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Community University Partnership Programme
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CUPP: sharing our story

The broadcasting of a BBC radio programme in 2001 was the event that sparked an educational experiment that over two decades later is still having an impact. The former Chancellor of the University of Brighton, the late Professor Sir David Watson, had presented his ideas on what an engaged university could look like.

Discover CUPP programmes

One of the listeners was an American philanthropic charity, Atlantic Philanthropies. They were so enthused by Sir David’s vision, the University of Brighton was awarded four years of funding to develop it further. The result was that in 2003 the Community University Partnership Programme - CUPP - as it is known, was born.

Civic engagement presents a challenge to universities... not simply to engage in “knowledge-transfer” but to establish a dialogue across the boundary between the university and its community which is open-ended, fluid and experimental... We have created a space where expertise and needs can come together. What makes CUPP particularly interesting is the nature of the dialogue between communities and the university.

The late Sir David Watson, 2007

Experimenting, evolving, embedding

Over the years, CUPP has continued to experiment as to what a community-university knowledge partnership can look like. Co-creation has been at the heart of this, alongside the aim of providing mutual benefits to community and university partners.

Many of the practices developed through co-producing partnership projects and programmes have been absorbed into wider systems at the university. Also, many of these partnerships have been in highly disadvantaged areas and tackling issues that are not easy to solve. Yet by sharing the learning and experience of community partners and university staff and students, much can be achieved.

Since it began, CUPP has run a series of programmes to support community-university knowledge partnerships. Our latest is Ignite – a fast track programme funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) as part of their SEE-PER initiative to develop a suite of community-university partnerships.

Today we can look back at hundreds of partnership projects from across the university that have developed from collaborations between community members and organisations, alongside academics, other staff and students. This work has been made possible by a combination of central institutional funding and a range of external funders.

The social enterprise Community 21, itself a community-university partnership, has developed an interactive map that illustrates just a selection of the many collaborations over the years between our academics and communities.

Explore our Ignite partnerships

Explore our Community 21 CUPP interactive map

Community 21 map
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