On a sweltering day in June 2022, 50 knowledge exchange activators, curators, managers and researchers met to consider ways of measuring, valuing and reporting the impacts and outputs of cultural knowledge exchange. This informal, peer to peer discussion was held against the backdrop of recent reviews of the Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF), the HE-BCI Survey, … Read more…

The NCACE event Culture and Collaborations on Climate Emergency brought together a community of artists, poets, writers, academics, local authority officers, actors, community activists and cultural practitioners to highlight the role of collaborative initiatives with a focus on climate emergency, climate justice, net zero and community action. In the face of a panoply of seemingly … Read more…

When we saw the callout for the Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre Fellowship, we thought it could be an opportunity to attempt something entirely different from what we’ve made before. We both work largely in theatre, as writers, directors and dramaturgs, but have an interest in experimenting with work that includes performance, but could be … Read more…

The Co-Creating Liveness in Embodied Immersion Research Group (CLEI), within the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences (FLAS) at the University of Greenwich, looked to opening up ways in which multiple types of stakeholders might come together to identify new practice-based research and Knowledge Exchange projects. This built on research Becoming civic centred – A … Read more…

How can researchers draw methodological inspiration from the communities they study? We have recently come to the end of a two-year project based on a case study of Glasgow Women’s Library (GWL), an organisation where creativity, art and design are embedded within organisational culture and everyday practice. Despite having very few artistic talents or crafting … Read more…

I want to start by saluting the community of practice and expertise which has been built through the event which took place recently on The Power of Collaborative Action: People, Place, Planet. I value enormously the work of NCACE in convening this group, and Research England and David Sweeney’s leadership in supporting this inspired initiative. … Read more…

What if citizens were not seen merely as beneficiaries of research but were instead considered as leaders and initiators? At a recent NCACE ‘What if?’ event, facilitated by Suzie Leighton, we explored the theoretical and practical implications of this question. The concept for this event had emerged from a year-long conversation between Robert Crawshaw and Bambo … Read more…

We are delighted to present our NCACE Annual Report 2020/21, providing an informative overview of our first year outcomes involving more than 1,200 people who came together in a dozen events and activities covering our key five areas of work. Our first chapter highlights the key involvement of our Regional Partners in our work on … Read more…

Discussions we have around cultural knowledge exchange collaborations often involve a focus on geography – whether that be physical boundaries, or the sense of place of an area. Much of the work at NCACE this last year has focused on our ‘Placemaking and levelling out’ theme – one of the four core themes guiding our … Read more…

While the Research and Excellence Framework (REF) has been devised primarily as an instrument to assess the quality of university research and of institutional research environments, the information collected is rapidly proving an invaluable source of qualitative information about the type of research that universities do, and how this generates real-world impact. In particular, the … Read more…