Briony Fleming is the Community Engagement Manager within UCL’s Cultural and Community Engagement team, working to connect research and teaching with local communities for mutual benefit.
Briony Fleming has spent almost a decade working across UCL’s public engagement and cultural teams and has been a pivotal figure in the development of its newest east London campus.
For Briony, the breadth of expertise at UCL is “an endless source of inspiration.”
If you want to know something about anything, somebody at UCL is researching it or teaching it. It's an absolute hotbed of knowledge.
Her work aims to foster long-term, equitable, and mutually beneficial relationships between researchers, students and local communities, to enrich this knowledge and tackle critical issues such as health inequity and social justice. She also supports creative programmes with neighbour organisations in London’s East Bank, the capital’s newest cultural quarter, such as V&A East, Sadler’s Wells, the BBC and London College of Fashion.
Broadening access and inclusion in UCL spaces and amplifying marginalised voices is central to her practice.
We are always looking at whose voices are not at the table. I hope UCL continues to have challenging conversations and to value the voices and skills of those communities local to our campuses, and the places where research is taking place.
In addition to welcoming her baby daughter this year, Briony is most proud of Words Matter, a programme she delivered with a cohort of artists and creatives to confront UCL’s eugenics legacy and widen access to dialogues around eugenics, power and healing. She is also looking forward to her team continuing Trellis, an art commissioning initiative which brings together artists, UCL researchers and communities in east London to co-create new work and ideas that lead to positive change.
One of the most rewarding things has been bringing together people who you might not expect to work together and seeing what they can do.
In short, if you’ve got an idea or you want to do something at UCL East, come and talk to us!
