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’ A COLLABORATIVE ARTWORK FROM OUR INCLUSIVE ARTS COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE: ‘THE PINK PAVILION’ David Wolff

Communities of Practice: Networking to Support Newly Qualified Practitioners 1. Introductions: who is in the session? 2. Community University Partnership Programme 3. What is my argument in this seminar? 4. What is a community of practice? 5. On-line and off line communities of practice  Boing Boing  The Cupp Network 6. How to create inclusive co-productive learning spaces 7. Questions and discussion

Ensure that the University's resources (intellectual and physical) are available to, informed by and used by its local and sub- regional communities Enhance the community's and University's capacity for engagement for mutual benefit Ensure that Cupp’s resources are prioritised towards addressing inequalities within our local communities Our Team Our Aims What we do : HelpdeskCommunity Knowledge Exchange Student Community Engagement Research and Development

A current snapshot Helpdesk – Over 2000 enquiries from community organisations 5000 plus students involved in community projects as part of study 150 community knowledge exchange partnership projects funded – involving 533 project partners Structured links with community organisations through co-ownership of governance, co-delivery of projects, co-production of research A dozen active communities of practice (for example: deaf community, young people and resilience, lesbian and gay community)

My argument Communities of practice can be a useful mechanism for networking when people come together around a shared interest They can be on-line or off line but generally a mixture The less off-line ‘person to person’ elements the harder the network will be to develop Our on-line networking practice faces particular problems that need to be overcome to be effective

Communities of Practice A community of practice (CoP) is a group of people who share an interest. It is via the process of sharing information and experiences within the group that the members learn from each other, and have an opportunity to develop their own knowledge and skills." (Lave & Wenger, 1991) CoPs can be described as communities created for sustained pursuit of a shared enterprise, with a membership committed to sharing knowledge and co-learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Smith, 2003). CoP approaches can provide opportunities for co-production of knowledge that tackle issues related to power, participation and boundary working (Hart et al 2013)

On-line Communities of Practice? ‘Online community’ is a legacy term that is engrained in Internet culture. But increasingly it is accepted that online communities rarely exist only online. Either they start as face-to-face communities and then part or all of the community migrates on to digital media, or conversely, members of an online community seek to meet face-to-face. Communication is hardly ever restricted to a single medium. Populations tend not to be bounded. (Preece 2006) Many online communities fail although reliable research is hard to find:  Gartner 2012 estimated that 70% ‘fail’  Piatt, K. (2006) found low usage (amongst University of Brighton students): the students had other ways of communicating already (eg face to face) and the students weren’t committed to it

What are Communities of Practice useful for? CoPs can be used for: Clustering projects together under a shared theme to promote longevity and impact Helping different stakeholders keep up to date with information and skill development that is relevant to them As a mechanism for assessing the viability and value of new pieces of work or projects Influencing key decision makers by providing them with well worked and mutually owned solutions to shared problems Explicitly working with power differentials and different knowledge bases

Boing Boing community of practice

Boing BoingBoing is an off and on-line community of practice established by Professor Angie Hart at University of Brighton and community partners in 2010 in response to the demand for research-based resilience knowledge exchange It developed a resilience learning knowledge exchange that involves practitioners and students in social work, medicine, nursing, teaching, psychology, occupational therapy and inclusive arts, involving over 4000 individuals in different COPS that met in person Since the end 2011, the has had 89,770 hits, and 46,155 downloads of presentations and materials from the repository. Its Twitter presence has 2,120 followers (all figures July 2013). Evaluation (Hart et al 2013) of the face to face Communities of Practice meet ups indicated that  Various stakeholders did come together and continued to meet, despite their differences  Knowledge was successfully exchanged between different stakeholders  The CoP created a vehicle for embedding learning and develop joint work  Tension between organic growth and ‘cultivation’. How much self-managing can CoP members do?

The Cupp network: On-line community that was set up initially to support local partners using Ning software. It is a complement to Cupp’s face to face delivery Members need to register and be approved Has grown to being an international network with 1200 members interested in sharing knowledge and activities on community university partnership practice 5517 user sessions in last year (up to Nov 15) Average 1 post a day on network as a whole and 18 sub groups (of which around 5 have regular posts)

How to create inclusive, co-productive and effective CoPS? Don’t assume either expertise or a lack of information, skills and resources – seek mutual learning and equitable learning partnerships Consider the needs of traditionally excluded learners carefully Take spatial issues seriously - flexible locations/timings to promote accessibility Develop a shared language If bringing together stakeholders with varied work cultures, use brokers (called ‘boundary spanners’ in the literature) who can work across different domains. Unless you want to be time limited, develop an effective long term strategic approach, even with short term resource Define ‘the practice’ that binds you together and work out how you are going to develop relationships and trust, particularly if the community of practice is primarily on-line If you are developing an on-line community consider going where people are at? Twitter, Facebook ect. Would we develop the Cupp network now? Useful 5 stage model for establishing on-line communities from Gilly Salmon

References Mobilising knowledge: what does a community of practice contribute? Hart et al (2013) Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press The encyclopaedia of informal education. Smith, M. K. (2003) Developing local "Communities of Practice" through local Community-University PartnershipsDeveloping local "Communities of Practice" through local Community-University Partnerships, (Hart and Wolff) Planning Practice & Research 21 (1) Piatt, K. (2006). Staff Attitudes to Learning Technologies, University of Brighton PHD Gilly Salmon : 5 stage model Online Communities: Design, Theory, and Practice Jenny Preece and Diane Maloney-Krichmar 2006 Guidance on developing community university partnerships

Contact and follow up Cupp network: For blogs, news and discussion. Free to join but need to register Cupp website: details of our work and sign up for newsletter Community 21 : digital mapping of community university partnership projects