Search these pages to explore a selection of our directory of activities. You can use the keyword search and filter buttons to discover how we are addressing each of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals and the five priorities in our Social Responsibility and Civic Engagement Plan. You can also filter activities by location and function.
searching subjects: Prosperous communities
Each year, we host the Making a Difference Awards to celebrate the incredible and inspiring work of our University community. The awards highlight the extensive range of social responsibility initiatives of our staff, students, alumni and external partners, and covers categories such as benefit to research; widening participation; environmental sustainability and equality, diversity and inclusion.
Our university has contributed to the Global University Social Responsibility Massive Online Open Course (MOOC), which allows users to learn about the general framework of university social responsibility as well as understand effective practices to design, plan, implement, and evaluate their own activities.
Each year, the University’s Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health (FBMH) hosts the ‘Talking Science Competition’ where second year undergraduate students and above are invited to share their ideas on how science can create a healthier, fairer and greener world, creating a unique opportunity to talk about a subject that really matters to them.
To mark the UN’s International Day of Older Persons we have created a booklet which showcases the different ways older age is experienced in Greater Manchester, alongside an accompanying animation. This booklet offers a guide to a more immersive, flexible, creative and participatory approach for engaging with those within the category – enabling policy communities, academics, and others to gain a richer, localised and more personal understanding of what it means to be an older person. The project also responds to research and campaigns that have found representations of older age often fall back on medicalised, stereotypical accounts of what constitutes older lives.
Academics from the University have worked with practitioners from the Tim Parry Johnathan Ball Peace Foundation to develop a framework and toolkit for conducting ‘mediated dialogue’ with groups in conflict. The framework and toolkit is used in community safety and neighbourhood team roles, restorative youth or community practices by social services and youth offending teams for a broader range of groups experiencing escalating conflict or as an opportunity to repair relationships.
Manchester Museum’s Top Floor is a space for people to come together to learn, share ideas and connect with the community. You’ll find education groups, charities, artists, writers, staff and students co-working and collaborating here, with a shared commitment to social and environmental justice. The Museum has also appointed Hannah Hartley as the Environmental Action Manager, where she works across all areas of the museum to drive forward its ambitions in environmental thinking and action, establishing sustainable practices, and building on the Museum’s rich experience in developing narratives and programming in response to the climate crisis.
The University has one of the UK’s most extensive programmes of work with local state schools and colleges. In accordance with the University’s access and participation plan with the Office for Students, we deliver a School Governor Initiative that helps staff and alumni to find volunteering placements as governors in local schools.
A Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Manchester has been working with an international team of colleagues to create a pioneering research platform called ‘Virtual Labs’, which uses autonomous AI to retrieve and share relevant knowledge with research teams around the world who are now in a race to mitigate the impact of climate change. The technology will also help fast-track new research and innovation to support breakthroughs in diverse areas of study, from the development of new advanced materials to the design of new drugs.
Each year our University organises the Student Volunteering Week which aims to encourage students to take part in various volunteering opportunities to help society and the environment. For example, in 2022, students took part in ‘cleaning and greening’ the Fallowfield Brow area which elevated the space for local wildlife and residents.
Our Whitworth Art Gallery partners with the Afrocats to hold a series of creative events and workshops to drive social change. Afrocats is a female-led charity that works closely with communities to address and dismantle inequality by identifying and breaking down barriers. Their vision is to create a robust and more inclusive social environment for vulnerable asylum-seekers and refugees.
Dr. Sherilyn MacGregor, Reader in Environmental Politics at our University, is the lead author of a major report commissioned by Oxfam America that investigates the impacts of climate breakdown, climate mitigation and adaptations on care work. The report calls for greater actions to limit greenhouse gas emissions and a more significant focus on the nexus of climate and care work within policy and research. It points to the need for climate initiatives to pursue gender-transformative approaches via the adoption of care sensitive interventions.
The ESRC festival of Social Science is an annual celebration of the research conducted in social sciences and its profound impact on society. It offers a fascinating insight into some of the country’s leading research and how it influences our social, economic, and political lives – both now and in the future. The festival is open to everyone and is a unique opportunity to engage directly with researchers about the projects they work on.
At the University of Manchester we are proud to be part of the City of Manchester team who worked together to achieve the Living Wage City Status. The University is a pioneer and advocate for the Real Living Wage in the City and has been a Real Wage employer since 2019.
Manchester Day of Action (MDoA) is our annual flagship volunteer programme where alumni from across the world are invited to choose a local project that needs volunteer assistance. Each project relates to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and a team of alumni work together to support the project during the ‘Day of Action,’ which takes place during the summer.
Examples of our civic partnerships include: We also prioritise global partnerships to advance our work towards the SDGs. These include:
Policy@Manchester is our University’s sector-leading policy engagement institute. It connects researchers with policymakers and influencers, nurturing long-term policy engagement partnerships and impact.
We partner with small local charities in Manchester right through to major government departments through our Q-Step programme. This places students on internships in organisations that require data skills and analysis and we’ve collaborated on projects with the Office for National Statistics on global, national and regional datasets used to measure progress on SDGs.
We’re committed to empowering students with the knowledge, skills and opportunities to address all of the SDGs through partnerships with public, private and civil society organisations. Our University Living Lab platform connects student projects with external organisations to address the SDGs. Our Volunteer Hub acts to advance partnerships between hundreds of charities and our student volunteers. And many academic programmes offer service-learning partnerships, where external organisations benefit from practical student interventions in areas such as dentistry, optometry, pharmacy, business and legal advice.
We’ve become the first higher education institution in the UK to adopt the Social Value Portal, the leading online tool that helps organisations prioritise and measure their social value when they procure, or pay for, major services.
Making a Difference Awards
Global University Social Responsibility MOOC
Talking Science Competition
Age-friendly Greater Manchester
Conducting ‘Mediated Dialogue’
Top floor of Manchester Museum
School Governor Initiative
Using AI to tackle humanity’s greatest challenges
Student Volunteering Week
Afrocats takeover at The Whitworth
University Publishes Report on Caring in a Changing Climate
ESRC Festival of Social Science
Living Wage City
Manchester Day of Action
Social responsibility partnerships
Policy@Manchester
Q-Step data partnerships
Student learning partnerships
Social Value Portal
