About public engagement

Image:Jan Stadtmann from ‘Quatre Mains’ Andrew Dawson & Sven Till for ‘The Articulate Hand’, Wellcome Trust public programme

In order to create and lead some workshops / training about Public Engagement, on behalf of Flow Associates, I put a quick call out to the GEM (Group for education in Museums) list which came up trumps with a wealth of resources streaming in from some kind people who took a minute out to share what they knew.Thanks - here’s what was collated, hope it’s useful to others too:

Ruth Semple, Public Engagement Manager, The Royal College of Pathologists  sent a  newsletter about their National pathology Week 2008 activities and a more detailed powerpoint exploring one of the Week’s events; a public autopsy exploration. Accompanied by a podcast available here  If anyone would like the powerppint and pdf please do comment, I’ll just check Ruth’s permission before passing it on.

“You should contact Penny Wilson here in Cambridge. She and a team have been running a public engagement training project for staff, postgrads and undergrads called Rising Stars. Your project sounds like it has a similar brief. This has worked with participants from across the board subject-wise, and I suspect they have learned quite a lot about what does and doesn’t work during the 3 years the project has run for. I’ve been working with groups of geology undergraduates for the past 10 years on a schools outreach project called Time Truck. Give me a call if you’d like to find out more about this.”
Annette Shelford, University of Cambridge

“Have you seen the recently revamped website of the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement? It’s fabulous and I think you should find what you need there. http://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/  See also www.cam.ac.uk/community and click on ‘resources at your disposal’ for University of Cambridge examples.
As Annette says, we have a public engagement course here called ‘Rising Stars’ - see www.cam.ac.uk/communityaffairs "
Penny Wilson, Head of Community Affairs, Office of External Affairs and Communications, University of Cambridge

“I don’t know if you have heard of TED.com but they always have fantastic speakers who are able to take complex and challenging topics to explain them at a straightforward and easy to understand level, surely an example of how to engage.
One project I have seen on there is Dave Eggers 826 varieties which essentially run after school programmes for inner city young people who then work with graduate students and teachers in improving the young people’s skills. To cover costs and legitimise the back room the front is set up as a shop (Pirate shop, Superhero shop) and sells wares, profits of which go to the costs of premises/charity”.
Mark Macleod, Museums Galleries Scotland

I run the Public Engagement Unit at UCL, so, amongst other things, I keep track of the definitions of PE that we, our funders, and other Universities use. I also trigger new and innovative engagement activities, and support those of other people. With my colleague Simon Gould I run a network for all the artists/writers/composers in residence at UCL, too.  You might also want to speak to the staff of the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement www.publicengagement.ac.uk
Steve Cross, Public Engagement Co-ordinator, UCL, London’s Beacon for Public Engagement

Taylor Nuttall, Chief Exec of Folly in Lancaster tweeted in via twitter to share this example of contemporary artists working with libraries.

As all this took place I was also following on Twitter the Art of With event at Cornerhouse exploring collaborative practice between artists and public - a lot of associated tweets touched on principles of public engagement too - http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23artofwith

Knowing the Wellcome Trust was a place to find art and scienc related public engagement activity I am just listing one of their programmes as a really interesting ‘shopping list’ of public programme events, in the form of the Apparatus series

25 June: A late addition to the list and follow-up of Mark’s comment re TED above: the fine art of talking - from the Guardian :: click ::