Standup comedy is one way of getting academic research to a new audience – and keeping funders happy
Becoming a standup comedian for the night might not seem the most obvious way to tell the public about your research but it worked for Mike Ward. "I've always wanted to do it and thought standup would be a really good way to get my research out to a different audience, show people that academics don't just sit in universities, and make them laugh," he says.
The 29-year-old PhD student sociologist at Cardiff University says his research into the lives of 18-year-old men from the Welsh valleys offered plenty of material for Bright Club, a monthly "thinking person's" comedy night.
Once seen as a distraction from the real job of research or teaching, public engagement is becoming an accepted part of university life, and something that officials are keen to promote – the UK's main research funders will sign an agreement to entice more academics to do outreach work at a major conference in London today.
According to Professor Alan Thorpe, public engagement champion at Research Councils UK (RCUK) – the umbrella body for all seven UK funding bodies – the concordat will give efforts to increase universities' public engagement real clout. "It's a single statement from a large group about what we expect, and it's very clear, which is powerful," he explains.
RCUK believes public engagement should be part of all researchers' skillsets – improving the way they communicate and influence people, as well as raising their personal and institutional profile and the potential for new partnerships. "We want to keep our foot on the pedal and accelerate this because we think it's important," Thorpe says. "We're not saying every researcher should be on the telly or radio, but it should make it much clearer for researchers that this is something worth spending time on."
With taxes funding research to the tune of £3.5bn a year, it's fair to suggest the public should have some share in what goes on. Showing the impact of research is now part of the grant application process and a nationwide campaign to encourage more interaction between universities was launched in 2007. Six "beacons", or networks of institutions, have tried to change university culture on public engagement so that it is not seen as an altruistic add-on but as an integral part of university life.
Bruce Etherington, programme manager for Wales's beacon, says the project has helped academics realise public engagement can be something universities want them to do as part of their job. The University of Glamorgan is trialling the allocation of public engagement in academics' annual workload agreements. "People asked whether it was just a fad at the start," he explains. "The concordat guarantees that it's not going away and isn't something the research funders can quietly drop."
The comedy night idea came from the University College London beacon. Steve Cross, head of public engagement at UCL, agrees with Etherington. "The concordat says that UK universities and research funders will never fall back past this point, and lays down some principles to guide our further development," he says – and that staff who engage with the public will be supported.
I'm a Scientist, Get Me Out Of Here is a scheme funded by the Wellcome Trust to get researchers to interact online with teenagers, and Researchers in Residence is an RCUK-funded programme offering placement in a secondary school.
"Our evaluation work suggests that public engagement benefits staff in terms of their skills, their opinion of themselves and others' opinions of them," says Cross. "It benefits research in that it raises new questions, sharpens existing ones and helps to create more robust outcomes. It can benefit members of the public in tangible ways, through helping them to achieve their own goals, as well as improving their skills."
Professor Paddy Regan, a nuclear physicist at the University of Surrey, has first-hand experience of this. Despite being a seasoned giver of public lecturers, he had little media experience when he was approached for comment on the polonium poisoning of Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko. The media work boosted his own and his university's profile.
University brand
"Some colleagues thought it was a waste of time and an ego trip but the university profile went through the roof," he explains. "It's good for the local university brand. The whole culture has changed dramatically over the last 15 years. No academic can sit in their office sipping sherry, we have to fight hard for public funding and justify getting it. Explaining things to the public is part of that role."
Julie Worrall, project director of the University of East Anglia's beacon, says they act as a broker between the academics and the community, helping to organise activities such as a literary festival. "People are enormously creative and want to do things, it's just having the time and capacity, and we can help with that," she says.
Momentum at UEA has built enormously over the last three years, thanks in part to a supportive vice-chancellor, Professor Edward Acton. He has signed up to a manifesto, also being launched today, that will help signatory universities receive practical help on public engagement.
Universities that embrace the concept will have a competitive edge in future, according to Paul Manners, director of the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement. "Students want to come out of university equipped to thrive in the 21st century and don't just want to be locked away on campus," he explains. "A lot of them are committed to volunteering and the kind of education that's not just academic but stretches them as people."
For Manners, today's agreement and manifesto will reinforce the message of recognising and rewarding public engagement work – and giving academics the training they need to do it. It can include anything from giving a lecture, to pro bono legal expertise, to giving expert advice or research evidence to policymakers.
Ward's foray into public engagement has been a "massive confidence boost". He was keen to share his findings with the community he came from and he has also helped some of the 18-year-olds to apply for university places. "People talk about them as chavs and they are vilified, but they are young people with a lot to say and they need to be listened to," he says. "Being from the area, I wanted to give something back. More people will have seen [my act] than will ever read a paper in contemporary ethnography."