The National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement are delighted to announce their plans for Engage 2020! With Covid-19 redefining our world, there has never been a more important time to stay connected, so we have decided to do Engage a bit differently this year…

The Engage Festival is an online extravaganza which will take place from Monday 30 November – Friday 4 December 2020. Bringing together all of those keen to support the role of public engagement in reimagining our world, the programme is the ultimate in tailorable experiences, with delegates being able to develop their own programme that fits their interests and their availability.

The call for contributions is open now, see: https://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/node/2952#call. The call for contributions will close on Monday 31 August.

We welcome poets, artists, thinkers, practitioners, funders, policy makers, dreamers, pragmatists, communities, publics, patients, to come and join us at the festival – to share perspectives, and to reflect on the future of engagement in a Covid-19 world.

Engage 2020 will explore these questions:

• What is the role of universities in our rapidly changing context? With Covid-19 changing the face of society, how can we reimagine the contribution universities can make? What is the role of public engagement in how universities respond?
• As we develop new approaches to engagement, how can we ensure that our work is inclusive, and appropriate to the interests and needs of those we work with? Are our emergent practices creating new barriers to engagement, and how can we respond to this?
• As we start the process of social, economic and cultural recovery, how we can work in partnership with others to generate and share knowledge together? How can we find ways to support engagement practice, in the face of reduced funding, and increased pressure on communities?

Engage 2020 themes
This year we will focus on the following key themes, seeking to open up a framework for action that could change the HE landscape forever.

• Being trusted and ethical
• Acting on inequality and inclusion
• Working responsively
• Mobilising knowledge
• Demonstrating accountability
• Remaining relevant

Innovation grant:
NCCPE are making some bursaries available to cover the cost implications of curating something really innovative. These are to enable contributors to push the boundaries of online engagement, explore other innovative ways of bringing people together, or to develop tools and methods to approach engagement in our current context.

For full details visit the NCCPE festival hub webpage.