On 24 January 2024, Student Hubs held a conference themed on the ‘Social Purpose University’ in Birmingham at The Birmingham & Midland Institute. We were joined by 55 delegates including speakers from 30 different universities and organisations across the country, sharing inspiring case studies about their work with students, communities, and the vision for what a social purpose university looks like in 2024 and beyond.
We had a brilliant day and learnt a lot; for people and institutions who weren’t able to join us on the day, we wanted to share our top reflections and things we heard at the conference on the theme of the social purpose university.
The power of co-creation and working collaboratively
When we set out to design our 2024 Conference at Student Hubs, there were certain things we were sure about. One was that we wanted to promote the role of collaboration in socially purposeful work, and that’s why we set out to have attendees of all backgrounds at the conference: from institutions at various stages of their social purpose journey; to third sector organisations who work in partnership with students and communities; and students themselves. We also heard from our breakout speakers about the power of listening to communities in designing socially impactful projects, such as from the University of Derby’s Student Legal Advice Centre, ARU’s SHoKE programme, and in Royal Holloway’s Homeless project.
Role modelling the future we want to see
Our CEO Sim Dhanjal-Field shared her definition of active citizenship in her keynote speech, and the theme of active citizenship and role modelling the future we want to see came up in various sessions throughout the day. We also saw speakers talk about the value of fun and joy as meaningful outcomes in this work: Organised Fun delivered a session titled ‘In Defence of Extracurricular Activities’, and Leeds Conservatoire spoke about this in their knowledge exchange partnership with Orchestras Live. The University of Sheffield Students’ Union programme, Change Lab, was also highlighted as a way for students to campaign for social change, creating the future they want to see whilst engaging with the community and receiving bespoke support from the university.
Looking to our third sector presenters during the day, Student Minds and YMCA George Williams College both presented on how leading in a person-centred way would better support students and communities to thrive. Student Minds explored examples of how universities are using the context of their student communities to enhance wellbeing; YMCA George Williams College focused on social and emotional capabilities in the people we work with, and how we can ask ourselves ‘six good questions’ about the work we’re leading with these groups.
Shaping the ‘DNA of the institution’
In our panel event, Director of Place and Civic Engagement at Sheffield Hallam University, Greg Burke, spoke about the importance of shaping ‘the DNA of the institution’ in striving to be a social purpose university. There were many ways in which universities could achieve this, and we saw lots of examples of this practice in our speakers. Nigel Ball led our plenary session as Director of the Social Purpose Lab at UAL, exploring the challenges and importance of definitions, a process for taking an institutional approach, and centring what social purpose looked like in practice for UAL’s staff, students and local community.
The University of Durham, UWE and the University of Derby with Derbyshire Voluntary Action showcased how they were taking this initiative in shaping their volunteering offer at their institutions, growing and embedding their programmes to reach students from across their institutions and working effectively in partnership within their communities.
The importance of protest
Our panel, particularly Sunday Blake from Wonkhe and Jonathan Grant from Different Angles, discussed shadow foreign secretary David Lammy’s remarks on 20 January where he said he wanted ‘change through power, not protest’. Both Sunday and Jonathan disagreed with this notion, with Jonathan’s keynote address earlier in the day exploring the long history and success of student protest and civil disobedience in creating meaningful change in society. Sunday also spoke about the dangers in volunteering being seen as a ‘palatable way of changing society’ with protesting being seen as ‘unpalatable’. Sunday and Jonathan agreed on the importance of students feeling supported by their institutions to protest and campaign. Our panel, panel moderator Richard Brabner from the UPP Foundation, and plenary speaker Nigel Ball spoke to the role of institutions balancing their political ‘neutrality’ with what they stand for and back as an institution, and the debate of whether neutrality was even possible in our current climate and context, let alone desirable for an institution to pursue.
Taking a long-term perspective
In designing the conference, we streamed our conference sessions to support delegates at different stages of their journey, and in our Embed stream we saw the power of having a long-term perspective in taking this work forward as a whole institution at a strategic level. In developing Community Engaged Learning as an institutional approach, Professor Sonia Kumar spoke of her work at CENTRE at the University of Leeds, Sarah Rafferty spoke about their Office for Students’ funded programme at the University of York, and Ali Orr and Louise Dukes spoke about their partnership with us at Student Hubs in delivering these activities, as well as how their Town House Strategy is leading their approach in this area at Kingston University.
Special thanks
Thank you to all of our wonderful delegates and speakers, and particularly Jonathan Grant (our keynote speaker and panellist); Greg Burke, Professor Sonia Kumar, Sunday Blake (our panellists); Nigel Ball (our plenary speaker); and Richard Brabner and the UPP Foundation (our panel moderator and headline sponsors of the conference).
Speak to us about your social purpose university
We would love to hear how this work goes at your institution, or if any ideas sparked from the day come to fruition later this year. We’re already starting to think about our next event, so if you’re interested in getting involved (or even partnering with us to deliver it!) get in touch with us at info@studenthubs.org.
If you want to work in partnership with us as part of your plans for the Social Purpose University, you can see more examples of how we can support through our Kickstart, Build, and Embed blogs, by downloading our university partnerships brochure, or getting in touch with our Partnerships and Development Director, Fiona Walsh McDonnell, at fiona.walsh@studenthubs.org.