Photo: Matthew Feeney
In the 2016
EU referendum, the top two ‘Leave’-voting areas of the UK were in
Lincolnshire (Boston with 75.6% supporting Leave, and South Holland with
73.6%). Even in the City of Lincoln, home to two universities and 15,000
students, the Leave vote was 56.9%.
As a sector, UK higher education has argued
passionately for the benefits of EU membership – benefits for student mobility,
staff recruitment, research excellence, and global competitiveness. It might be
assumed, therefore, that a university located in a part of the country with a
large majority of Leave voters would find it challenging to engage with its
local communities. That has not been the experience of the University of
Lincoln.
When I was
asked recently about ‘Re-engaging with the vote-leave community’ I took issue
with the question itself. First, I argued, if any university has left it until
the end of 2018 to re-engage with its community, it is too little, too late.
Continuous dialogue with our community, and responsiveness to local and
regional needs, are defining features of the University of Lincoln’s way of
working.
The range of our engagement is captured in a recent publication, ‘The
New Civic University’; but the underlying ethos goes back to our very
foundation. The University of Lincoln was established by and for the people and
businesses of Lincoln and Lincolnshire, and our civic responsibility is at the
very core of our mission.
For
example, we sponsor a multi-academy trust in one of the most disadvantaged
areas of Lincolnshire (South Holland), helping to raise educational attainment,
aspiration and progression to higher education. We work closely with the Local
Enterprise Partnership, aligning our educational provision and research with
regional industrial requirements; with local authorities to support growth,
offering our expertise to facilitate their plans and ambitions; with the arts
and cultural sectors regionally to ensure their sustainability. And the new
Lincoln Medical School, which will welcome its first students in September
2019, is our response to the chronic challenges facing recruitment and
retention of doctors across Lincolnshire.
In every sphere, partnerships are key:
while many universities are ‘anchor institutions’ in their localities, we can
only help to realise the aspirations of our communities by working with them,
in a genuine dialogue.
This raises
a second important issue. At the University of Lincoln, we don’t recognise the
phrase ‘vote-leave community’: the citizens of our city and county are our
community. (Moreover, universities themselves have a mix of Leave and Remain
voters, and we have learned to respect each other’s perspectives.) Although
Lincoln is a small city (130,000 people) with a significant student population,
we work hard to eliminate barriers between ‘town’ and ‘gown’. Students sit on
local residents’ associations and volunteer thousands of hours to local
projects: clearing ditches, litter-picking, redecorating community facilities,
befriending elderly residents, mentoring school pupils. The Students’ Union led
a successful campaign to save a local drop-in health centre; its closure would
have affected students and residents alike. Our Media Production students have
filmed a series of interviews with residents in the city’s West End (which has
one of the greatest concentrations of student accommodation): ‘Meet the
Neighbours’ allows all members of the community to share experiences and
establish common understanding.
Two
initiatives in particular exemplify our innovative approach to community
engagement. At the end of each academic year, when students leave the
university, many – especially international students – find they don’t have
space in their luggage for everything they’ve acquired during the course of the
year. Rather than throw unwanted items away, this year students (and staff)
donated them to the British Heart Foundation, raising £42,000 to support the
charity’s work in Lincoln and Lincolnshire. At the other end of the year, over
the festive season, international students who stay on campus can feel quite
isolated, while the demands on charities rise sharply as winter bites. In
response, international students at the University of Lincoln work as
volunteers for the local Rotary Club. They provide much-needed extra support at
a busy time of year, and help to build stronger connections with the local
community.
International
students, Leave voters: in Lincoln, we are all one community, finding new ways
to work together to benefit our city and county.
