and Communities of Practice strand is where NCACE’s leadership in cross-sector collaboration comes alive, supporting and cultivating the people, relationships, skills and confidence to support meaningful, resilient and equitable cross sector collaborations.

At the heart of NCACE’s work is a belief that strong collaboration depends on people, not just structures. Through People and Communities of Practice, we nurture the conditions in which researchers, cultural practitioners and knowledge exchange professionals can learn together, experiment together, and build lasting, equitable partnerships.

This strand of our work focuses on growing leadership for collaborative practice, strengthening peer networks, and developing practical skills for working across boundaries. We support emerging communities of practice, pilot new models of partnership working, and create generous spaces for reflection, learning and exchange, helping individuals and organisations to nurture the confidence, capability and imagination needed to collaborate well in challenging times.

A major driver of our work is to build and further develop an influential and engaging knowledge and resource base on the values of cultural collaboration, creative research partnerships and knowledge exchange.

It is important in these challenging times, that we seek to evidence and understand the values and transformational impacts of collaborative working and cultural knowledge exchange. One of our key goals therefore is to create a better understanding and awareness of such work to give courage, hope and to inspire imaginative and strategic thinking about the panoply of innovations that cultural partnerships are enabling across so many spheres of our social, cultural and economic lives.

A core part of the development of our evidence base is the NCACE Collection, which we describe as “a community garden” for knowledge generation — a living archive of reports, case studies, long-form essays, toolkits, and other papers. This aspect of our work aims to widen and deepens our understanding of the nature, scale, histories and potentials of collaborations between higher education and the arts and culture sector.

At the heart of our Showcasing, Communications, and Signalling (SCS) work is the intention to develop visibility and shape, support and lead emerging narratives on the field of cultural knowledge exchange. We do this through ongoing communications, public engagement activities, and writing and training opportunities.

In this area of our work, we shine a light on incredible cultural knowledge exchange, generating and amplifying awareness of and engagement in all kinds of cultural partnerships and initiatives between universities, the arts and the wider ecologies in which these take place. We encourage, showcase, support and incentivise emergent, exemplary and innovate collaborative activities and foster a culture of writing, discussion and learning about such work.

We share great examples of collaborative research, practice, projects and opportunities through our communications platforms, public-facing events, and engagement initiatives.  We also provide opportunities for researchers and practitioners to develop skills to showcase their work, helping to increase visibility and impact.

The NCACE Blog platform fosters a vibrant community of writers exploring collaborations between higher education and the arts, showcasing diverse stories, experiences, and reflections on cross-sector partnership.