At Buttercrumble, we always love a field trip! Our Community Manager and Special Projects Expert, Alex, recently visited the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement’s annual conference. Alex shares his experience below…
This past April, I made my first trip to Birmingham to join over 400 public engagement professionals (PEPs), funders, and researchers at the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement’s (NCCPE) Engage Summit. As the Academic Community Manager at Buttercrumble, I went to connect, learn, and share inspiration. I left with a renewed sense of purpose—and a clear view of where the future of research is heading.
Here are my key takeaways from two days of intense, inspiring discussion, and how we can use creativity to navigate this changing landscape together.
Finding my people (and shifting the power)
More than anything, it was deeply refreshing to connect with like-minded peers who want to see academia transformed into a more inclusive space—one that meaningfully connects people, knowledge, and communities. A massive theme of the summit was the dismantling of traditional institutional hierarchies. The tide is turning away from the isolated "ivory tower" and moving firmly toward valuing lived experience.
All too often, academia can fall into the trap of pursuing knowledge for knowledge’s sake. There is a deeply entrenched history of doing research to people, rather than with and for them. Fortunately, the energy in Birmingham showed that the sector is ready to move past disciplinary navel-gazing. There is a genuine appetite for wider participation, democratised research relationships, and crucially, accessibly sharing findings with non-academics.
The vital need for creativity in research
Amid this paradigm shift, traditional methods of research dissemination (such as the standard journal article, dense walls of text, or even the academic poster) are no longer sufficient. To connect with broader audiences in a meaningful, equitable way, we have to embrace creative outputs.
One of the most exciting realisations for me at the summit was that Buttercrumble has something vital to offer this community. I felt immensely proud of how we are already supporting researchers through this transition. Whether it’s through live visual notetaking at community workshops, creating visual abstracts and infographics, designing zines for participant playback, or formatting highly accessible stakeholder reports, we help translate complex ideas into a universal visual language. We ensure your participants see themselves in the final output.
Above: A visual note, illustrated by Buttercrumble to summarise the event. Learn more about our visual note-taking service here.
Helping others navigate the dreaded REF with confidence
For anyone working in UK Higher Education, the acronym "REF" (Research Excellence Framework) can elicit a collective sigh or feelings of panic and anxiety. For the uninitiated, the REF is the system that assesses the quality of research in UK universities, heavily dictating institutional reputation and funding.
While the pressure on academics has historically been to publish exclusively in prestigious, paywalled journals, the upcoming REF cycles are placing a much sharper focus on how research involves communities and benefits wider society. Public engagement – both in co-producing research and sharing findings transparently with the public – is gaining unprecedented weight.
This is exactly where public engagement professionals and research teams face a crunch point: how do you evidence deep, qualitative impact and genuine culture change?
That is the space where Buttercrumble wants to partner with you. By helping you co-create engaging, accessible visuals from the very beginning of your funding cycle, we don't just help you "box-tick" dissemination at the end. We help you build a visual legacy for your project that funder boards, communities, and REF panels can instantly understand and appreciate.
Intrigued? We’d love to hear from you. Please get in touch to see how we can help, or join the Grapevine (our newsletter) below for future updates.