University of Oxford, UK

From June 2018 to April 2019 Oxford Oracle worked with the Oxford Humanities Division Research Support Team to evaluate the potential for, and best practice in, university-business engagement in the Culture and Heritage Industries.

Oxford Oracle supported the Division through a combination of research and direct engagement with a select group of key stakeholders in some of the UKs leading Cultural and Heritage Organisations to identify the key challenges organisations operating in the sector face and the collaboration opportunities for universities. The review partially also focused internally on Oxford and explored the already existing interactions and perceptions of university-business engagement in the sector through interviews and focus groups with senior academics from across the University. This project was conducted in two phases firstly providing a scoping review of the Heritage Industries, that reviewed: 1) Regional and national opportunities, 2) Existing interactions at Oxford 3) Successful ways of delivering these heritage partnerships 4) What does Business Engagement look like from a humanities perspective. Phase 2 looked at existing interactions in Oxford. CONCEI

The output helped the Division focus their external vision around an offer of leading university-business engagement and mutually beneficial partnership with the Cultural and Heritage sectors. Key stakeholders, as well as important internal communication and investment priorities, were identified so as to secure future funding and to enable the delivery of research and teaching with contemporary relevance.