Clients and partners: University of Exeter, Arts and Humanities Research Council
'Pandemic & Beyond' is an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) umbrella programme coordinated by the University of Exeter. The large scale project brings together over 70 leading academic research studies from across the UK that are investigating the impact of Covid-19 on several key policy areas. Culture Commons provided a wraparound service to the core team through the project lifecycle, ensuring emerging findings were communicated to the right decision makers, at the right time. We co-produced a series of high-level webinars and roundtables, bringing UK Government Ministers, senior parliamentarians, officials across the Cabinet Office, No. 10, Department for Health and Social Care and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to the table.
We worked on the development of a new virtual policy hub where researchers and policymakers could meet, find out about each of the studies, access succinct briefings, and work together to share expertise and resources for maximum policy impact.
A Principle Investigator (PI) on the programme said:
Culture Commons has radically shifted the ways in which we engage with policymakers and developed some very strong long-term relationships right across the UK.
Independent consultants reviewing the 2 year programme also found that:
The input of Culture Commons was transformative for the P&B project, as the consultants were able to let projects within the portfolio that had no pre-existing policy contacts and who were geographically beyond the reach of policy makers in Westminster and devolved governments access ready-made networks, which the consultants expanded to create new connections with the right decision-makers. - Pandemic and Beyond project report, Dec 2022
You can find out more about the project impacts here.