The National Conversations on Social Innovation will create debate on forms of SI for the future and understanding critique/criticism. This series of five events will occur over the next six months, and will cover a range of thematic areas, engaging key practitioners and organisations in lively discussion. As we are aiming to make this a UK conversation about each topic, we are inviting a range of organisations from the four UK nations to be a part of the conversation. The debates will be held online through Zoom.

Join us for all sessions, or a particular session that catches your interest.

National Conversation on Social Innovation in the Context of Higher Education

Within the HE context, social innovation is an area of growing interest, both as an academic discipline in its own right and more widely as an approach to knowledge exchange to optimise impact and outreach. From social entrepreneurship incubation to a theoretical research, socially innovation has become increasingly relevant in both theory and practice. Social Innovation Connect wants to bring together key researchers and academics as well as knowledge exchange professionals from across the UK to discuss their local social innovation context. SIC is embedded within the Scottish ecosystem, but across the UK, the context varies widely, and we want to have a conversation about the nuances and differences, as well as our similarities.

Universities are often seen as removed from their communities, and considering the wealth of resources, knowledge and capacity available within universities; more needs to be done to ‘turn the university inside out’. Within the Social Innovation ecosystem, even the use of the term ‘Social Innovation’ can be an alienating and exclusive term. We want to understand how we can bridge the gap between the research and study within universities and bring the benefits of this to our local communities. We face unprecedented challenges around the world today; from climate change, to health inequalities, poverty and social cohesion. Higher education is often at the forefront of thinking and investigation into these wicked societal problems, but being disconnected from our local communities hampers connections that could help change the tide for some of these key issues.

During this session we will hear from leading academics in different regions of the UK about Social Innovation and the Social Economy in their local context, and also about the ways in which we can start to collaborate with our communities to address the variety of challenges we face as a society today.

This will be an online Zoom session. The panel discussion will be followed by audience questions.

Our panel speakers:

● Dr Fiona Henderson / Professor Simon Teasdale - Scotland

● Professor Richard Hazenburg, University of Northampton

● Professor Kevin Morgan, Cardiff University

● Professor Brendan Murtagh, Queens University Belfast

Facilitator - Mark Majewsky Anderson, Director of Research and Innovation, Glasgow Caledonian University

Organiser and facilitator: Social Innovation Connect, or SIC is the European Social Fund UK Social Innovation Competence Centre – set up and led by Glasgow Caledonian University. SIC aims to create a better, more connected UK social innovation ecosystem across the regions, with stronger transnational ties to Europe and beyond. It is a member of the European Social Innovation Alliance (ESIA), an EU-funded programme which is supporting the establishment of national social innovation 'competence centres' across Europe.

Please note: this session will be on Zoom and will be enabled with live closed captions. The session will be recorded. Please let us know in advance if you have any issues with recording or if you have any accessibility requirements.