Students in the community

Case study: From banking to football

Martin Clayton was a business student at the university and vice president of the Students’ Union. It was his experience of working within the Students’ Union and the university’s community engagement module that combined to give him the skills to move into a community-focused career that he loves.

Having left a management position in the Royal Bank of Scotland, I joined the University of Brighton in 2008 at the age of 19 to study for a business management degree. I’d like to say I made this choice based on determination and ambition to succeed in the cut-and-thrust world of business, but in reality, I was just bored at the bank. I saw three years’ studying as better than sitting in front of a desk worrying about account numbers every day. 

I was an average student in the first year of my studies. I had to resit a couple of exams over the first summer due to overexertion on the social side of university and my second year followed suit academically. It was in my second year, having become at ease with my surroundings, academic routines and friends, that I began to expand my horizons and capacity for experiences away from books.

Engaging with my own community

I got involved in the Students’ Union newspaper as an editor. Then I ran in the elections to become a vice president of the Students’ Union, to represent 22,000 students at the highest level within the institution as well as amongst political leaders both locally and nationally. After a fortnight of sleepless nights and constant repetition of my campaign principles, I won.

Martin Clayton (right) with Malky Mackay, Cardiff City manager, on a training session at Lewes before their match with Brighton & Hove Albion.

Theory into practice

Splitting my final year into two part-time years, I took advantage of a module outside of the Business School. I took the community engagement module, run by the university’s Community University Partnership Programme (Cupp) within the School of Applied Social Sciences.

Students on the module undertake practical projects with local community and voluntary organisations. It gave me an understanding of the theories and principles that, unbeknown to me, were influencing my SU work all the time.

I was able to critique social and community theories and analyse organisational models. This allowed me to approach each partner organisation appropriately in order to represent students effectively.

As an SU officer, fighting to achieve change for students, it was vital to understand these concepts in order to achieve my goals.

In 2012 I was also involved in organising a national student-led conference in Brighton, supported by Cupp, for students interested in making a difference in their local communities.

Taking skills into a new community

I left the University of Brighton, graduating with a Business Management BA and leaving behind two successful years working with, in my eyes, one of the most innovative environments I have ever had the pleasure of being involved in.

I now work for Lewes Community Football Club, a cooperative football club run and entirely owned by the local community. I am responsible for ensuring the local community is at the heart of the club and the club is at the heart of the local community.

This includes offering and maintaining initiatives for kids, teenagers, community groups, fans, local businesses and, with any luck, hundreds of new owners becoming the lifeblood and long-term future of the club.

As good as it feels to be working in an organisation that works specifically for the local community, it is essential that we are financially able to survive and grow, so the business degree is certainly coming in handy. 

Unlike the bank, I now work in an industry that I am incredibly passionate about, doing things that I didn’t know even existed until I got involved in Cupp and the community engagement module.

Case study: Inclusive art 

An action-based research project

Natalia Agote Urquia, postgraduate student on the Inclusive Arts Practice MA, shares how her research project gave her the opportunity to explore and develop her research together with her participants. It strengthened her research skills while facilitating a process that was truly inclusive.

She is a student in the second year of the Masters in inclusive arts at the University of Brighton.

According to senior lecturer Alice Fox, inclusive arts can be defined as ‘supporting creative opportunities between marginalised and non-marginalised people through artistic facilitation and collaboration as a means of challenging existing barriers and promoting social change.'

Alongside my own creative practice I have been working with marginalised community groups in India and the UK for the last 10 years, including older people, children in care, refugees, street children and adults with learning disabilities. In the second year of the course we are required to organise and facilitate an action-based research project. This is intended to be a vehicle for self- reflective investigation, refining our practice, while undertaking mutually beneficial work with marginalised community groups or individuals.

My vision was to organise an inclusive project for women with learning disabilities that would promote expression, equality and knowledge exchange between the participants and myself. I wanted to facilitate an environment in which they would play a key and active role in influencing the creative processes and direction – informing and contributing to the research as active participants instead of passive subjects.

The university ethics committee responded positively to my proposal and the research was further supported by the university’s Community University Partnership Programme (Cupp) which identified funding for the work through the Springboard grants programme. The project started at the beginning of September 2012.

We met once a week at the Phoenix Studios in Brighton to make art together. We have been using ourselves and our experiences as the starting point for much of the artwork, exploring together how the creative process can be a non-verbal vehicle for dialogue and expression.

A space to experiment

Our latest work has been a series of paintings on Perspex based on important people in our lives. Works such as the important people pieces are concept-based; we centre on a theme collectively and then portray it in our own individual ways. This method of working allows us to collaboratively explore different aspects of ourselves and our identities both as individuals and as a group.

Within the sessions we also give ourselves the space to experiment with a more process-based approach, relieving us of the necessity of having to constantly convey a message and work within a theme. We have a fabric tablecloth that we work on top of and re-use each week. It collects the drips of our paint and the rings from our coffee cups.

We don’t protect it from getting smudged, stained or dirty. As well as being a medium that passively records our processes by collecting the marks of our art-making, the tablecloth has become the canvas for a collaborative process-based piece on which we simply draw when we feel inspired to.

Initially we all drew on our respective sides of the table where we were sitting, but as the weeks have gone on we have moved around it and the lines have organically blurred between where one person’s artwork ends and another’s begins. It’s a continually accumulating, truly collaborative piece for which we can all claim equal creative ownership.

Growing as a researcher

One of my challenges as a researcher has been to negotiate the fine line between directive and non- directive facilitation, balancing the need to hold the framework of the investigation and align it with our chosen themes, while at the same time giving participants the space and creative freedom to express themselves.

The participants and myself have adopted a creative language that is primarily non-verbal with which we collect data, evaluate and represent our opinions, and this serves to put us on an equal platform. Because of the participatory methodology of the project our aims and focuses are in constant flux, shaped and re-shaped by the group during the journey of investigation.

The group’s active role in influencing our creative developments gives the participants a greater claim of ownership over the research and its outcomes, helping to balance out the power dynamic between participant and researcher.

The project finished in December 2012 with an exhibition of the exciting work that we produced. Not only is it important that wider inclusion and access to the arts is provided to excluded minorities, but it is also key that the work created is supported to filter into the mainstream visual culture as the arts have the power to increase the visibility of marginalised groups in wider society, serving to challenge preconceptions and trigger social change.

Case study: The peerless pier

Ideas for Hastings Pier by Jess Lyons, third year architecture student.

Hastings Pier and White Rock Trust

By doing project work on the redevelopment of Hastings Pier, architecture students benefited from engaging in a live project, while the community gained fresh insights through the students’ creative approach. Kate Cheyne, a senior lecturer at the School of Art, Design and Media describes the project.

Case study: A grassroots opportunity for growth

Grassroots Suicide Prevention

Kerry Dowding made the transition from student to a professional career in the third sector through her experience-based postgraduate certificate in Community Enterprise. Equipping her with invaluable skills and experience it also gave her the chance to share her expertise with Brighton-based charity, Grassroots Suicide Prevention.

In spring last year I took part in an experienced-based postgraduate certificate course arranged by the Community University Partnership Programme (Cupp). I spent time at a Brighton-based not-for-profit organisation called Grassroots Suicide Prevention which provides suicide intervention and mental health awareness training to the local community. Whilst on my placement I was supported through action learning sets at the university to achieve a postgraduate certificate in Community Enterprise.

Kerry Dowding raised money for Grassroots by having her dreadlocks cut off.