Author Archives: Heather

Demonstrating Impact Training – Effective and Innovative Research and Evidence Gathering for Annual Reporting, Funding Applications and Evaluation

Demonstrating Impact Course

Effective and Innovative Research and Evidence Gathering for Annual Reporting, Funder/Sponsor Reports and Funding Applications

This course tackles the tricky area of demonstrating the impact of your work.  This is ideal for those working in Students’ Unions, community, voluntary or social enterprise sectors looking to develop their skills in researching and reporting. It expands on the different ways you can collect and use data, and looks at ways that this can be done innovatively, engaging with service users.

All of our courses are interactive, creative and focused on reflecting on your working practice, and developed in consultation with the community sector.

Learning Outcomes:

  • Be able to describe, evaluate, and communicate the impact of your work
  • Be able to assess the requirements for different types of reporting
  • Evaluate the challenges of different types of research techniques and where to access support on using them
  • Be able to identify different types of data and understand how you might choose to analyse it
  • Understand how you can engage service users, customers or your audience creatively in measuring your impact

Course Schedule:

Day 1

  • A chance to share current experiences and problem solve issues you have faced
  • Responding to types of reporting processes
  • Research techniques: desk-based research, surveys, interviews
  • How to evidence different types of working
  • Data Protection

Day 2

  • Dealing with data, an introduction to working with different types of data and the limitations and challenges
  • Beyond KPI’s: A Creative Enhancement Based Approach to Planning and Evaluation
  • Using  case studies effectively
  • User-led impact mechanisms, storytelling, video work and visual arts as integral and robust reporting mechanisms

This event is ideal for those working in Students’ Unions, community, voluntary or social enterprise sectors looking to develop their skills in researching and reporting.

We deliver the course in-house in your organisation, it runs over 2 days for up to 12 participants.

Overall cost – £1350

10% Discount for August Only! For booking and further details contact heather@magneticideals.org

Train the Trainer Courses – Delivered in-house for Students’ Unions, Charities and Community Organisations

Train the Trainer Courses

All our train the trainer courses are delivered in-house at your organisation over 2 days for up to 12 people. They all involve practical application of skills and an opportunity to deliver and receive feedback on training in practice.  They build skills, confidence and knowledge about training resouces and networks!

 

Level 1 Course – For new trainers with little/no experience of training

Includes: Basic theories of learning, creating a safe learning environment, dealing with challenging behaviour, access and inclusion, delivering presentations with confidence, preparation and reflective practice, giving and receiving feedback on training.

Level 2 Course – For trainers looking to advance their practice

Includes: Theory and design, writing learning outcomes, differentiation of materials, facilitation skills, equality and diversity law and policy, advancing your training plan, evaluation and analysis, encouraging active learning, creative practice, resource design.

Bespoke Train the Trainer – we can help design a Train the Trainer programme specific to your needs, whether that is to deliver a specific piece of training (i.e. to teach a number of students to deliver Course Rep Training to their cohort, for volunteers doing outreach training) or to select a mix of the above learning outcomes from levels 1 and 2 to suit a particular group of staff.  Please contact us to discuss your specific needs.

Cost

Level 1: 2 days for up to 12 participants                 £1300

Level 2: 2 days for up to 12 participants                 £1500

 

Please contact heather@magneticideals.org for further details or to book your session.  Let us know if there are ways we can tailor this training to respond to the specific needs of your organisation!

We encourage organisations to work together in partnership to allow training to happen and are happy to train multi-organisation cohorts.

We are offering 10% discount for courses run in August 2018.

 

Idea Hack: Student Union Facilitation Sessions – Problem Solving, Planning and Idea Generation

These sessions aim to give you clear steps and managable goals for the future.  Over either a one or two day facilitated session tackle a problem, plan new idea or new development in the Union.

A series of creative exercises are used in these sessions.  these are specifically designed to level the playing field, and overcome restrictive power structures, allowing all members of the group to contribute to the process.  They are ideal for sessions that might involve joint planning between the SU and the University.  They focus on ideas generation, and try to break down restrictive ways of thinking, while understanding strengths and inherent possibilities.

Each session will be tailored to your specific problem, idea or development through two free phone or Skype consultations.  You will receive full notes and write up of the session discussions.  These sessions can run for groups of between 6 and 30 participants.

Useful for:  New sabbatical officer team planning, new project, department or funding bid, liberation campaign planning, advice or support service developments, student engagement in quality enhancement planning, student led research project development, new cooperatives, society development, joint projects with university departments

Pricing Structure

 

Includes Consultation for Session Development and Full Write Up 6 – 15 participants 15 – 30 participants
1 day £750 £1250
2 days £1350 £2150
½ day follow up session £400 £550

 

These above prices include the printing of materials for sessions at £50 per day – there is the option for these to be emailed over and printed in house by the SU or University removing this charge.

For Small/Specialist Students’ Unions there is a 25% discount, please contact us for further details.

heather@magneticideals.org

Further 10% discount available August bookings only

 

Inspiring Creativity – Training for Community Organisations, Charities and Students’ Unions

“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” – Maya Angelou

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein

The value of creative thinking for workplace productivity and personal wellbeing is something that is understood but all too often not cultivated.  This course looks at how creativity used daily can improve working practices, to build confidence, facilitate collaborative working, inspire innovative thinking, and foster well-being. It will engage with different ideas of what creativity is, how the working environment can be made more creative and will leave each participant with a plan of how to personally become more creative in your own working practice  This training will be delivered in your organisation over two days, for up to 12 attendees.

The course is interactive, creative and focused on reflecting on your working practice.  All  our courses are developed in consultation with the community sector,

Learning Outcomes:

  • Identify ways to create a more creative working environment
  • Develop an understanding of the connection between wellbeing and creativity
  • Be able to inspire creativity in others
  • To have a grasp of different creative facilitation techniques and how you can use these
  • Be able to have a clear plan of how you can apply different techniques to increase your personal creativity

Course Schedule:

  • Day 1 – Defining creativity, art, inspiration, and connectivity, what does it mean in different working situations, why is this useful in the workplace? What does and doesn’t work and why; A creative environment – overcoming fear and workplace wellbeing, creating a balance: the role of confidentiality and the importance of space of sharing, team working, networking and diversity
  • Day 2 – Techniques for becoming more creative: exercise’s in lateral thinking, divergent thinking, metacognition; More creative facilitation techniques for mitigating power structures and encouraging engagement; Going further – looking at the actions you will take improve creativity in your workplace and making a personal creativity plan

This course can be delivered in-house for up to 12 attendees.  We encourage organisations to work together in partnership to allow training to happen and are happy to train multi-organisation cohorts.

Total delivery cost for 2 days and up to 12 attendees: £1350

10% discount for courses run in August 2018.

If you are interested and would like to know more please get in touch! heather@magneticideals.org

 

Call for Papers: UK Student Movement Research Project – ‘Protestival’ University of Sussex

UK Student Movement Research Project // 1st Symposium

As part of Sussex University’s Protestival // 20 – 22 April // University of Sussex, U.K.

Call for Papers and Panels

The 2010 protests and occupations against tuition fees reignited the student movement in the UK on a scale not seen since the late 1960s. A generation of young people and students organised in their universities and colleges, worked inside the National Union of Students, and campaigned outside of the national union too. There was an attempt to set up a separate anarchist student union at the end of 2012, and a student occupation at University of Sussex in support of staff fighting against privatisation in early 2013. The Sussex occupation organised its own national demonstration that drew student activists from across the country. Heavy police repression at the University of London led to the formation of the Cops Off Campus campaign, and resistance to border controls took place through organisations such as Universities Resist Border Controls. There has been renewed interest in feminist and LGBT+ activism, and efforts to question colonialism in our curricula.

Parallel to this wave of activism is the work done by researchers of the student movement. Bringing both closer together and learning from each other is essential for better understanding the student movement and to meet the challenges of the coming years. The UK Student Movement Research Project was set up in January 2017 to connect those interested or active in research on the student movement. The people involved come from a variety of academic and activist backgrounds, and research in a variety of different disciplines.

The 1st Symposium of the UK Student Movement Research Project will be held at the University of Sussex 20th – 22nd April. We welcome contributions on any aspect of the student movement in the UK, but also student movements around the world and analyses from transnational and global perspectives. These can have a contemporary or a historical focus.

Proposals are welcome for individual papers, as well as for panels drawing together 2-3 papers around a common theme. We are also interested in inviting those whose research presentation involves creative practices or a workshop based approach. Alternative spaces will be available for presentations, and if you have an interesting space on Sussex campus that would like to use then please let us know.

Contributions can be from academics, independent researchers and from student activists themselves. While the anti-fees protests are an integral part of the movement’s recent past so papers on this would be very welcome, we are especially interested in topics that have thus far been neglected in academic and political discourses. We are also interested in papers that link the student movement to other social, political, emancipatory and cultural movements.

Please submit your abstracts of no more than 300 words to us in the form below.

https://goo.gl/forms/XWCkvnDuUNEq1pmk2

Deadline for abstracts: 16 March 2018

 

The UK Student Movement Research Project’s symposium will be in collaboration with the University of Sussex Students’ Union Protestival, which celebrates a milestone of 50 years of student activism since May 1968. This will be a three day festival of speaker and panel events, workshops, music, comedy. The festival will look at the legacy of student activism and also, where things are at today. As well as presenting papers as a part of the symposium there will also be opportunities to get involved either as a participant or as an audience member in other events throughout the festival weekend.

If you have an idea for a related event that falls outside the symposium brief, please get in touch with Steph Cassin in the University of Sussex Students’ Union Events team. Her contact is steph.c@sussexstudent.com

The festival will be happening 20th-22nd April but the earlier you let us know your idea, the more time we will have to make your event a reality and as successful as possible.

While the Research Project has no direct funds with which to support travel and accommodation costs, opportunities to find cheap shared accommodation will be provided.

Unionising the Future: A Joint History of Trade Unions and Students’ Unions – Research Volunteers Required

Could your knowledge and experiences contribute to a history of joint working between Trade Unions and Students’ Unions?

Opportunities are currently available to participate in a project that tracks the history of interactions between Trade Unions and Students’ Unions from 1970 onwards.  Your experience of joint working between these organisations could contribute to the narrative of a currently unwritten history.  This may include policy that governs joint working, joined up working on campaigns, protests, consultations, casework, direct action, or any other areas you have experience of.  This project is seeking perspectives on where things have worked well, where they have been difficult, and in your thoughts about the future of joint working between these partners.

Participants may be current, or past officers, stewards, staff or volunteers working at Trade Unions or Students’ Unions, or in other HE Sector organisations.  You will be required to take part in a one hour recorded interview reflecting on your own experiences.  This interview will focus on your personal experience and observations in relation to the topic and you will be required to do no prior work or research on the matter.

If you are interested in participating, please complete this online contact form and we will be in touch shortly: https://goo.gl/forms/bQoamscNQ4YWZuWT2

 

This research is being conducted by Heather McKnight, a PhD student at the University of

Sussex funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council funding consortium CHASE (Consortium for the Humanities and Arts South- East England). This research has been approved by the Social Sciences & Arts Cluster Research Ethics Committee at the University of Sussex. 

Any information provided is confidential, no information disclosed will lead to the identification of any individual in the reports on the project, either by the researcher or by any other party. Personal information will be treated as strictly confidential and handled in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998.

Call for Papers and Abstracts: Networks

EXCURSIONS JOURNAL 8:1
Call for Papers and Abstracts: ‘Networks’

Deadline for Symposium Abstracts: 31 July 2017
Deadline for Journal Articles: 31 October 2017

‘To operate within the matrix of power is not the same as to replicate uncritically relations of domination.’ Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (1990)

‘They have built tents across the campuses and lived there, both to show the impact indebtedness is having on their lives, to show that they need to move away from a university that is becoming more and more like a financial operation, more and more commercialised.’ Sylvia Federici, Education and the Enclosure of Knowledge in the Global University (2007)

‘One thanksgiving, Danny spent hours handing out flowers to people on a busy street. It was like he was trying to jumpstart a zone of contact in the world.’ Kathleen Steward, Ordinary Affects (2007)

The recent political turmoil, in both the US and European context, has made tangible the desire for dissolution of old networks of trade, communication and allies, and we find ourselves debating the formation of new structures, and their impact on the everyday as well as the political hierarchy. In the meantime, networks of resistance to the right have sprung up: the Women’s March on Washington found itself in solidarity with sister marches across the globe; people across Britain and the US wore safety pins to mark themselves as a resource for immigrants made newly vulnerable. Divided across the political spectrum, what these political happenings have in common is a belief in the plasticity of networks and the potential they have to create an alternative to the present.
Equally, developments in technology have enabled intimate surveillance of our everyday lives, increasing the potential for intrusion and violence, by both governments and corporations. Networks can be deeply conservative, restructuring academic and professional fields which are often rendered invisible in the process. Mechanisms of control, corporate or professional networks, and the norms/practices that constitute them, can ingrain societal exclusion and privilege.
Environmental crises, war and migration demonstrate how seemingly disparate processes are deeply networked and how both social, natural and technical systems are mutually constitutive. This highlights the need to be aware of the networked complexity of the world, and the entanglement of human and nonhuman phenomenon, which is crucial to make sense of the world in which we exist.

Excursions Journal are seeking abstracts of 250 – 300 words for a symposium due to take place at the University of Sussex on 27 September 2017, and journal articles of 3000-5000 words. We are interested in receiving submissions from a range of disciplines that engage with instances, contemporary and historic, where the networks we have established matter. This could include, but is not limited to:

  • How networks in our historical approaches help us to better understand our present moment, or reinterpret our narratives of the past
  • Representations of networked practices in art, literature and music
  • Spatialisation, architecture and place
  • Economic networks of production, distribution and/or exchange
  • Telecommunication, technology and surveillance, conspiracy, and in/visibility
  • How networks structure organisations and hierarchies, engaging with networks of power, politics, social mobility and privilege
  • How networks are embodied, and how networks create and construct feelings of belonging and/or isolation
  • Migration and borders in relation to local, national and international networks
  • The role networks play in constructing identity and identity politics, issues of race, gender and queer networks
  • The transmission of ideas and practices through networking
  • Academic networks and critiques of these, looking inward as well as outward, considering professional networking, and collaborative practice
  • Inclusion, access and discrimination in the public and/or private spheres
  • Use of complexity theory or speculative entropy to understand social and practical issues
  • Religion, intentional communities, protest networks and the project of humanity

The deadline for abstract submissions for the symposium is 31 July 2017, abstracts should be between 250 – 300 words, and include a short author bio (no more than 50 words). Please submit via enquiries@excursions-journal.org.uk

The deadline for journal submissions is 31 October 2017. Scholarly papers should be between 3,000 and 5,000 words and must follow Harvard style guidelines. We also encourage creative submissions in media such as film, photography, or audio. For creative submissions, please include an abstract and a brief biography (no more than 150 words) along with your submission. All enquiries should be directed to enquiries@excursions-journal.org.uk. To submit your work, register with us  here

Workshop 7th June: Time and Fear: The Proximity of Crisis and the Horrors of Repetition

T
Politics of Temporality Workshop

Time and Fear: The Proximity of Crisis and the Horrors of Repetition

Wednesday 7th June, University of Sussex Freeman Centre Room F40

Full Schedule and abstracts available here

To book a free place please email h.mcknight@sussex.ac.uk

10:00 – 10:15

Tea and Coffee

10:15 – 10:30

Introductions by Chair Dr Lucy Finchett-Maddock

10:30 – 11:45

Panel 1 – Techniques of Fear and Change

First as Tragedy, Then as Farce: The Slow Death of Social Democracy in the UK – Tom Frost, University of Sussex

A Fearful Symmetry? The Uses of and Responses to Fear by Leave and Remain Campaigners in the UK’s Referendum on EU Membership of June 2016 – Dr Nick Randell, Newcastle University

11:45 – 12:00

Break

12:00 – 13:15

Panel 2 – The Labour Party in its own Discourse

Inter-Generational Memory: The Labour Party and the Ghost of The Two Tonys – Daniel Lewis, University of York

The Spectre of Technological Revolution: Scientific Revolutions in Labours Old and New – Matthew Francis, University of Birmingham

13:15 – 14:15

Lunch

14:15– 15:45

Panel 3 – Radicalism and Resistance

H is for Heterotopia: Temporalities of the “new nature writing” – Dr Cathy Elliot, School of Public Policy University College London

Urban rhythms and the afterlives of conflict. Memory, affect and landscape in Derry/Londonderry (N. Ireland). – Garikoitz Gómez Alfaro, University of Brighton

A Heritage of New Terrorisms: The Chronotopology of Prevent Legislation in University Spaces – Heather McKnight, University of Sussex

15:45 – 16:30

Break

16:30 – 18:00

Book Launch: Emily Robinson, (2017) The language of progressive politics in modern Britain.

This book traces the word ‘progressive’ through modern British history, from the Enlightenment to Brexit. It explores the shifting meanings of this term and the contradictory political projects to which it has been attached. It also places this political language in its cultural context, asking how it relates to ideas about progressive social development, progressive business, and progressive rock music. 


‘Progressive’ is often associated with a centre-left political tradition, but this book shows that this was only ever one use of the term – and one that was heavily contested even from its inception. 


The power of the term ‘progressive’ is that it appears to anticipate the future. This can be politically and culturally valuable, but it is also dangerous. The suggestion that there is only one way forward has led to fear and doubt, anger and apathy, even amongst those who would like to consider themselves ‘progressive people’.

Emily Robinson is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Sussex, UK, Commissioning Editor of Renewal, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Her previous work includes History, Heritage and Tradition in Contemporary British Politics: Past Politics and Present Histories(2012).

Location

Details of how to get to Sussex Campus are available here: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/about/directions

A campus map is available here, the event is taking place in the Freeman building , number 43 on this map.

CfP Politics of Temporality Workshop, Wednesday 9th June – Time and Fear: The Proximity of Crisis and the Horrors of Repetition

Call for Papers

Time and Fear: The Proximity of Crisis and the Horrors of Repetition

Politics of Temporality Workshop, Wednesday 9th June

University of Sussex, Fulton Room 214

Time and Fear

We live in times that are saturated with narratives of present crisis, past mistakes and uncertain futures. Political temporalities may seem to be collapsing in on themselves to pinpoints of inevitability, from which there is no turning back until we have hit an unbearable ‘rock bottom’. The rise of the right may seem to be echoing back to dark and dangerous histories as if the lessons learnt have now been suppressed or forgotten. From the election of Trump, to the racist discourse surrounding Brexit, from the refugee crisis to climate change, we are seeing unsettling indicators that our future may be limited and totalitarian. At the same time we can see the emergence of international movements of resistance, the prevalence of direct action, discourses of kindness, and a call for a fundamental reconsideration of how systems of political representation are operating.

We welcome abstracts that address the above theme, this may include but is not limited to:

  • The relationship between temporality and fear
  • The positioning of the crisis as happening now
  • Representing and misrepresenting horrors of war and conflict
  • How the media and political parties are using past narratives, or future projections, to justify, or explain, political actions
  • The role of memory and/or artistic representation in affirming and escaping present fears
  • The positioning of fear in the personal and the political, understanding the temporality of emotions
  • What is the role of forgetting, remembering or suppressing the past in times of crisis
  • What counter narratives are there to the rhetoric of fear, and future limitations
  • What discourses are being overlooked by the primacy of the crisis narrative
  • The role of repetition in either resistance or oppression
  • The temporality of protest
  • The role of technologies in constructing these futures, or in reconstructing our past to explain or resist

Abstracts should be between 200 – 300 words. Please sent titles and abstracts to h.mcknight@sussex.ac.uk by 1st May 2017

Calling Trade Union and Students’ Union Staff and Reps!

The Unionising the Future project looks to understand and bolster local relationships between Students’ Unions and Trade Unions.  We are looking to provide research and resources in this area, working with Students’ Union and Trade Union representatives to share experiences, map activity and bring people together to discuss the future, which is looking ever more precarious in light of the recent referendum and impending HE bill.

Some practical things we are looking at doing include: Providing a guide for Students’ Unions about Trade Unions their working students can join with details on costs and benefits.  Sharing Case Studies on successful joint campaigns.  Trying to understand that this is not always and easy relationship, and bringing people together to discuss why this is, and ways we can overcome it.  Providing training and resources for both Trade Unions and Students’ Unions on joint working….

…. interested?

Our first piece of research is a brief survey – it would be great if you could take the time to complete it!  This survey will take around ten minutes, and seeks to better understand relationships between Students’ Unions and Trade Unions locally.  The survey is based on conversations we have had so far with Student Officers and Trade Union reps, should there be any areas we have not covered that you feel are important we are keen to know, and there will be space to cover this at the end of the survey.

If you would like to know more about the project you can read more on our website here and join our mailing list here to hear about events and further opportunities to participate…

Link to Survey