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Linda Drew and Mary Stuart.
Linda Drew and Mary Stuart. Illustration: Sophie Wolfson
Linda Drew and Mary Stuart. Illustration: Sophie Wolfson

'The city was dying': university leaders on how they've transformed local communities

This article is more than 5 years old

The vice-chancellors of Ravensbourne and Lincoln universities discuss how disastrous a university shutdown would be

As the fierce new higher education market begins to bite, experts are warning that we are now closer to a university going under than ever before. What would this mean for the local community? Are universities across the board doing enough to connect with, and improve, their own local areas? In the latest of our 2VCs discussion series, Anna Fazackerley talked about growing local roots with Professor Mary Stuart, vice-chancellor of Lincoln University, and Professor Linda Drew, vice-chancellor of Ravensbourne University.

Stuart won The Guardian’s Most Inspiring Leader award this year, for success in turning around what was once a flagging university. The Queen opened Lincoln’s new campus in 1996 – the first city centre campus to have been built in the UK for decades. The city’s leaders wanted the institution to boost the area, but they put up the first building “on spec”, designing it to look like a shopping mall in case it didn’t work out. The university now has around 14,000 students, and a gold ranking for its teaching in the Tef. The institution focused on arts and social sciences when Stuart took over, but now has strong engineering and science departments. It is in the process of setting up a medical school, to supply local hospitals, in collaboration with Nottingham University.

Ravensbourne is a specialist digital media and design institution, awarded university status this year. It moved into a striking new campus on the Greenwich peninsula in 2010. North Greenwich has long been a deprived part of London. However, Ravensbourne’s innovative open plan building, which looks more like an advertising agency than a university inside, is well positioned for the industries students want to enter. It is right next door to the 02, the popular music and entertainment venue that replaced the Millennium Dome. The Greenwich peninsula is also London’s newest digital community, and Tech City, the capital’s fast-growing media and technology hub, is just down the road.

What have you done locally that has made you most proud?
Stuart describes her whole university as a local regeneration project. “We were established on derelict railway land. It was a city that people said was dying.” She says taxi drivers say you couldn’t find a bite to eat anywhere on a Monday night before the university brought the city to life. Gradually, the institution is transforming Lincoln’s low-skill, low-wage economy. “We are bringing graduate jobs and hope to a part of the country that was being left behind.”

Anna Fazackerley interviewing the vice-chancellors on stage at Ravensbourne University Photograph: quinnhumphreys/Wonkhe

Our discussion is happening in Ravensbourne University, and out of the window we can see another tower block that is nearly ready for people to move in. “We’re very new to the area but so is everything else,” Drew comments. She says that after the Millennium Dome was built “there wasn’t much else here”. “The developers decided this was an area for design and the digital, and that’s where we fit in.” She is especially proud of the deal she brokered with the 02 when she arrived: students now do work placements there and the university has a jobs board advertising any part-time work at the centre. She recalls the institution being on call for a Take That tour, with students and staff involved in a flashmob event. “They thronged to that, and I got letters of thanks saying ‘I can’t believe I met Take That!’” she laughs.

How catastrophic would the death of a university be locally?
Last week the Office for Students Chair, Michael Barber, said the regulator would protect the interests of students but would not bail out a failing university. Drew is angry about the implications of this. “If there is a failure in a hospital, communities feel completely abandoned as a result of those services being withdrawn.” She warns that the full economic and social impact of a university is rarely understood, and local people may not realise how much their university contributed to their services and lives until it has disappeared.

Stuart stresses that it is a vice-chancellor’s responsibility to make their institution “sustainable and successful”, but she agrees about the impact of losing one. She says removing a university that is properly embedded in its local community won’t just mean a loss of jobs. Lincoln, for instance, has stepped in to rescue arts projects that the local authority can’t afford to sustain. “If we were to be removed from our community, they would go,” she says.

She believes that Barber’s argument is part of a paradigm of universities being about “private goods”, which she says the sector itself “very unfortunately bought into”. “Universities have never just been about the benefits that individuals get,” she insists. “We’ve got to make sure we hang on to that social purpose. It is absolutely vital. We are there as a public good.”

Would it be easier to lose an institution in London?
Drew says it would be less easy than it might appear, because universities in London are part of an intricate social ecosystem. Ravensbourne works with the two other higher education institutions in Greenwich, but also with further education colleges, the NHS and community groups. “If you were to remove one part of that ecosystem the rest of it would be bereft – not just less rich, but actually bereft.”

How do you draw in locals who think your university isn’t for them?
Stuart says that Lincoln is designed as an open campus. There is a walkway from one part of the city to the city centre that goes straight through the campus, and the university runs guided tours. “But there are still people who feel that this is not for them,” she admits.

To circumvent this they run a pop-up social science park on a different local housing estate each year. There is a law clinic – which Stuart says is hugely important following government legal aid cuts – and parents can talk to education academics about dealing with their children’s school. Locals are encouraged to pop into the law clinic at the university to follow up. “Doing these things in community settings helps break down barriers in a way that trying to force people to come on to campus wouldn’t,” Stuart says. “Growth in an area is great, but if it’s not inclusive growth, then you create greater disparity, and we all know what that’s done to our world at the moment.”

But operating in a capital city on high terrorist alert means that Ravensbourne has to think more about student security. “This is a high security area so we have to be really careful about how we invite people on to the campus,” Drew explains. As a result a lot of their engagement with local people happens elsewhere in the borough. The university does, however, use its digital expertise to pull locals in, offering young and retired people bite-sized skills courses which are highly subsidised by the local authority. “We cover everything from how to manage social media to how to take the perfect Instagram photo,” Drew says.

Do your graduates stay and work locally?
Stuart says about 45% of Lincoln graduates stay locally – and many who leave do so with regret. “It is difficult because we are having to create those graduate jobs,” she explains. The university has worked with many local companies to help them set up new graduate training schemes, and it runs innovation centres where there are opportunities for graduates to work in new businesses.

Many Ravensbourne students come from the area in the first place. Like Lincoln, the university tries to make sure there are local jobs available by working with the local authority and other partners. “But because a lot of our graduates are at the innovative end of creativity and technology, many will go into our own incubation hubs and on to accelerators,” she says. “Staying in London is a way of creating a creative identity.”

Do we focus too much on economic impact locally?
“I’m definitely thinking past the economic,” Drew says. “We are developing skills like resilience and developing a graduate’s role as a citizen. That’s really important here in what was formerly a depressed part of London.”

Stuart argues that employers won’t come to a region if there is nothing for their employees outside work, and this is one of the reasons her university is trying to make Lincoln a better place to live.

But she adds that the government is still too focused on the big metropolitans. “People in my part of the world are in a ‘great small city’, as the Americans call them, and we don’t recognise those cities properly in this country.” She feels strongly that we don’t know enough about the people living in rural and coastal areas, and universities should be a key part of addressing problems they face, including a lack of employment and opportunity.

What do universities need to get better at locally?
Stuart is quick to point out that “some universities aren’t as embedded in their communities as they should be.” She argues that every university will have many staff who are doing things locally, such as being a governor of a local school or taking part in community artistic activities. “Senior management often don’t even know about those things, but they need to find out and to value them.” Yet she warns that institutions need a clear civic strategy, or they will end up being pulled in many different directions.

Drew’s advice, as a small specialist institution, is that you can’t do much without others. “You need to be meaningfully connected with lots of other bodies in your area,” she says.

Linda Drew

Linda Drew
Linda Drew Photograph: Ravensbourne University

What was your first degree and where did you study?
Fashion design at Saint Martin’s School of Art.

What advice would you give your 18-year-old self?
Speak your mind, hydrate, moisturise.

What book is on your bedside table?
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life by Mark Manson.

What is your insider tip for people visiting Greenwich?
Greenwich has a fantastic naval heritage. See it from the Thames: go via Thames Clipper to Cutty Sark, North Greenwich Pier or Woolwich Pier. You can use an Oyster card and there’s a bar onboard for a cheeky glass of wine.

What would you like for Christmas?
Time off! Time to see family and friends. Oh, and a bottle of Puligny-Montrachet please.

Where would you live if not in the UK and why?
France. Somewhere near the south west coast ideally. Why? Excellent wine, seafood and style.

Mary Stuart

Mary Stuart Photograph: Phil Crow; "Phil Crow phil@philcrow.com"/Lincoln University

What was your first degree and where did you study?
I went to drama school. Then I took a second undergraduate degree with the Open University as a mature student when my twins were babies.

What advice would you give your 18-year-old self?
Believe in your future ... I am not sure I did!

What book is on your bedside table?
It is a kindle, not a book, but what I am reading for pleasure is Dave Hutchinson’s Europe at Dawn.

What is your insider tip for people visiting Lincoln?
Great intact medieval uphill part of the city, and the best cathedral in the country.

What would you like for Christmas?
Sunshine.

Where would you live if not in the UK and why?
Ireland, I am Irish (and I know it rains but nevermind).

Anna Fazackerley interviewed the vice-chancellors on the Guardian stage at Wonkfest

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