‘How to engage ‘hard-to-reach’ audiences and widen the impact of your research and teaching

This workshop will share a case study comprising a project that deliberately sought to work with participants who would usually be considered 'hard-to-reach' because they had Additional Support Needs and were living in an area of high deprivation. The participants were taught by a team of ten Strathclyde academics from HaSS, Science and Engineering faculties. This team delivered a series of hands on workshops on the theme of STEM and sustainability over six days. The project leads will describe the processes by which they devised the project, planned the delivery and successfully implemented it (despite the various practical challenges that emerged). Finally we will consider the evaluation of multiple impacts of the outreach work on all participants.

The workshop will then explore the more generalisable principles that underpinned the successful delivery of the project and how they could be applied to a wide range of academic disciplines and audiences. The project leads will share candidly the highs and lows of setting up an untried approach to knowledge exchange, and reflect on the lessons that they learnt along the way. There will be time for discussions and questions; it is intended that workshop attendees leave with clear, actionable ideas on how they could extend the impact of their academic work and teaching