2019 Beacon Bursaries awarded

The latest round of Beacon Bursary funded projects have been announced. The Beacon Bursaries have been designed to support staff and postgraduate research students at UCL to do public engagement. This scheme funds public engagement activities that increase staff and postgraduate research students’ activity, skills, and understanding of public engagement. Bursaries are part of a strategic programme of activities that aim to embed public engagement as a normal, valued activity for UCL staff and postgraduate research students, additional funds have been made availble from UCL East from projects taking place with communities in east London.

The aim of this scheme is to advance the practice and culture of public and community engagement within UCL by enabling UCL staff and postgraduate students to:

• Explore mutually beneficial engagement between communities and UCL research and teaching.
• Be innovative in their engagement.
• Evaluate, learn from and share their engagement activities.

In the latest round three projects have been awarded funding for their work with communities in east London.

Naaheed Mukadam - Faculty of Brain Sciences.

Re-framing the dementia narrative in east London
Re-framing will co-develop and run four art-based workshops to raise awareness of dementia risk factors and the benefits of dementia diagnosis in the South Asian community in east London. Working with community groups such as the Sonali Gardens Day Centre and Kobi Nazrul Community Centre, it will gather the communities’ input regarding research priorities from this group.
Dr Naaheed Mukadam is a Senior Clinical Research Fellow Consultant in the Division of Psychiatry.

Julia Bailey - Primary Care and Population Health.

Contraception Choices.
Contraception choices will offer a series of outreach workshops and an event for International Women’s Day. It will aim to include a range of audiences in discussions about contraception. This project will seek to work with communities who are often excluded from these conversations such as the queer, trans and non-binary communities, homeless people and migrant women. Working with groups including Open Doors in Hackney and Queer Newham. It will facilitate discussions to find more about the contraception needs of these less often heard communities, and to set agendas for future research.
Dr Julia Bailey is an associate professor in Primary Care at the UCL eHealth Unit, and a specialty doctor in community sexual health .

Valentina Giordano - Bartlett School of Planning.

Place Alliance: Child-centred urban planning.
This project will involve children in a design workshop to explore the question: What would child-centred urban planning look like? Students from Bobby Moore Academy, near UCL East, will be involved through an assembly, co-design workshops and the chance to share their work through public exhibitions.
Valentina Giordano is a Research Fellow at the Bartlett School of Planning where she manages the Place Alliance.

To find out more about the other projects that were funded read the announcement on the UCL Culture Website.