NCACE Evidence Café 16: Knowledge Exchange Framework & KE Metrics

NCACE’s Evidence Café sessions have been held regularly since March 2021. The Evidence Café is an online space for presentations, evidence and information sharing, story-telling and creating a community of knowledge sharing and exchange.

In this Evidence Café session, we are delighted to invite colleagues from the Policy Evidence Unit for University Commercialisation and Innovation (UCI) - University of Cambridge to share key findings from the work they have been undertaking for Research England (RE) in developing the next generation of Knowledge Exchange (KE) data and metrics.

The session builds on a workshop held in collaboration between NCACE, UCI, and Royal Northern College of Music on 16th of September 2025 at The Warburg Institute that set out to explore the following questions:

• What is the value delivered by university KE in the arts and cultural sectors
• What types of KE should be captured in a modern KE framework?
• How can we better assess the health of the KE system and the value it delivers?

This Evidence Café session presents an important opportunity for discussion and input to the draft report. It builds on key themes that emerged from the September workshop while creating a space for further input to the ways that knowledge exchange (KE) in the arts and humanities can be best measured, understood, valued and rewarded. You can read our blog from the September workshop.

Contributors include:

• Dr Valeria Ramirez (UCI, University of Cambridge)
• Dr Michelle Phillips (Royal Northern Conservatoire of Music)
• Dr Patrycja Kaszynska (University of the Arts)
• Evelyn Wilson (Co-Director, NCACE) and Dr Mai Musié (Senior Manager, NCACE)

NCACE is part of the School of Advanced Study, University of London. It facilitates and supports the capacity for Knowledge Exchange between Higher Education and the arts and cultural sector across the UK, with a particular focus on evidencing and showcasing the social, cultural, environmental, as well as economic, impacts of such activities.

NCACE Evidence Café is an ongoing series that is part of our wider Evidence-building activities and resources. We are undertaking this work to support our overall mission to support knowledge exchange between research and the arts and culture sector and to understand and evidence the impacts of such activities. The NCACE Collection houses our research reports and case studies as well as commissioned papers, toolkits, essays whilst the NCACE Evidence Repository signposts to wider resources in the public domain. We also produce an annual policy workshop and other activities that help us to better understand, document and showcase the scale, extent, nature and drivers of knowledge exchange collaborations between Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and the arts and cultural sector.