AHRC Impact Accelerator Account - Nottingham

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As a community of Arts and Humanities scholars, we have an impressive track-record of winning AHRC and other funder awards for impact. We have held 16 Follow-on-Fund Awards for Impact since 2012 (84% success rate from 19 submissions). Latterly this has given an average spend of £255K p/a between 2016-2020, with spend focused on delivering important KE and impact benefits from AHRC-funded research. Our core limitation in developing our KE capability as a research community has been a lack of access to KE and impact funding for academics whose research is funded from diverse sources (e.g. British Academy and other charitable research funders, plus University of Nottingham research leave) and/or whose work is with external partners and beneficiaries that are excluded from HEIF funding criteria (e.g. from the public, third sector and community groups). An AHRC IAA will radically alter who we can support in developing KE and what we can achieve. We would deploy the IAA to enable: experimentation (learning through failure as well as success); smaller-scale developmental KE projects that build researcher capacity and experience; grow communities of practice in order to develop capacity by sharing best practice and knowledge; showcase the value of AHRC remit disciplines to other disciplinary areas and to external partners, and deepen the training offer to enable a more rigorous approach to research project design - one that builds KE in to embed and track impact from the outset.In 2020 we undertook a survey of research active Arts and Humanities academics to benchmark their involvement in, and attitudes towards research impact and knowledge exchange activities. The survey has provided us with important information on the research community's knowledge of our KE support mechanisms and their reflections on KE and impact as part of their research leadership and career development trajectories. 91% of respondents want their research to make a difference to society. However, the survey also revealed the need for a culture change that empowers a wider range of academics to learn how KE and impact generation can feedback into their own research. This survey provides us with a good benchmark from which to measure and evaluate change in capability, capacity and attitudes as we move forward, and has helped us frame our aims and objectives for this AHRC IAA award.Our approach to investment will be: i) To invest in new training that enables researchers to learn about KE and ways to mobilise their research (e.g. Implementation Science, enhanced Arts Research and KE Leaders Programme). ii) Develop capacity through forging communities of practice in KE, e.g. peer review college review of applications; network development clustering individuals participating in training offers and who have shared interests in a sector or partners. iii) Make available seed-corn funding schemes that enable academics to develop new partnerships, conduct pilot collaborative KE projects and have the mobility to spend time with a partner institution (see Modes A-D below). iv) Seed new opportunities for policy impact through partnership working with Nottingham's Institute for Policy and Engagement. v) Develop a region-wide community of practice to enable challenge-led and place-based research by catalysing a regional consortium through Midlands Innovation (MI-AHRA, see below). vi) Align and lever in resources to strengthen Arts and Humanities-led KE, e.g. funding from HEIF to further underpin KE projects and alignment of existing KE and Research Development roles to extend professional support for the programme. Alignments will also be made through core existing non-academic partnerships (see Objective 2 below) to enable greater Arts and Humanities-leadership and involvement in place-based, research-led KE with interdisciplinary collaborations forged in the central Nottingham Impact Accelerator.