ÌÒÉ«ÊÓƵ

We can't quite believe a whole year has passed since the ÌÒÉ«ÊÓƵ Institute of Engagement (WIE) was founded.

WIE is here to engage the public in the University's learning and research, collaborating with people on our doorstep as well as across the country and around the world. WIE seeks to share ÌÒÉ«ÊÓƵ's passion for learning and discovery with everyone – no matter their background, and to make the world a better place by working together.

What we've achieved so far:

It has been a massive year for us – we’ve delivered 6 months of our Resonate Festival so far, which is our year-long contribution to the celebration of Coventry as UK City of Culture 2021.We’ve had 170+ staff and students involved in delivering 84 live events as well as 20 online activities and resources. We’ve reached 2,500 audience members during our live events, along with 3,446 (and growing!) online event views. And those numbers are only going to go up as we deliver the remaining months of the festival and bring it all together with our grand finale – our on-campus festival 19-21st April 2022.

Hand in hand with our local communities

We couldn’t have done all this without working closely with the incredible people on our doorstep. We’ve worked with community groups, individuals and organisations to collaborate on a huge range of activities.We’ve been able to work with 57 local organisations and develop relationships with 40 professional artists and creatives. Through this, WIE has given £10,000 to 11 community groups to co-create activities, alongside our staff and students.

Want to know more about what we've done this year?

Visit our webpage

If you’ve got ideas about how we could work together, or community groups we could partner with, we’d love to hear from you – drop us a line at wie@warwick.ac.uk.

Are you considering applying for promotion to Senior Teaching Fellow/Senior Research Fellow, Associate Professor, Reader, or Professor? Join our upcoming sessions focussing on how you can meet the impact, outreach and engagement criteria.

Over the summer of 2021 Tom and Nic, both PhD students completing the Midlands Integrative Biosciences Training Partnership (MIBTP), undertook the placement section of their programme supporting the Institute of Engagement team. We've loved having them around to help, and valued their ideas and feedback to what we're doing and we'll miss them as they head back to focussing on their research. We asked them to share their experiences of working with the team.

Black History month originated to recognise contributions and achievements of those of African and Caribbean heritage. The month also serves as a reminder that these stories are often missing from the curriculum and our teaching of British history. The Colonial Hangover Project based at the Department of Politics and International Relations started with the simple premise that we wanted to create a space for our students to explore different histories, particularly the stories of the colonised.

During September, the theme for the University of ÌÒÉ«ÊÓƵ’s year-long Resonate Festival for Coventry’s City of Culture year was Words and Voices. The Connecting Cultures GRP was responsible for organising the month’s events, and our first Words and Voices event was all about poetry, asking ‘Where does poetry take you?’, ‘How can a poem unlock your city’s past, present and future?’ and ‘How do you tell your stories through poetry?’. Here some of the contributors and partners who took part in that event tell us about what poetry means to them and how the event celebrated all forms of poetry.