Mapping the Landscape

This free online training session will cover approaches to cross-sector collaboration. It will focus on how different sectors – specifically Higher Education, Arts, Culture and Heritage, and Voluntary, Community, & Social Enterprise – sit alongside one another. The session aims to start a conversation and generate reflection to help people refine their approaches to partnership work, or create stronger alignment in their partnerships.

• An overview of different sectors and roles and how they operate
• An insight into each sector from a sector representative
• Top tips for collaboration and cross-sector partnerships

• A presentation setting the scene of cross-sector collaboration
• A panel discussion about how to navigate cross-sector collaborations impactfully and equitably. The panel is chaired by David Owens (Civic University Network) and features Zain Hafeez (Senior Community Organiser at Citizens UK and Funding Manager at Civic Power Fund), Dr Juanita Cox (Community Engagement Researcher at University of Edinburgh), and Richard Martin (Director of Participation at Whitechapel Gallery)
• Interactive breakout rooms with representatives from HE, Arts & Heritage and the VCSE sector. Each representative discusses key drivers, motivators, and top tips, with the opportunity for attendees to ask questions and have discussion, and time allocated for plenary feedback.

We invite you to join this dynamic and engaging session to start conversations, build understanding across sectors and take away ideas to inform your own collaborative working.

This session has been designed with a broad range of professionals in mind. We hope it will be a useful session for academics and researchers at different career levels working in a range of humanities subjects, professional services staff from universities, public engagement professionals and staff from community, cultural and charitable organisations.

This event is free, but booking is required. It will be held online and joining details will be circulated via email to registered attendees.This session will be recorded. If you would like to receive a link to the recording, please sign up for the session to receive the recording link once it is available.

This event is part of a series of CPEP training sessions exploring participatory and collaborative approaches to public engagement. Sessions are designed as standalone trainings, but participants may benefit from attending them in sequence.

This session will be held on Zoom and closed captioning will be available. Any resources referred to during the session will be circulated afterwards via email. Please make a note of any accessibility requirements in the booking form. Further details about what to expect in each session will be made available before the session to those who have booked.

David Owen

David has over fifteen years of experience working with universities and a wide variety of institutions to support the co-design and development of university-community engagement strategies and programmes. His areas of expertise include engagement, partnership, place-based engagement, systems thinking, and organisational learning. As an associate with the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement, he recently worked with them to help develop the Place Navigator and the Civic Capabilities Framework, two tools to help university staff in England get to grips with their local area. David is an experienced facilitator and trainer and has also written extensively in the field of University-Community engagement and led numerous publications and policy reports, including A Handbook for Authentic Learning in Higher Education, the University Partnership Playbook, The Engaged University: Turning Words into Action and The State of Play: Public Engagement with Research in UK Universities.

Dr Juanita Cox

Dr Juanita Cox is Community Engagement Researcher on the 3-year AHRC‑funded project Voices in Slavery’s Archive at the University of Edinburgh. She co‑curated the ground-breaking Senate House Library exhibition In the Grip of Change: The Caribbean and its British Diaspora (2024–25). Previously, she was Research Fellow on The Windrush Scandal in a Transnational and Commonwealth Context and an earlier scoping project, An Oral History of the Windrush Generation and their Relationship to the British State, 1948-2018. A leading authority on Guyanese novelist Edgar Mittelholzer, she edited Creole Chips and Other Writings: Short Fiction, Poetry, Drama and Essays  (2018). She is a trustee of the Oral History Society, co‑founder of Guyana SPEAKS, and serves on the editorial board of Black Histories: Dialogues.

Zain Hafeez

Zain Hafeez works across community organising, funding and systems change. He leads place-based work at the Civic Power Fund, organises for Citizens UK Migration Justice campaigning work and is a consultant working on community power and systems change. He also advises institutions on community power and participatory approaches, including co-designed learning and evaluation frameworks, grounded in both practice and lived experience.