Our Research and Knowledge Exchange strategy

We’ll empower our staff and students to achieve excellence in research and knowledge exchange through an active culture, supportive operating environment and world-class infrastructure.

We'll do this by recognising and valuing the full range of people who undertake, enable and support research, engagement and impact, and the partnerships that this work leads to. We believe that UAL’s studios, workshops, libraries, archives, collections and labs function as a critical and technological infrastructure for innovation through research and knowledge exchange.

We'll:

• enable and recognise contributions by staff at all career stages
• enhance our infrastructure and cultures for disciplinary leadership
• diversify and grow our RKE income to expand impact and resilience
• ethically, responsibly and sustainably manage our RKE work
• evaluate and evidence our openness, accessibility and impact.

We’ll engage partners with our specialist expertise and facilities to address complex challenges, scale impacts and deliver sustainable benefits.

We'll do this using our research and knowledge exchange and its underpinning infrastructure to diversify and deepen our academic, business, civic and community partnerships to grow capacity for innovation.

Through research and development, we’ll create prototypes, demonstrators, pilots and scalable interventions that have measurable societal impacts and benefits. This includes economic outcomes such as new products and services, jobs, ventures, productivity gains, new market categories.

We'll:

• diversify and deepen our partnerships across sectors and disciplines
• facilitate leading-edge RKE with and through new technologies
• enable partners to innovate and scale their impacts
• sustain inclusive and resilient place-based partnerships
• support ideas through to commercialisation.

We'll give our learners the knowledge, skills, technological fluency and professional networks they need to access good work, have creative lives and become our advocates and partners.

We'll do this by championing research and knowledge exchange as a mutually informed mode of learning and practice. This will support our students to become highly skilled and lifelong creative learners who are impactful, networked and have the cross-cutting skills and knowledge to make them the next generation of practitioner-researchers, innovators and creative entrepreneurs.

We'll:

• apply RKE insights to shape future-facing curriculums
• enhance student and graduate journeys through RKE
• meet market demand for creative skills at all stages of life/career
• extend support for our high potential staff and student entrepreneurs
• train the researchers needed to drive future creative innovation.

We’ll provide public and policy makers with evidence that shows the value of creative changemaking and innovation.

We'll translate our work into compelling, credible and influential propositions that demonstrate how research and knowledge exchange in our creative disciplines drives innovation, improves lives and supports inclusive growth.

By developing areas of thematic strength, shaping cross-cutting narratives and evidencing our reach and significance through evaluation, our research and knowledge exchange will advocate for our creative disciplines.

We'll:

• translate our expertise into compelling value propositions
• strategically engage diverse and targeted audiences with our content
• use RKE evidence and insights to advocate and inform policy
• apply RKE insights to change how society thinks and acts
• explore local and global dynamics through RKE networks.