Creative Industries teachers seek student experience and community engagement via a new LITE Fellowship
The Fellowship seeks to boost students’ employability skills while also helping to meet the university’s civic responsibilities.
Two Scholarship-contracted staff from the School of Performance and Cultural Industries are embarking on a three-year research project to explore ways in which problems identified by the university’s local communities can be solved while giving students real-world experience.
Dr Alex Timewell, programme Lead for the MA Culture, Creativity and Entrepreneurship, and Dr Hughie Brown, former Programme Lead for the BA Global Creative Industries, have been granted a three-year LITE Fellowship aiming to create a toolkit that will help staff from any discipline to build the relationships and resources needed to safely, inclusively, and equitably engage students’ learning with community needs.
The project is based on innovations that have been piloted over the past few years in partnership with the Lord Mayor of Leeds’s Office, and the Balbir Singh Dance Company, among others. It seeks to document these experiences from the perspectives of all stakeholders, and to identify the factors that shape mutually beneficial outcomes.
Students from the 2025 Final Year Project group present Lord Mayor of Leeds, Cr Abigail Marshall Katung, with a ceremonial cheque for funds they raised for the Leeds Community Foundation at the Leeds Civic Hall.
Hughie Brown, who pioneered this approach at QUT in Australia before joining PCI in 2022, said the benefits of this approach were not difficult to identify. “Once the process begins, you can see the students’ growth as people as well as their intellectual development. Their confidence, their willingness to take on challenges, and to work with others is palpable,” he said.
The project is designed over two action-research phases and includes students from PGT and UG programmes. It picks up from the innovations in creative and cultural industries disciplines, but seeks to engage across schools to identify similarities and differences in partnership development, teaching methods, and administration.
Alex Timewell said the pilot outcomes were immensely positive, but issues of scale and equity would come into play as the approach expanded across disciplines and class sizes. “Increasing class sizes from 30 undergraduates to 100 master’s students really shakes up the possibilities and constraints. It’s also important that international students who are only here for one year have access to the same opportunities as three-year undergrads. That adds a layer of complexity that we need to explore,” he said.
Artistic Director of the Balbir Singh Dance Company Balbir Singh said that partnerships formed with mutuality and clarity at their heart brought great benefits for all concerned. “These students have had a real impact on us. It was a genuine exchange, and we learned as much from them as they did from us.”
Interim Head of the School of Performance and Cultural Industries Professor George Rodosthenous noted that a small investment of Seedcorn Funds from the Experiential Learning Project had strengthened the Schools partnerships and opened up great potential for all concerned. He added that “this Fellowship builds on proven pilot work to create a practical toolkit that any staff member can use to connect student learning with real community challenges. The focus on scalability and equity, especially across different class sizes and student cohorts, is exactly what we need to ensure these opportunities are genuinely accessible and mutually beneficial for everyone involved.”
Alex and Hughie’s LITE Fellowship will run from September 2026 to August 2029. Anyone interested in bringing this approach to their teaching can contact Hughie or Alex directly to find out more about the project.
