Public Engagement Network at Tooting

What is Seed Funding?

City St George's, School of Health & Medical Sciences (Tooting) PE Seed Funding supports staff and students in developing and delivering public engagement activities and events. Applicants can apply for funding up to £500, with funding up to £1000 considered with strong justification.

Who can apply?

Research students and staff at the School of Health & Medical Sciences at City St George’s. Projects can have members from outside the School involved in the planning and delivery, but the project lead should be from City St George’s in order to qualify.

What projects are supported?

Any project that falls within the NCCPE scope of Public Engagement or within the scope of NIHR/UKRI will be considered. If you are applying for what could be considered PPI for your project, then please indicate why this funding is not already provided by any grants that fund the work. For video and multimedia projects, please consider the promotion and dissemination of the material that is produced – and budget accordingly. We will not fund engagement events or activities that are unlikely to ever engage their target audience.

Apply

The November 2024 PE Seed funding round is now open for applications.

Please note that only one application round is expected to run in 2024-25.

Projects should take place during the 2024-25 academic year and all funds must be spent by July 2025.

If you are preparing for a funding application that requires early PPI work to be undertaken outside of these deadlines, please contact Duncan Barron to discuss further.

Follow-up:

Project leads will be asked to write up a short report of their project. This report is used to share the successes of Seed funded projects with others through staff newsletter articles, news stories and the Public Engagement Stories page on the university website.

The University began a new series of Public Engagement events from March 2024.

The events are a mix of seminars featuring highlights in the public engagement work taking place at City St George's, School of Health & Medical Sciences (Tooting), combined with training workshops on a range of topics to help you develop your public engagement skills. The events will usually take place on the second Tuesday of the month at 1pm, with some additional and extended special events planned throughout the year.

The focus of these events will be to add to your skills, share good practice and to encourage a community where we support one another on our public engagement journeys.

The events are open everyone, and both staff and students from City St George's are welcome to attend.

Running an event in the university's new Public Engagement Space is a great way to get started on your public engagement journey. Have a read though the information below to get started.

Booking

To check availability and to book it for an event, please add it to your Outlook calendar: Home > Add > Open Shared Calendar > Name: Public Engagement Space.

Bookings for the space are via the MS Outlook calendar, just select the date and add Public Engagement Space as the location.

Tables

Setting up: Email the Estates Team to request tables, giving the date and time required. Sorry we do not have screens available for you to borrow.

IT

The control panel for the screen is on the left hand side of the bench and the PC driving the screen is in the cupboard. To turn the screen on or off, press the Display On/Off button on the control panel.

Security and access

Access to the space is via the door on the left-hand side, the shutters are then unlocked (and relocked, making sure the to secure the blot at the base of the screen to the floor) from the inside. Keys are available from the university security desk. If you wish to run your event over more than one day, you can keep it set up and lock up overnight, but we'd advise you not to leave any valuables in the space overnight. Users are responsible for locking up after use.

Planning to evaluate

To help you evaluate your event, think about how you will track visitors and the people you are engaging with. This could include getting a member of your team to record the number of visitors (e.g. five-bar tally), or to have giveaways to help you count those people interacting with the stall.

You can also poll your visitors e.g. asking them if they are staff, students or members of the public.

Banners

We'd advise you to have a banner or posters to help promote the event and encourage people to stop. Or use the digital screen for a more sustainable option!

Promotion

Make sure to tag the School of Health & Medical Sciences in your social media posts so they can share more widely. You can also get in touch with the Design Team to design a poster and have your event promoted more widely on the digital screens throughout the university campus.

Risk Assessment

Make sure you complete a risk assessment for your event. To help you get started we've created a Risk assessment template for the public engagement space. Enrol on the School's online Guide to Public Engagement on Canvas here, read a case study and download the risk assessment template.

City St George’s (Tooting) has a network of STEM Ambassadors amongst our staff and students who are interested in inspiring and supporting the next generation of scientists.

Meet our STEM Ambassador Academic Lead

Dr Clara Cieza-Borrella is Lecturer in Molecular Biology at the Centre for Biomedical Education (Institute of Medical and Biomedical Education, IMBE) and joined City St George's, School of Health & Medical Sciences (Tooting) in February 2019. She previously worked at the Institute of Cancer Research (Sutton, London) for five years where she carried out her postdoctoral research on the functional characterisation of novel genes and variants associated with prostate cancer development.

It was in 2017 when she got the opportunity to get actively involved in Public Engagement activities and became UK STEM Ambassador. Since then, she has been organising and taking part of diverse activities addressed to children (ages 7-12), teenagers (ages 13-17) and young adults (ages 18-23) such as careers speed dating, online live chats with School classes, on-site School students visits, School Careers Fairs, hands-on activities and talks in local Schools.

Clara feels confident in speaking about Biology-related subjects to lay audiences including children, young people, parents and carers, and anyone not familiar with the subject really. Contact her by email to ccieza-b@citystgeorges.ac.uk or follow her updates on Twitter: @clara_cieza

The City St George's (Tooting) Public Engagement Network is open to all staff and students who have an interest in public and civic engagement. By joining the network, you will be kept informed of events, training and new funding opportunities.

You can join our network via Microsoft Teams using the following link: Public Engagement Network .

For information on how we use your data please read this privacy notice.

Opportunities

If you want to get some experience we have a range of opportunities to help you get started.

• Run an event in the Public Engagement Space.
• Join the School's STEM Ambassador team. From professors to PhD students, we are signing up to share our expertise with young people by becoming a STEM ambassador.
• Compete in I'm a Scientist, the online competition is a great way to try your hand at engaging with school groups without having to leave your office
• Volunteer for Pint of Science: which takes place every year in May and needs volunteers from October onwards
• Volunteer to give a Spotlight on Science talk: Public lectures onsite here at City St George's
• Take part in Science Showoff – fun talks in pubs around London where you can talk about your research to the public
• More opportunities are listed in the canvas module (Tooting log-in required) which is kept up to date as new projects are announced.