Engagement Day

The Dilemmas Cafe offered an opportunity to discuss the challenges we face in partnership work, and work collaboratively to uncover the correct ways to address the challenges. 

Dilemmas Cafe attendees heard about real-life experiences of dilemmas in partnership working, before exploring them and coming up with solutions and insights through collaborative dialogue. As part of Public Engagement team's work developing guidance around Terms of Engagement for working with partners, the session allow participants to play an active role in Imperial's work around how to support ethical and effective partnerships.

This session allowed discussion of a number of tools and frameworks that can help set clear aims of partnership working and understand the impact of these collaborations. It was an opportunity to share how we tell the stories of meaningful partnerships, drawing from participants' own ideas and experiences. Partnerships can lead to diverse outcomes – sometimes unexpected, often gradual - this session allowed people to come together and explore how good evaluation practice can help to measure, learn from and share our work. 

This session explored best practice for initiating community partnerships and addressed some of the challenges around doing so.

Institute of Global Health Innovation's Jodie (Public Involvement Officer) and Anna (Public Involvement Lead) shared about the recent partnership developed between Imperial College and the Marylebone Project, a local women’s homelessness service, which has resulted in an NIHR-funded project to explore the use of psychologically informed environments (PIE) to safely and meaningfully involve women experiencing homelessness in research. They reflected on the environment which allowed for a genuine partnership to be formed, and shared the lessons learned so far about building trust and ensuring reciprocity. Participants finished the session with an activity which prompted thoughts about how psychologically-informed approaches could support work with community and public partners going forward. 

Engagement Day's keynote speaker and director of Dialogue Matters, Diana Pound, hosted an interactive session exploring the importance and role of negotiation in partnerships. 

This workshop introduced insights into how people negotiate in partnerships and participation processes, and the key to finding win/wins for all involved.