Tom Doust, Associate Director of the Institute of Imagination, delivering the keynote speech
Delegates discussing and collaborating on a Lego bridge during the keynote speech
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The panel discussion hosted by Vicky Brightman-Hahn, Director of Public Engagement at ³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ
Dr Linda van Keimpema hosting one of the Deep Dive sessions on enhancing impact through collaboration
Alexandra Lyons presenting on how to plan your impact story in another of the afternoon Deep Dive sessions
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Delegates have the opportunity to network and meet representatives from ³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ's Public and Community Engagement team
Engagement Day 2025: Creating lasting impact
Whatever form our engagement takes, the planned outcome is always to make a positive change – for both our target audience and our work. But how can we ensure this change is meaningful, and how do we plan for greater impact through our engagement activities?
Engagement Day: Creating lasting impact on Wednesday 26 November 2025 involved talks, discussions and networking for ³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ staff and explored how we can have positive and meaningful impact through our engagement activities.
From identifying the impact we want to have, to measuring and evaluating it, this year’s Engagement Day was an opportunity to be inspired by others working across all areas, audiences and scales of societal engagement.
Programme
Illustrator Rae Goddard's artistic interpretation of Engagement Day 2025
Illustrator Rae Goddard captured the keynote speech in a permanent art piece
The panel discussion and afternoon Deep Dives as captured by Rae Goddard
Finally, illustrator Rae Goddard also captured the quick-paced Lightning Talks in a permanent art piece to conclude Engagement Day
Keynote speech from Tom Doust
Reimagine, Reengage: unlocking imagination and creativity for impact
Tom Doust, Director at the , delivered an interactive opening session that explored the power of imagination as a driver of meaningful engagement. Drawing on the work of the Institute of Imagination and their partners, Tom invited conference attendees to step outside of their everyday context and experience creativity through playful activities. He considered how imagination can be nurtured, and why agility and openness are vital in engagement approaches. Participants gained new insights, practical tools, and renewed confidence to embed imagination and creativity into their own practice.
Panel discussion
Impact – getting to the heart of what’s important
Impact is a term that’s often used but rarely fully understood. What does ‘good’ impact look like? What type of impact should we be striving for in our own engagement? Three inspiring panellists shared their experiences and advice for how to approach impact, whatever the scale of your engagement and whatever the size of your budget!
Panel:
- Dr Lesley Paterson, Director of Mesh Associates
- Katherine Mathieson, Director of the Royal Institution (Ri)
- Mohammed Attaur Rahman, Founder Chief Executive Director of Rochdale Science Initiative
- Vicky Brightman (chair), Director of Public Engagement at ³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ
Deep Dives
Attendees had the opportunity to participate in one of three Deep Dive activities, each of which explored in greater detail a specific aspect of impact.
Deep Dives
- Enhancing impact through collaboration – Dr Linda van Keimpema
- Planning your impact story – Dr Amy Seakins and Alexandra Lyons
- Impact: a brief history – Liz Danner
This session was all about the Invisible Warrior project – an ³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ societal engagement project raising awareness for Sickle Cell Disease with a focus on mental health, invisible disabilities and health inequalities. Participants learnt about this case study and how it evolved over the 5 years it’s been running. They discovered how a variety of internal and external collaborators allowed the Invisible Warrior project to diversify its impact, and the methods they used to measure success. In an activity, participants developed ideas on how you can expand your impact by identifying potential collaborators to diversify the impact of your own engagement initiatives.
This Deep Dive was a whistlestop guide to planning and telling a strong impact story from your engagement work. The session began focusing on the start of a project, and how you might ‘map out’ the impact you want to have through your engagement activities. Amongst other tools, explore how creating a theory of change can help with this process. The deep dive closed with ideas and examples of how you might translate your evaluation data into a compelling story for funders, partners and others, that helps to demonstrate the impact you have had through your activities, from visualising your data to using storytelling techniques.
Although very much at the front of our minds now, the concept of impact is relatively new to research assessment and funding criteria. This deep dive session explored how impact has been defined, understood and valued within research culture and how this has changed over time. Based on her doctoral research, Liz provided useful context around how impact is featured within the UK higher education funding landscape, and how universities are asked to report on their societal impact.
Lightning Talks
Engagement Day was rounded off with four inspiring and fast-paced Lightning Talks:
- The Pimlico Connection: A journey of tutoring across five decades (presented by Dr Corinne Hanlon and Dr Jennifer Cooke)
- What the Tech?! (presented by Samuel Lambert-Dale)
- The art of learning by doing (presented by Lili Gyopár)
- Let’s work it out on the remix (presented by Siobhan Markus and Alexandra Halbish Rayner)
If you have any queries about Engagement Day, please contact the Public and Community Engagement team.
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