Ignite: one partnership programme

Over the years, CUPP has run many different community-university partnership programmes. However, none had the explicit focus of initiating a suite of new partnerships through a range of support for partners including a knowledge exchange development programme. Nor have they set out to achieved this all within a few months.

Explore our Ignite partnerships

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A significant feature of the programme was the breadth of partnership interests addressing issues of deprivation and marginalisation – from improving children’s mental health to finding solutions to the local housing crisis and exploring why people do not trust local services. Despite only having a few months to develop the partnerships, collaborators were creative in co-producing projects that brought mutual benefits for both communities and the university. In fact, the 12-month time limit, alongside a focused support programme, was seen as an important factor for success, given how busy the partners were individually and together. Learning from Ignite will be included in the forthcoming CUPP Guide - a fast track for initiating new community-university knowledge partnerships  (2022). 

UK Research and Innovation

The Ignite programme to initiate a set of community-university knowledge partnerships was designed, developed and delivered by CUPP. However, it would not have been possible without the support of the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) including funding from their Strategic Support to Expedite Embedding Public Engagement with Research (SEE-PER) initiative.

At the heart of Ignite is an incubator model for developing a suite of partnerships based on a framework for supporting community and research partners, including those new to co-production. This framework was designed around five clear steps achievable within a year: 

Step 1. Embarking

Establishing a community-university advisory group and launching an open competition to find a set of new partnerships to take part in Ignite.

Step 2. Exploring

Encouraging exploration of potential partnerships that prioritise mutual benefits for community partners and researchers. Where possible, supporting potential partners in their bids to the Ignite programme. 

Ignite reportIgnite final evaluation (PDF)

Step 3. Experimenting 

Supporting partnerships to experiment with their partnership with seed funding. Importantly, this enables the partnership to contribute to the time community partners dedicate to the project. Plus support a range of co-designed and co-produced community-focused research activities.

Step 4. Exchanging 

Prioritising knowledge exchange by capturing and sharing of activity and learning. This is not only between partners but also across the partnerships though meeting a three plenary events that included a social learning space. Also ensure that the learning is captured for the partnership but also to share more widely through films, case studies, reports and guides.

Step 5. Evaluating 

Ensuring that evaluation is both helpful for the individual partnerships but also for the overall Ignite programme. Being as creative as possible by using mixed research methods to enable the development of rich data - for example, interviews, self-evaluation and participant observations. Evaluation of the Ignite programme demonstrates that it is possible to develop a set of new knowledge partnerships that can start to have positive outcomes and impacts in just a few months. Click on the above PDF report to read our final evaluation.