Engagement with higher education institutes is an essential part of Medical Research Council (MRC) activity. It allows us to give the community insight about upcoming activities, get feedback on our strategy and build connections.
Our new ‘Community Visits’ programme expands MRC’s engagement beyond visits to individual higher education institutions. Instead, this year we hosted events in different locations across the UK, inviting institutions within the region to meet collectively.
What came before
In-person engagement at MRC has traditionally been carried out through individual visits to higher education institutions that receive the highest proportion of our funding.
Having access to MRC and knowing about upcoming activities is a clear advantage of our visits. But by previously only offering visits to institutions that already receive significant funding from us, this knowledge was only being shared with a limited number of institutions. Widening our engagement programme through the community visits supports the equitable sharing of this knowledge and allows us to hear from the diverse range of communities throughout the UK.
This new approach is particularly important as MRC adopts its framework for ‘place’. Our framework aims to support outstanding research and innovation across all regions and nations in the UK, helping them grow capacity and develop strengths to perform research and innovation.
What are ‘Community Visits’?
The name ‘Community Visits’ reflects their purpose. Although part of the visit is hearing from MRC, bringing organisations together collectively to support the building of strong local communities is also a key part of the new programme.
For some regions bringing large numbers of organisations together in this way is something new, and a great opportunity for new partnerships and collaborations to be built.
Roundtable discussions at the South-East Community Visit. Credit: MRC
The first round of visits
We hosted six visits over May and June 2024 where we engaged directly with 72 higher education institutions and 296 regional partners. This is over a 250% increase on higher education institutions that we were engaging with previously.
Institutions were invited to nominate which staff members they would like to attend, and we balanced attendance from each institution to allow for equitable representation.
Each visit consisted of two parts: an MRC-led section, and a region-led section.
In the MRC sessions we presented updates, answered questions, and hosted breakout sessions where we asked for feedback on areas of future opportunity in preparation for an upcoming spending review.
For the region-led sessions local institutions told us about topics that are important to them. As part of this there were workshops, panels and presentations. The focus of these sessions was varied and included many different topics, for example:
- health inequalities
- maximising the opportunities afforded by artificial intelligence
- research culture
Marie Sams (Head of the National Centre for Research Culture, The University of Warwick) opens the Research Culture session at the MRC Community Visit for the Midlands. Credit: Alexandra Archibald, Midlands Innovation
Working with existing regional networks
For many of the visits we partnered with local regional consortia including Eastern Academic Research Consortium, Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance, Northern Health Science Alliance (NHSA), GW4 and Midlands Innovation. Delivering the visits would not have been possible without these partnerships.
The local knowledge and networks regional consortia have are unmatched, and being able to use these links was essential in being able to understand what was important to their communities.
Dr Helen Turner, Director of Midlands Innovation, said:
It was a privilege to host senior leaders from MRC in the Midlands, and to provide them with an opportunity to meet with and hear from representatives from universities from right across the region.
Patrick Chinnery (Executive Chair, MRC) with colleagues from the Northern Health Science Alliance (NHSA). Credit: Charlotte Thompson, NHSA
Local communities informing national strategies
What particularly shone through at the visits was the excellence and collaboration already happening within regions.
Many discussions also considered MRC’s role in how we can best support regions in tackling research challenges. Using the local insights we gain to inform our national strategies is an important part of the visits programme.
Looking forward to expanding the programme
My hope is that the visits continue to grow, and we can expand to more and more organisations. Whilst we spoke to a lot of higher education institutions, there were still many that we didn’t get to engage with.
I also hope that going forwards we can even expand the programme beyond higher education institutions and include a bigger diversity of communities. For example, colleagues from civic organisations (including charity, local government and community) and industry organisations. Advancing health isn’t just driven by universities. We need to include a range of local partners in these conversations if we truly want to foster aligned and collaborative approaches.
Other opportunities to engage with MRC
I think it’s important to note that despite moving to this new community engagement approach we recognise that there still need to be conversations that happen on a one-to-one basis.
We remain open and happy to chat about anything you think would be useful, so do feel free to get in touch with us at any point.
What’s next
We’re currently reviewing the first round of visits and planning next steps. We’re keen to make sure that visits are valuable to both us and the communities that we serve. We’re reflecting on what went well, what didn’t, and how we can improve going forwards.
Whether you attended a visit or not, we’d love to hear your feedback on our new approach as we continue to develop and shape the programme. To get in touch, please contact us at mrccommunityvisits@mrc.ukri.org
Top image: Group photo from the MRC Community Visit for Scotland at the National Robotarium, Heriot-Watt University. Credit: Ally Hughes, Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance.
Dominic is a Strategic Engagement Manager who leads the strategic vision and delivery of the Community Visits programme. He also supports MRC’s engagement with key partners across the medical research landscape, primarily focusing on academic engagement.
Before joining MRC, Dominic worked for the Wellcome Trust in their genetics and molecular sciences team and supported the management of Wellcome’s Basic Science PhD programme.