Novel approaches and mechanisms for knowledge exchange

 

Relu has developed a series of novel approaches to knowledge exchange:
• Relu set up a Strategic Advisory Committee and three national stakeholder forums to act as sounding boards on programme and project development and dissemination strategies. These included stakeholders from the public, private and voluntary sectors. Food Chain Forum People and the Rural Environment Forum Animal and Plant Disease Forum
• Core stakeholder communities were built around themed clusters of projects, with around 200 to 300 key stakeholders attending workshops and targeted events and receiving internal policy briefings and synthesised outputs.
• Relu promoted people exchange in the form of work shadowing and visiting fellowships. These placement programmes introduced Relu research staff to the action-contexts in which their research may be used and enabled policy makers and practitioners from the commercial, voluntary or public sector to visit a Relu research team or cluster of teams with a view to exploring the implications of the research for their work and to raising awareness of their interests among the researchers. These schemes helped to build up links between stakeholders and strategic research projects, through which insights from research can flow and stakeholders can in turn contribute to the wider strategic research
• Relu developed a distinctive approach to science communication using the skills of a dedicated science communication manager. This has enabled the programme to design a range of accessible written, electronic and communications that meet the needs of its audiences including a Policy and Practice Note series and a Briefing Paper series
• Relu also experimented with interactive formats at conferences and workshops, introducing debates, speed-dating and video-box feedback which enabled stakeholders to play a key role at such events

The following Relu publication explores these approaches in more detail:

Adventures in Science: Interdisciplinarity and knowledge exchange in the Relu Programme

Common Knowledge: an Exploration of Knowledge Transfer

Further information on the following mechanisms is available here:
• Work shadowing
• Visiting Fellowships