Free training and discussion groups
A programme of free training events, a quarterly reading group and regular discussion groups, based on feedback from the impact culture community, co-hosted with a different member of the community each session.
Programme for 2024
Event
Type
Duration
Date
Time
Free training
2 hours
6 Oct 2025
09:00
To find out what’s planned for 2024, make suggestions or offer your own session, please contact Madie.
Free training: Integrating impact into your next funding bid
Date: 20 May, 2024
Time: 10:00 - 12:00
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Learn how to increase your success rates and integrate impact into your next research proposal
Key benefits:
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Discuss insider tips and tricks, and get bid writing tools to help you co-produce your next proposal with the people most likely to benefit from your research.
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Discuss examples of impact sections from real cases for support
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Learn how to integrate impact convincingly with your proposal, using a mapping approach to ensure your impact goals map onto your impact problem statement, beneficiaries and impact generation activities, whilst managing risks and assumptions.
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Power all of this with a systematic stakeholder analysis and impact logic model that will make it easy to articulate specific and credible impacts.
Free training: Influencing policy
Date: 2 September, 2024
Time: 10:00 - 13:00
This session is based on research by Prof Reed and the latest evidence on how to get research evidence into policy.
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Key benefits:
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Discover quick and easy tools you can use immediately to:
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Prioritise which policy actors to engage with first and how to instantly get their attention
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Create a powerful impact plan that will guarantee your research makes a difference without wasting your time
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Discuss how to design an effective policy brief, infographic or presentation
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Learn how to get your research into policy, wherever you work in the world, by building trust and working with intermediaries
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Be inspired by primary research and case studies
Free training: Kick-start your impact case study narrative
Date: 9 October, 2024
Time: 10:00 - 12:00
Developing an impact case study is a significant undertaking. Starting this process early can help to gain much-needed clarity, both about your impact project(s) and about expectations for the final product for REF2029. In this workshop, Bella Reichard will guide you through creating (1) a narrative arc for your impact case study, and (2) an action plan to progress your impacts.
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We will consider different approaches to framing the impact narrative. This can help with prioritising if you have several projects and need to bring them together in a coherent way,
or to articulate the core message of your case study if you have one main project. -
Based on her research into high- and low-scoring REF2014 impact case studies, Bella will suggest how to write a summary of your impact for Section 1 of the REF template.
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There will be time for you to sketch out a writing frame for the whole impact case study,
and to prioritise actions for the next few weeks, months and years.
Free training: The Productive Researcher
Date: 2 December, 2024
Time: 10:00 - 13:00
Find out how you can become significantly more productive as a researcher in a fraction of your current working day.
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Key benefits:
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Leave with practical tools you can use immediately to prioritise limited time to achieve more ambitious career goals
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Gain a deeper understanding of the values that underpin your work, and the reasons why you feel time pressured
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Identify priorities that are as much about being as they are about doing, and that are stretching, motivational, authentic, relational and tailored to your unique strengths and abilities
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Turn these into an “experiment” to make practical changes that create a positive feedback loop between your priorities and your motivation, so you can become increasingly focussed and productive
Free training: Pitching policy options in seminars and webinars
Date: 7 April, 2025
Time: 09:00 - 11:00
Gain practical skills and confidence to deliver presentations to policy audiences that drive action and leave a lasting impression. You will learn from research on what makes a compelling presentation, including insights from TED talk speakers, and consider how you can have just as much impact face-to-face and online. Discussion includes sharing tips on dealing with nerves and increasing confidence as a public speaker.
Free training: Designing and facilitating meetings/workshops with non-academic partners
Date: 6 October, 2025
Time: 09:00 - 11:00
This session will give you everything you need to design and facilitate partnership meetings and workshops with non-academic partners that are easy to facilitate, efficient and enjoyable generate and communicate real-world impacts from your research. You will learn about practical tools to grow your confidence and effectiveness as a facilitator, which you will be able to use immediately to take meetings and workshops to a new level.