Welcome

Welcome to the Manchester Beacon Network: Profiling people, events, projects, resources and ideas for public and community engagement.

Sign up as an individual, organisation or group to create and attend events, showcase projects and share resources and ideas.

Membership is encouraged from university staff and students, community groups, cultural organisations, funders and businesses involved in engagement.

About Manchester Beacon

The Manchester Beacon combines the complementary strengths of the University of Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of Salford with the Museum of Science and Industry and Manchester: Knowledge Capital.

The Manchester Beacon engages staff, students, community groups and local businesses in the design and delivery of activities that use engagement to break down the barriers between universities and local people.

Launched in January 2008, the Manchester Beacon is part of the Beacons for Public Engagement initiative designed to create a culture change across the higher education sector to support, recognise, reward and build capacity for public engagement.

If you would like to find out more about the Manchester Beacon for Public Engagement, you can read this short guide:

  Guide to the Manchester Beacon for Public Engagement. ?

For all the latest news from the Beacon:

  follow us on Twitter, or    like us on Facebook

Our Funders

The Beacons for Public Engagement are funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England and Research Councils UK, in association with the Wellcome Trust, the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales and the Scottish Funding Council.

The Manchester Beacon Team

• Erinma Ochu, Creative Director
• Belinda Rowlands, Team Administrator
• Zora Kuettner, Project Manager, Museum of Science and Industry
• Sam Gray, Project Manager, Manchester Metropolitan University
• Claire Turner, Project Manager, Dissemination
  
• Suzanne Spicer, Project Manager, The University of Manchester
• Sally Fort, Local Evaluator
  
• Paul Neale, Web manager
  

You can contact us through our profiles or by sending enquiries ahead of our weekly Wednesday team meetings to: belinda.rowlands@manchester.ac.uk

Manchester Beacon’s programme includes:

• Building capacity through networking, mentoring and professional development
• Funding new and relevant University partnerships with local communities to foster knowledge exchange and co-inquiry
• Funding innovative approaches to public engagement
• Celebrating and showcasing public engagement through an annual November summit

Beacons outside Manchester

The other beacons are Beacon North-East, CUE East, UCL, Beacon for Wales and Edinburgh Beltane. There is also a National Coordinating Centre in Bristol, which helps share learning between the beacons and more widely.

Evaluation Support

Everybody involved in a Beacon funded project or event will take part in a process called Evaluation. Suzanne Spicer, one of the Manchester Beacon Project Managers, explains more:

The Evaluation Support Pack has been created to help you get the most out of your projects and events, and is an invaluable resource:

  Read the Evaluation Support Pack here. ?

Getting started with Evaluation

Here, Suzanne provides some handy tips if you're starting out with Evaluation, and explains how the Early Careers Researchers project team used the Evaluation Support Pack:

It's important, but don't be put off!

Antonio Benitez is another Beacon Project Manager, and worked on the Science Festival Community Awards. Here, Antonio discusses his approach to Public Engagement at the Ideas Networking event, and shares some of his experiences of using the Evaluation Support Pack:

Plan to Evaluate from the start

Sarah Evans is the Lead Project Worker on The Dragon's Den Decides, and shares her experiences of what can be achieved by making using use of the Evaluation Support Pack right from the start of the project:

Be creative with your evaluation!

Here, Antonio describes how he used the Evaluation Support Pack for the first time on the Manchester Beacon Cultural Awards, and how it helped to get the most out of the projects:

Evaluation and case studies need to be an honest assessment of both successes and failures, but as Antonio says, "...that doesn't need to be boring!"

Acknowledgements

Thanks to everyone who took part in making this Evaluation Support Pack possible!

Reading our Documents

Most devices can display our documents, but if you don't have Adobe Reader installed, you can download it free here.