Working Together

Holistic staff-student partnerships work with civil society institutions to bring collective social justice to our region.

Newcastle University is a strategic partner of Tyne and Wear Citizens. This is a broad-based community organising alliance founded in December 2015, in response to alarming rates of poverty and inequality across the region. It operates across the breadth of civil society. It brings together educational, religious, charitable and public health organisations. It engages with difference, rather than avoiding it.

Members collectively tackle social justice issues. They develop strong community leaders who care about the everyday injustices across their communities.

Three action group campaigns

Member institutions voted for the three action group campaigns:

• poverty
• Islamophobia and hate crime
• mental health

Newcastle University has student and staff representatives who work across these campaigns. They work alongside institution members from around the region. They conduct listening campaigns and construct action teams to tackle shared issues by proposing actions to those with the ability to progress change.

Grassroots community outreach

Tyne and Wear Citizens has established strong connections to the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology.

More unconventional student-led placement opportunities provide participatory involvement with Tyne and Wear citizens. Dents and staff continue to build strong civic relationships that establish the University as a regional hub for social justice. The hub is led by empowered yet politically unsettled student and staff leaders who have been a part of, and constructed, their own teams. They:

• raise the number of real living wage employers in the region
• produce a charter against hate crime for public transport
• hold key public figures to account to facilitate co-produced improvements to mental health facilities and services in our communities

Callum is a third-year undergraduate Geography student. He told us:

“Through engagement with Tyne and Wear Citizens, I have been told and trusted with honest and personal stories of deplorable Islamophobic hate crime, student struggles with poor mental health and experiences of child poverty. Tyne and Wear Citizens has provided me with a platform to tell my own stories, while giving me the tools to realise my own power to progress social change with the backing of the collective alliance.”

• Callum Stridgeon is a third-year Geography undergraduate student, Tyne and Wear Citizens Mental Health Commission Assistant and Campaign Leader

The North East of England has a long history of social justice campaigning.

The University shares in this tradition, from our foundations as a civic university to the award of an honorary degree to Dr Martin Luther King Jr in 1967. Our longstanding work to promote social mobility amongst young people in the North and the appointment of a Dean of Social Justice in 2018.

Working together in the North East of England

Our core values of social justice, equality, diversity and inclusion are threaded through all that we do, from our education, to our research, to how we operate institutionally. We take a lead on progressive societal change that challenges the status quo and inspires future generations.

We work together with communities across our region. By doing this, we are able to:

• fully understand our local challenges
• apply our research, education and professional expertise to address them

Our partners in the voluntary community and social enterprise (VCSE) sector are central to this. In the North East, there are over 7,000 VCSE organisations, employing almost 5% of the workforce. Through strategic relationships with VCSE partners, we co-design solutions to the challenges facing our communities.

In 2018, Newcastle University launched a fund to support work in the field of social justice. This is a part of the University's new Engagement and Place strategy. The fund will develop successful relationships between the University and VCSE partners. It will support projects focused on key social justice challenges in our place. We will take a long-term view of enhancing meaningful and mutually beneficial relationships between Newcastle University and the VCSE sector.

• Andrea Henderson is Engagement Manager and Bob Allan is Engagement Support Coordinator

How do people deal with not having enough water?

We use and value water in a multitude of ways that impact on technological uptake and on the broader environment. We can learn from and, perhaps even more importantly, with those who don't have enough water.

Meeting UN Sustainable Development Goal 6 – ensure the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all – needs a collaborative interdisciplinary approach. We must include inputs from social sciences, humanities and arts if we are to build equitable water security.

Newcastle University is leading on this with two UKRI Global Challenges Research Fund Hubs. These hubs will tackle intractable challenges relating to water. Over the next five years, both hubs will use interdisciplinary approaches to create research and impacts across the world, starting by talking to people.

People, power, place

These are all vital for building water security, but are often forgotten in the creation of technical solutions which then often fail. Many people don’t have access to adequate safe water supplies. There are social justice implications for who gets reliable access to water.

“Water shortage is not synonymous with drought. It can happen in times of plenty, depending on infrastructure decisions and funding,” explains Dr Cat Button, co-investigator on both projects.

There is a big difference between creating a system where a small number of people receive a lot of water, and one in which lots of people receive some water. As states roll back responsibility for provision, this can improve infrastructure. Where someone lives and whether they can pay can be crucial.

Much of Dr Button’s research has focused on the middle classes in India, and thinking through the possible consequences of this for wider water provision and policies.

“It is important that solutions are relevant to the context, both the people and the place” – Dr Cat Button

• Dr Cat Button is a Senior Lecturer of Global Urbanisms in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at Newcastle University

Engaged learning involves our students in working with external partners.

Partners belong to all areas of business and industry: the private, public and voluntary and community sectors.

One of the key benefits of engaged learning is reciprocity. All participants feel the benefits of the experience. Our students gain invaluable work-related experience. Our partners gain opportunities for students to investigate a problem or challenge on their behalf, or to provide extra help.

Working with external partners

Engaged learning is an integral part of the student experience at Newcastle University. Students gain invaluable work-related experiences, either as a part of their studies or as extra-curricular activities. They work with external partners through internships, placements, volunteering, and their degree course.

Students work with external partners to provide:

• an extra pair of hands
• the time and expertise to investigate a problem or challenge on their behalf

Students have the opportunity to:

• put their knowledge and skills to the test
• gain experience of working practices that will help them in their future career

Curiosity, collaboration and resilience are three elements in the University’s Graduate Framework. Engaged learning provides opportunities to develop these and a wide range of other skills sought by recruiters.

Volunteering

Many of our degree courses include engaged learning opportunities. Many of our students also gain invaluable experience through volunteering.

The University offers a wide range of diverse volunteering opportunities. From one-off events such as ‘beach cleans’ to teaching English to refugees and asylum seekers, more than 4,000 students volunteer. By volunteering, they:

• give back to their local community
• become engaged in issues relating to social justice, such as diversity, inclusion and respect

More than 40% of our graduate students stay in the North East each year as graduates. Volunteering is a great way in which many start new friendships and join networks in the region.

• Marc Lintern is Director of Student Experience at Newcastle University Careers Service

Our model of engagement enables:

• mutually beneficial civic partnerships
• voluntary sector placements
• collaborative research

Newcastle University has a high-profile commitment to “social justice in all that we do”. This commitment enables us to lead the way in facilitating partnerships with the voluntary sector.

Our external partnerships are essential to our teaching, research and civic responsibility. We will ensure that these partnerships are equitable and sustainable.

The civic role of higher education institutions

The civic role of UK higher education institutions (HEIs) has long been contested. New fee structures and declining public funding have led to a suggestion that HEIs no longer support people and places confronting austerity. Rather, they represent corporate and commercial interests.

Newcastle University’s Vision and Strategy is a unique opportunity to reconcile competing corporate and civic orientations. For example, we will prioritise student well-being and resilience. At the same time, we will embed civic action and social responsibility in graduate skills pathways. This will include volunteering, work-based and service learning.

Engagement and place

Campus-community partnerships have been criticised for being rooted in charity rather than justice:

• charity occurs when one entity gives resources and surplus to another
• justice occurs when both partners enjoy shared resources and common goals

This resonates with calls from academics for HEIs to engage and work with the public. We should not conduct education and research ‘for’ or, indeed, ‘on’ the public or voluntary and community sectors. We should not regard them as subjects.

We propose an ethical model of campus-community engagement. The model fully enables frontline civic social justice work in the North East. The project will articulate and trial a sector-connector model and social infrastructure. This will take place in a strategy of connected engagement which benefits everyone involved.

We are co-producing these proposed relationship innovations with the Voluntary Organisations Development Agency. The Agency is a North Tyneside network of some 258 voluntary and community organisations. Together, we will demonstrate and support social justice priorities for various forms of campus-community engagement. We will ensure that external partnerships intrinsic to education, research and civic responsibility are equitable and sustainable.

• Dr Helen Jarvis is Reader in Social Geography in the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University

Newcastle University is a strategic partner with Tyne & Wear Citizens’ Safer Cities Action Team. Together, they hosted the Law Commission’s consultation on hate crime legislation on Thursday 28 August 2019.

The targeted audience was mainly women. Forty women of all ages from various diverse communities and those working in the voluntary sector attended. Their contribution to this consultation has the potential to reshape the legal landscape relating to hate crime. Members of the Law commission listened and heard from all. They spoke passionately about their life experiences on Islamophobia, Misogyny and Intersectionality. Many of them do not currently feel protected by the law and do not feel able to report. Countless conversations have reflected that people do not feel like the law adequately protects them.

There was a unanimous demand in making misogyny a hate crime.
Many examples of intersectionality were provided, such as a woman with a hijab and a person of colour practising a particular religion. There was very positive energy in the room. The women were empowered with the collective conversations and their emotive shared experiences.

The representatives from the Law Commission said they would present the requests in their recommendations. The report will be available in early 2020, after they complete their consultations across England.

University staff and students wanting to learn more and work with Tyne and Wear Citizens (on Safer Cities, Mental Health or Poverty Action Teams) should contact helen.jarvis@ncl.ac.uk or Claire.Rodgerson@citizensuk.org.

A poetic contribution

Habeeba Haque, Maisha Hussain, Sonia Osman and Samira Hassan (sisters from Newcastle Central Mosque, Grainger Park Rd) wrote and contributed the following poem. It summarises the tone of the event.

Spoken Word

“How can the law be fair, when there’s such an imbalance for all the women out there?

Parliament controlled by white privileged men,

When the population of women in the UK represent more than half of them.

Does the superiority felt by men surprise you when the bias towards them in the law is true?

Continuously seeing women as their prey, does it always have to be this way?

Just for women being women.

Your attempts of stripping me of my identity, whether it be through attacking, harassing and mocking me. how many more incidents of injustice will it take?

Throwing us on to the floor “you filthy, little whore”, burning our faces with acid, thinking our beauty is extinguished.

Trying to rip my modesty away using us as an object to fuel your desires.

Belittling us through what you perceive as vulnerability; the colour of our skin, the bodies we choose to dress, the people we choose to love, the religion we choose to follow, the gifts and challenges we are born with.

This is our strength and you’ll never silence our voice.

Just like Rosa Parks took her seat on the bus, we want our chair in parliament.

Just like the suffragettes stood to achieve our rights, we stand here to fight.

Against misogyny we unite.

Just for women being women.”

• Vijaya Kotur is Newcastle University’s Race Equality Officer.