Public engagement (PE) is a term that is used to describe the many ways we connect, share and involve the public with our work; whether it be research, teaching or social responsibility.

Public engagement is mutually beneficial to staff, students and the public in a myriad of ways; it enables knowledge sharing and exchange to solve problems; inspires researchers and students of the future and can stimulate new areas of research. It covers a wide breadth of activities and contributions including patient involvement work, applied student work, outreach and policy engagement. The University of Manchester has a long legacy of outstanding public engagement work and we want to build on this to support out staff and students to do good quality public engagement work.

The public engagement framework ‘Share, Inspire, Involve‘ describes what we mean by public engagement, types of public engagement activity at the University and provides useful links to find out more. The framework was developed by Suzanne Spicer, Social Responsibility Manager and Dr Sheena Cruickshank, the Academic Lead for Public Engagement, and was informed by the public engagement survey findings.

A key component of the framework is defining the University’s five strategic priorities for public engagement over the next few years. We strive to achieve high quality by improving the quality of the work we do and by creating a supportive environment to improve public engagement training and share best practice. We want to improve coordination to maximise the opportunities and effectiveness of the work we do and will strive to diversify the audiences we work with and best serve our audience needs. We will seek to capture data from the impact of the public engagement we do which is important for us to reflect on the quality of what we do as well as for our funders.

Staff can find out more about our public engagement on the engagement@manchester website, you can read the engagement matters blogposts with hints and tips for effective public engagement and come to the engagement@manchester lunchtime sessions where practitioners in public engagement share their experiences and best practice.

The next engagement@manchester session is at 1-2pm on the 18 October, on the topic of ‘Storytelling and public engagement’. This will take place in the Kanaris Theatre at Manchester Museum.

Future sessions are on:

• impact and research partnerships
• policy
• health
• the arts and community engagement: working with/empowering young people.

There are also some fantastic opportunities to get involved with public engagement activities, such as Science Spectacular and the ESRC Festival of Social Science. For more details see engagement@manchester website.