Developing local ‘communities of practice’ through local community – university partnerships

This paper draws on the experiences of local community – university partnership activity in a UK university to offer a pragmatic framework for local community – university partnerships. We illustrate how to make things happen in this complex area and highlight our application of Wenger and Synder’s framework of ‘community of practice’ to our community – university partnership work. Our framework is rooted in a sense of place and a commitment to engage with issues of locality. It offers critical reflection on work in progress—projects within one programme, at the University of Brighton which is located in an ostensibly prosperous region of the UK, but where there are also areas of deep-seated disadvantage and economic and social exclusion. We illustrate some of the complex debates about how local partnerships can be conceived and developed; about what they mean for the definition of the university, and about how to work across academia and practice in a meaningful and inclusive way, while producing the desired outcomes. Over the past decade much has been done to grapple with the question of how best to cohere community – university relationships. Universities have almost always engaged with external professional worlds, for example through students on practice placement. However, formal strategic programmes increasingly feature, with various models of practice embedded within them. One model sees universities explicitly linking with local community, statutory and voluntary organisations, and with local social enterprises. In this model, universities may feel a sense of enhanced obligation to their local communities, possibly to mend previously poor relations. The work of the University of Pennsylvania is an example of current practice here (Maurrasse, 2001). Others place their primary emphasis on students and faculty members developing learning and research in a manner that enhances civic responsibility and engagement. Such models do not privilege local relations, and partnership work may be nationally or internationally orientated. Tufts University in Boston is a relevant example of this model.