Creative Engagement Fellowship

Through working with the Wellcome Trust and NCCPE to support the public engagement, Dr Marie Nugent, Public Engagement Manager for the University of Leicester, identified a gap within research surrounding collaborative work between researchers and artists. By partnering with the NCCPE, research was undertaken to better understand this area of work. It was revealed that it is popular for researchers to work with artists for supporting dissemination and engagement, however, this tends to be within a commissioned-based relationship instead of the creative taking a direct role within the project.

The Fellowship built upon the aforementioned practise research and combined the experience gained in community-led partnership working through the U.matter engagement project, commissioning a range of projects and activities linked to health and wellbeing with community partners. It also took inspiration from a similar scheme promoted via the University of Exeter’s Arts and Culture Unit.

Funding was provided by the University of Leicester’s Wellcome Trust Institutional Strategic Support Fund, which supports universities to explore research culture change, increase the value of public engagement, and support equality and diversity initiatives.

The collaborations supported by this scheme generated beneficial impacts across the institutions, communities, research, and most notably the collaborators involved. For the researcher, it enables them to inject creativity into their practice that values community engagement at the forefront of development. For the creative practitioners, it offers them the opportunity to engage with innovative research while developing their practice-skills. The mutual exchange of skills and expertise for opportunities to improve practice for engagement and inclusion across research and the arts is what underpins furthering the development of this scheme.

Currently, this collection houses Phase 1 of the scheme completed in 2021. Additional phases will be added into the collection through separate dataset, with Phase 2 planned to start development in 2022.