Thank you to everyone involved in making our autumn Teams Build Dreams community event so successful: we have had some fantastic feedback and can’t wait to do it all again in spring!
The focus this time was on launching our 24/25 Microcatalyst call which for 24-25 we are delighted to be partnering with Healthier Futures to increase the number and range of projects we can fund. We were grateful for all the questions, suggestions and enthusiasm with which the call was received, and we heard some great project ideas being created in real-time over refreshments.
What really brought the potential of the call to support collaborative, interdisciplinary research, to life for the audience, were the great talks from three very different but equally successful projects funded in our 23-24 round. The presenters shared their project ideas, aims, processes and outcomes:
Sarah Fox: Launch Event: Dementia Research Action Group – Our Network (DRAGON)
Georgia Vesma: Playing Well Together – Board Games for Interdisciplinary Collaboration
Elaine Dewhurst: Building an Innovative Response Team for North Manchester for Healthy Aging
One of the key takeaways (pardon the pun) from this showcase and resulting q&a was how the funding can be used to support access to provide refreshments, catering and good spaces. This really seems key to establishing and driving collaborative work by fostering engagement, enabling informal networking and creating a sense of belonging in ‘neutral’ or special spaces.
A special thanks to John McAuliffe, Director of Creative Manchester for his engaging and inspiring keynote talk: Planning for participation: Partnership, creative practice and interdisciplinary research.
John kicked off by describing the innovative way the Creative Manchester platform works as an infrastructure reshaped by its users in a learning cycle.
He followed this with an overview of their work evaluating arts-based participatory research methods, and the critical principles of cultural partnership engagement they identified (e.g co-creation trust; meaningful non paternalistic participation); and recommendations for universities to improve, such as creating more opportunities for academic and non-academic stakeholders to meet and share knowledge…which we wouldn’t agree with more here at Teams Build Dreams!
Finally, thanks everyone for participating in our team building activity – we will keep the twist a secret but suffice to say it involved jigsaw puzzles, negotiation, networking, communication and a lot of laughter!
See you all in 2025 for our next event (check the mailing list for dates and more information nearer the time) – ideas for topics very welcome via team.research@manchester.ac.uk.