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UCL East Engagement Awards: Recognising outstanding engagement work in east London
5 December 2024
Explore how staff, students, partners, and projects have exemplified high-quality, meaningful and mutually beneficial engagement between UCL and our local east London communities.
The Cultural and Community Engagement team UCL East are delighted to announce the winners of the 2024 UCL East Engagement Awards!
This is the first year the Awards have been held, and the team received nearly 30 inspiring nominations across six different categories. The panel, made up of community engagement experts from across UCL and our east London partners, were deeply impressed by the variety of creative and collaborative approaches taken, the widespread commitment to building long-lasting reciprocal relationships with groups not often heard in academia, and the meaningful impacts delivered.
The winners were announced at a special awards ceremony at UCL East Marshgate, hosted by Professor John Mitchell, Co-Director for the UCL Centre for Engineering Education. Each winner received a certificate and bespoke medal, designed by Annie Lee, a London-based transdicsiplinary artist and recent graduate from the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL.
Meet the winners
Engagement Leader
This award is for a UCL individual who has shown outstanding leadership around engagement practice, created a culture of engagement within their department or team, and empowered staff/students to be agents for change.
Winner - Leah Lovett
Artist and researcher in Connected Environments, The Bartlett, UCL
Leah Lovett's leadership in arts-led, digital co-creation has fundamentally transformed engagement within The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis and beyond.
By integrating engagement and knowledge exchange into every aspect of her research and ethos, Leah has delivered high-impact projects, influenced the culture of her department, and empowered colleagues and students from across UCL to engage with local communities.
Highly commended - Monica Lakhanpaul
Professor of Integrated Community Child Health, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health
Monica Lakhanpaul has led multiple community-led, co-produced engagement projects with east London communities, which have improved health, wellbeing and social outcomes for some of our most underserved groups. She has found innovative ways to ensure community voices are heard and developed tools and methodologies that are culturally appropriate and meaningful rather than taking a one-size fits all approach.
Outstanding Engagement in Professional Services
This award was created in recognition of the excellence of professional services staff specialising in community engagement.
Winner - Vicky Price
Head of Outreach for UCL Special Collections
Vicky Price has spearheaded a rich programme of engagement with local schools and communities across UCL campuses and worked to support east London communities, years before UCL East opened.
From delivering her programme alone as the only member of the Outreach team, Vicky now manages a full UCL East Outreach Programme team, co-delivering 101 workshops, reaching 1041 people in the 2023-2024 academic year.
Engagement Rising Star
This award is for a UCL individual who has demonstrated commitment to embed engagement in their research, teaching or learning practice.
Winner - Dieter Deswarte
Head of Public Anthropology and Lecturer in Non-Fiction Film at UCL East
Dieter Deswarte has developed a wide range of initiatives to foster inclusivity, creativity, and connection in east London. Dieter established ‘Spectra’, a curated programme of non-fiction films exploring diverse queer experiences, which has since grown into a vibrant community platform.
Dieter is also developing intergenerational storytelling projects and collaborating to support young people from underprivileged backgrounds to gain skills in creative technologies.
Excellence in Co-creation
This award is for a team who have demonstrated excellence and innovation in the co-creation, development, and delivery of a collaborative project.
Winner - Another Provision
Grown from the third iteration of the UCL East Trellis programme, Another Provision was a collaborative project between UCL researcher Hanna Baumann and artist Johann Arens, focused on food injustice. Jointly with the UK-wide mutual aid network National Food Service (NFS) and its members, Hanna and Johann developed a joint vision of food as a Universal Basic Service.
Another Provision has created meaningful connections between UCL and east London communities, bridging the divides between art, research and activism, as well as between ‘providers’ and ‘recipients’ of food support.
Highly Commended - The Evaluation Exchange
The Evaluation Exchange began in 2017 to meet a pressing need among small charities and community groups in Newham to evaluate their work effectively. Many of these organisations serve vulnerable populations and offer essential services to people facing complex challenges.
The Evaluation Exchange, a collaboration between UCL and the voluntary infrastructure organisation Compost London, matches community organisations with UCL PhD students and researchers, who help each other to tackle research and societal challenges over a six-month period.
Amplifying Voices: Engaged Event or Exhibition
This award is for a project where an exhibition or event has been created through a process of co-creation and collaboration.
Winner - Promoting Access and Use of Dementia services in South Asian communities (PrAUD)
PrAUD was an east London-based community project which aimed to identify the barriers and needs of people from South Asian communities on a dementia journey and promote awareness, access and use of dementia care and support services in these communities.
The research team from Primary Care and Population Health at UCL, led by Dr Claudio Di Lorito, built a partnership with people living with dementia and their caregivers in east London, alongside east London-based illustrator Ada Jusic. Their conversations were translated into storyboards and showcased at a final engagement and dissemination half day event.
Outstanding Community-Engaged Learning
This award is for a module or course taught out of UCL East that focuses on teaching, curriculum, or students that involves community engagement.
Winner - MA Core: HIST0867 Critical Public History
The MA Public History module Critical Public History programme, led by Dr Anna Maguire and Dr Mark Frost, champions community engagement. The core course module provides multiple opportunities for the students to learn about community engagement practice and to work with east London communities while undertaking their coursework.
The impact is a series of mutually beneficial relationships: with students embedding themselves in local communities, and local organisations gaining from the skills, time, and alternative approaches being brought in by the students.
We would like to congratulate everyone who was nominated and recognise all of the time and energy that has been devoted to such outstanding community engagement work.
Thank you also to the selection panel: Sam Wilkinson, Head of Public Art and Cultural and Community Engagement, UCL, John Mitchell, Head of Department and Professor of Communications Systems Engineering, UCL, Sarah Barnes Head of Public Engagement, UCL Library, Culture, Collections and Open Science, Tamsin Ace, Director of East Bank, and Louise Francis Co-founder & Managing Director, Mapping for Change CIC.
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