1
John Goddard: Emeritus Professor of Regional Development Studies
The Centre for Urban & Regional Development Studies at Newcastle University
I was delighted to be asked to give this lecture for a number of reasons.
The first reason is largely biographical. As you will probably be able to tell from my accent I am a Londoner and studied at UCL and LSE. My PhD was on the dense network of linkages between institutions that are at the heart of London’s role as a capital city. This included financial institutions, professional services, trade associations, learned societies and of course government itself. Before moving to Newcastle to a newly endowed chair in regional development studies in 1975 I had begun working on the British network of cities, particularly the large so called ‘provincial cities’ and the role of local institutions in the development of the city and its region . Hence the title of my inaugural lecture was
‘Regional development in Britain: an urban perspective’. This evening’s lecture has given me an opportunity to reflect on the role of a particular group of institutions which are now generally referred to as ‘knowledge institutions’ in the development of the City of Newcastle in which I have worked for nearly 40 years.
The second reason for delight is more substantive and builds on the first. As is well reflected in this historic institution, during the 19 th century London was not as dominant in the economic, cultural and intellectual life of the nation as it was to become in the later part of the 20 th century. The “and intellectual life” is a vitally important dimension of city and regional development such that institutions like the Lit & Phil, the Mining Institute, the
Natural History Society and more recently the Centre for Life play a key role in bridging of the worlds of learning to the economy and the wider society, working alongside the three formal institutions of higher education that undertake teaching and research. I want to argue this evening that the contribution of these higher education institutions to the wider
‘knowledge infrastructure’ of Newcastle as a city of learning is vital to ensure that this city remains as a hub for both business and societal innovation regionally, nationally and internationally. So I am very pleased that this lecture forms part of a new partnership between the Lit & Phil and Newcastle College particularly as the College establishes its place as a higher education institution with new degree awarding powers.
I have chosen in my title to focus on education since I think this has been a neglected in terms of the role that knowledge institution play in city development. The main focus of much policy has been on the commercialisation of research to the neglect of the role of learners and the engagement of these knowledge institutions not just with business but
1 Text of a lecture sponsored by Newcastle College and given at the Lit & Phil, Newcastle, 9 th January 2014

with civil society more generally. Although knowledge creation through research is important I have chosen not to focus on this, not least because leading edge research must be of international significance making the link to cities challenging. That is why I will refer to urban social challenges and ‘social innovation’ as well as business innovation and finally to the concept of the civic university that connects to civil society globally and locally. As a final caveat I should say that I will only be considering higher education institutions. I fully recognise the importance of primary and secondary education and pathways into tertiary education and will provide some example of how some of the city’s knowledge institutions are reaching out to younger people.
A final introductory point about my sources. I have drawn on my book with Paul Vallance on the The University and the City. In addition to reviews of key themes we have case studies of four provincial cities (Newcastle, Sheffield, Manchester and Bristol) and the role of the universities in relation to four urban challenge themes – sustainable development, health and culture. I will also draw on the work that I and my colleague Louise Kempton have done for the European Commission on Connecting Universities to Regional Growth. In what follows I will move between the city and the region on the basis of obvious linkages between the two and the fact not always appreciated by politicians that higher education institutions are not bound to any particular administrative geography. But having referred to these sources I must say that pulling the material together for this lecture has been challenging and I must thank Liz Robson from CURDS for her help.
It has driven home for me the need for a proper audit of the civic engagement of
Newcastle’s higher education institutions and if my lecture prompts them to work together with the Council, business and social organisations, then the effort will be worthwhile.
But before unpacking the key concepts underlying my lecture and illustrating them with reference to activities that illustrate my argument, I need to establish some basic historical and contemporary facts about Newcastle’s knowledge and education ‘suppliers’.
It is appropriate to begin a lecture in the Lit & Phil by reference to the notion that Newcastle as a city of learning linking science, technology, business and society is not a new one. It was to the Society in 1815 that George Stephenson’s safety lamp was first demonstrated in
1815. In 1879 Joseph Swan demonstrated the first electric light bulb in this building.
Significantly the societal challenge of abolishing slavery was also debated by the society. The
Society developed strong links with education with William Armstrong ‘inventor, industrialist and businessman’ and President of the Society from 1860-1900 giving his name
(if not his money) to the predecessor of Newcastle University. Armstrong College was founded in 1871 with the first chairs in subjects strongly linked to the evolving industrial base of Tyneside and the surrounding region: geology, mining, naval architecture, engineering and agriculture. The new College was linked to the already established College of Medicine with its strong focus on public health since the new industries clearly needed

healthy workers! The two colleges then became part of Durham University where the campus focussed on the basic sciences and humanities. In Newcastle the Lit and Phil played this role in relation to the humanities and also run Armstrong College’s (later King’s College) extension programme taking knowledge out to the community – including the practical skills of painting to the pitmen of Ashington.
The next key phase in the evolution of Newcastle as a learning city was the establishment of an independent University of Newcastle in 1963 and the creation of a city centre ‘education precinct’ for the University and what was to become Newcastle Polytechnic. The precinct and national lobbying to deliver this was very much down to the leader of the Council T.Dan
Smith who told his fellow Councillors
“It is an opportunity to have a successful link between town and gown. Not only is the
University in the centre of the City but it represents an important economic factor. If you bring these students and staff here they have to eat and drink and have books. It is a tremendous source of industrial attraction to the city and region”
This was an extremely prescient statement as I will go on to sh ow.
Significantly the chair of the planning committee noted
“we are have invited, even welcomed, the university into the city centre instead of directing it to an out of the way corner”
This central university precinct continues to distinguish Newcastle from all of the other provincial cities.
Newcastle Polytechnic was established in 1969 from the amalgamation of Rutherford
College of Technology, the College of Art and Design and the Municipal College of
Commerce each of which had strong roots in the region and to the practical and vocational training needs of local industry and commerce. The Polytechnic absorbed colleges of education and established its role as a centre for initial teacher training and nursing through further mergers. Along with all other Polytechnics it was made a full university in 1992 and has developed research functions alongside teaching
Newcastle College’s history dates back to 1894 when Rutherford College was founded on
Rye Hill. After being split into a College of Further Education and a Technical College in 1962 the two were re-merged to form the present college in 1972.
It has been a characteristic of newly established higher education institutions around the world with strong local origins that they subsequently seek to establish themselves on the national and international stage. During the 1970’s, local institutions in the UK were incorporated into a nationally funded and regulated systems of higher education, systems which had no explicit geographical dimensions. Notwithstanding its origins and Dan Smith’s aspirations Newcastle University like most of the so-called redbrick universities paid little

regard to the city and sought to raise its national and international profile. Likewise the city council took little notice of the growing institutions it faced across the road other than acting as the planning authority. Similarly when the polytechnic became a university it naturally sought to establish its national and international standing. And Newcastle College
Group has become one of the largest providers of further education across a number of UK sites and also a provider of higher education through foundation degrees. As I will go on to show all three institutions are re-discovering their roots and combining presence in the national and international higher education market place with engagement with the city and region.
To complete the story of knowledge institutions, additional organisations have emerged linking science, education and the wider society of Tyneside and like the others I have referred to all have a physical presence in the city. The International Centre for Life (ICFL) in many respects combines all three elements of knowledge creation, its application for the benefit of business and individuals and opening the knowledge to a wider audience through education. Through the judicious use of Millennium funding the Centre brought together a wide range of disciplines across Newcastle University relevant to the newly emerging field of human genetics and within it the use of stem cells to derive new therapeutic technologies, the NHS Fertility Centre and Northern Genetics Service, Educational laboratories, business incubation and conference facilities and a major visitor/ attraction centre. Its mission is to:
“Ignite and nurture a curiosity in everyone for science, technology, engineering and maths and encourage the next generation of STEM professionals. We support world-class science in the region and make a positive economic, social and cultural contribution to North East
England and its communities.”
Initially a key participant located on the ICFL site was the Politics Ethics and Life Sciences
Institute whose mission is:
“to produce world class research focused on the social and ethical debates around the contemporary life sciences. Working with a wide range of academic and community-based partners, we will develop rigorous and socially engaged analysis, innovative teaching, and
public dialogue that informs and contributes to future practices”.
PEALS now runs the Cafe Scientifique which is part of the wider Cafe Culture programme of the City.
ICFL was very much the model for establishing Newcastle as a Science City. The idea was to expand the model of linking newly emerging areas of science to the economic, social and cultural development of the city building on specific sites. Amongst other things NSC runs a forum ‘First Friday’ every month, an informal gathering regularly attracting over 100 people who come along to discuss innovation and entrepreneurship. The events are specifically

targeted at the science community, including entrepreneurs, designers, scientists and financiers. To date the event has played a key role in helping a number of collaborations and businesses get off the ground.An ongoing educational programme also forms part of the ongoing work of NSC seeking to interest young people in careers in science working with the universities, college, ICFL and business.
In summary Newcastle now has a dense network of organisations and initiatives that are anchoring the higher education institutions in the life of the city. I will now go on to say something about the various dimensions of that anchoring but first must define the term.
The Work Foundation has provided a helpful definition of anchor institutions:
“Anchor institutions do not have a democratic mandate and their primary missions do not involve regeneration or local economic development. Nonetheless their scale, local rootedness and community links are such that they are acknowledged to play a key role in local development and economic growth, representing the ‘sticky capital’ around which economic growth strategies can be built”
In the case of higher education institutions (HEIs) their main location in comparison with private firms is fixed within the current home city – notwithstanding possible expansion to other nearby or far away campuses- where they have considerable sunk investment in buildings and strong historical identification with the place.
As the map below shows most obvious form of that anchoring is in the sheer scale of the institutions as city centre land users. But they are also major employers, purchasers of goods and services and attract inward investment in the form of students recruited from outside the city.

Newcastle and Northumbria universities have a combined expenditure of £594m with an estimated knock on impact on the North East of £647m. Together they employ 3,500 academic staff and 4,300 support staff across a wide range of occupations, from the highest to the lowest grades. Expenditure on goods and services in the region is estimated to generate further jobs bringing the total to almost 17000 jobs. The services include construction – most of the cranes on the skyline in the city are linked to university expansion including student accommodation – legal and financial services and consumer services – retail, hotel, leisure and culture. NGI will attest to the importance of national and international conferences linked to the universities for hotels and other venues All of this ignores the effects of student expenditure.
Both institutions have seen a significant growth in student numbers from 40,000 ten years ago to more than 50,000 now. The College also has 3,500 higher education students.
Significantly the number of overseas students has doubled. It has been estimated that these each of these students adds £25k to the local economy and equally important add to the cultural vitality of the city.
Newcastle College has 20,000 students. It employs 1,400 staff and has undertaken its own analysis of the regional impact of its activities. Its expenditure on staff salaries is £37m much of which is spent locally. Its expenditure on goods and services is £25m and expenditure by non-local students amounts to £1.7m giving a net impact on the region of £46m. Most of the College’s learners join local employers where they contribute £88m in added income.
In total this adds up to a £235m contribution to the local economy or 1.2% of the total economic output.
These are what I would call the static impacts of higher education on the city and region but what of the dynamic aspects of the anchoring process? To review this I will draw on my work with Louise Kempton for the European Commission on Connecting Universities to
Regional Growth. The latter draws on my previous work for OECD and identifies four dimensions of anchoring:

Enhancing regional innovation through research activities

Promoting enterprise, business development and growth

Contributing to the development of regional human capital and skills
 Improving social equality through regeneration and cultural development
These activities relate to the three functions of HEIs – teaching, research and service to society, although I will go onto show that the last of these needs to be embedded in the core activities of teaching and research and not a so called ‘third’ and by implication inferior mission.

In reviewing the mechanisms we make a distinction between the regional impact of ‘normal’ university activity financed as part of the core business of teaching and research and purposive regional interventions initially funded form a source outside higher education and then hopefully ‘mainstreamed’. The individual mechanisms can vary in their complexity. At one end of the spectrum are fairly straightforward ‘transactional’ services in response to a stated need or demand; at the other end of the spectrum are more developmental or transformational activities which recognise latent or unstated needs.
We can further identify the complexity of the activities in terms for example the number of other organisations or stakeholders that need to be involved. The figure below maps the range of sometimes overlapping activities that we found across the EU according to these two dimensions.

For this lecture I would like to have been able to present you a complete picture of how these mechanisms are operating in Newcastle in relations to the needs and opportunities of the city and wider region but will only have time to dip into a few examples, some of which I have already touched upon. In so doing I must apologise in advance for not mentioning the numerous initiatives which are anchoring our HEIs in the city. I will focus on teaching and learning as this most closely relates to this evening’s topic starting with talent attraction and retention as a means of developing the city’s human capital.
I have already referred to the growth in student numbers in the city. Significant numbers of these come from outside the region and some remain here to work for local employers while other take up employment elsewhere. Still others go to local universities and remain in the region for work. It is possible to view these flows in the following way:
The Regional Geography of New Young Graduate
Labour in the UK
(Source: Hoare & Carver, Regional Studies, 2010)
In terms of individual universities in 2010/11 Newcastle recruited 79% of its home undergraduate students from outside of the NE of England and Northumbria 48%. Although
I do not have the data I suspect Newcastle College higher education students are even more local. But to what extent are locally and non-locally students retained to work locally and add to the local human capital stock?
This requires longitudinal data linking home origin to employment destination some time after graduation which is not publically available by institution. Analysis by Hoare and
Carver of the regional data for four cohorts of graduates reveals the dominance of London as an employment destination for graduates regardless of their home or where they studied. London gains around twice as many graduates as young people from the capital go

to university. Every other region is a net loser of school leavers in order to provide this surplus for London. This is shown in terms of a ‘gain’ rate where a score of 100 indicates a perfect balance between student recruitment and labour market demand.
Source: Hoare and Carver, Regional Studies, 2010)
It is possible to use that the longitudinal data to calculate the conversion or retention rate for non-locally recruited student. Once again London has the highest conversion rate and the North East one of the lowest. On the other hand locally recruited students, chiefly from the former Polytechnics here, as elsewhere, are more likely to be employed locally.
Graduate labour recruitment conversion rates for ‘locals’ and ‘stayers’ pathways for 2001/2002.
(Source Hoare & Carver,
Regional Studies, 2010))

These figures need to be set alongside the fact that the region has some of the lowest participation rates in HE across the country. This is not just because of deprivation. Young people in receipt of free school meals here are less like to progress into higher education than their those in the same category elsewhere, especially London. For example according the latest figures from BIS 39% of the pupils aged 15 who received free school meals (an indicator of deprivation ) in 2005/6 had progressed into higher education by the age of 19.
The comparable figure for Newcastle was 12%. The figures for those not receiveing school meals are 41% and 34% respectively, a much wider social gap in the case of Newcastle.
These difference need to be seen in the context higher overall levels of deprivation in Tower
Hamlets with 59% of pupils in recipt of freee school meals compared with just 18% in
Newcastle.
These figures paint an all too familiar picture of a failure of demand for graduates in the local employment base and low aspirations that no amount of increase in graduate supply can counter. This is borne out by data on the skills of the workforce which shows that only
27.4% have NVQ level 4 qualifications and above compared with 34.4% nationally. It also paints a picture of a relatively self contained regional labour market for higher level skills.
What can HEIs do about this? Returning to my diagram, one answer is to work with employers in shaping a workforce development strategy for a particular sector which both attracts and retains talent across a range of qualification levels. I would now like to take few minutes to describe one such initiative in the sub-sea sector that has involved both
Newcastle University and Newcastle College. The specific business and education context was as follows:

The need to design, engineer, build operate and maintain complex systems to operate in hostile ocean environments

Remotely operated vehicles, valves, pipelines, controls etc

Oil and gas, telecoms and marine renewables markets

Firms with £1bn turnover (11% of UK total in this field) and 10,000 employees
 2020 vision prepared by Sub-Sea North East (cluster association) highlights major skill shortages across all grades

Newcastle University Schools of Marine Science and Technology; Mechanical and
Systems Engineering; Civil Engineering and Geo-science; Electrical and Electronic
Engineering and Business

Newcastle College with long tradition of technical training and foundation degree status.
With substantial funding from the RDA the following programmes were put in place:


New MSc in Sub-sea engineering and management at Newcastle University shaped with business

New sub-sea specific foundation degree programme pathway at Newcastle College
 Development of a control room to house sub-sea specific training plant and equipment at Newcastle College

Technical seminars as part of continual professional development programmes

Collaborative student projects
 Work with schools to raise awareness of career opportunities

Communication of clear student progression pathways.
The following outcomes were achieved:

Sustainable MSc with c150 applications and c100 acceptances in 2012/13 and continuing business engagement (lectures, site visits, student placements and business staff development) now mainstreamed with conventional metrics

Ditto Foundation degree and technical facility

SMEs collaborating with each other and the academic partners at many levels
 Establishment of Society of Underwater Technology in the North East with technical seminars

Participation in National Subsea Research Institute and skills group for Subsea UK
There have been a number of wider impacts:
 Enhanced international subsea reputation of the region (e.g. international students from countries with subsea activity and potential customers for business)

Neptune National Centre for Subsea and Offshore Engineering at former Neptune shipyard led by Newcastle University to be funded by central government, the
University and Subsea North East (March 2013)
 North East Enterprise Zone with subsea focus

Subsea one strand for North East Local Economic Partnership’s ‘smart specialisation strategy’ within the bid for European Regional Structural Funds
Many of the firms working in the subsea area are also participants in the College’s Energy
Academy which caters for skill across all levels, including CPD. The academy has the following features:
 Specialising in offshore, wind engineering and sustainable technologies
 A centre dedicated to developing higher level skills
 A multi partner, cross collaboration between the college, Newcastle University, Local
Authorities, Sector Skills Councils and businesses such as Shepherd Offshore Group,
Duco Ltd and Wellstream
 The first of its kind and offering Specialist Diplomas, Apprenticeships and
Foundation, Honours and Masters Degrees


Part of North Tyneside’s Learning Village
Significantly these particular initiatives contribute to a number of other bubbles in my diagram such as facilitating networks and clusters, international links and investment and physical regeneration and capital projects at the Neptune site. Indeed research based collaboration has flowed from a teaching and learning link between business and HE.
One of the ways in which graduates can be retained in the region is if they set up their own business. Both universities run student enterprise training programmes partly in recognition of the fact that such students are more employable in the conventional labour market even if their proposals enterprises are never launched! Less cynically although the focus in many universities is on staff spin outs, the fact remains that there are many more students than academic staff and they have to find their way in the world! How can student enterprise contribute to addressing some of the societal challenges facing the city and region?
I would now like to give an example from Newcastle University’s annual business competition for post graduate students and which focuses on the societal challenge themes that the University has identified. These themes have global and local relevance and are:
 Ageing
 Sustainable development

Social renewal
The winners of last year’s competition were a team of postgraduate students from different disciplines with a company called Thermolastics. Its mission is
“sustainable home insulation for everyone”
The students recognised the societal challenge of fuel poverty in the North East especially amongst older people living in houses without cavity walls and also, the possibility of using recyclable plastic collected by volunteers. This business therefore addressed all three of the university’s societal challenges. More specifically it was an example of what others refer to as not only a technological but also social innovation through engagement of the community in the business process
Another example of a service innovation with great social relevance and which has received national recognition as a ‘knowledge transfer partnership’ would be Northumbria’s work with the ambulance service for innovations that have helped reduce ambulance journeys, unplanned hospital admissions and stays in hospitals. For me these example come under the broad banner of social innovations

I would like to digress for a few moments from my examples and say something about social innovation as being an essential activity of a learning city. We would all agree that innovation is essential if communities and societies are to thrive in times of rapid change. As
NESTA has shown, the way we are innovating is also changing with more emphasis now on user and service innovation. The Board of European Policy Advisors has defined social innovation as:
“Innovations that are social in both their ends and their means. Specifically, we define social innovations as new ideas (products, services and models) that simultaneously meet social needs (more effectively than alternatives) and create new social relationships or collaborations. They are innovations that are not only good for society but also enhance society’s capacity to act. The process of social interactions between individuals undertaken to reach certain outcomes is participative, involves a number of actors and stakeholders who have a vested interest in solving a social problem, and empowers the beneficiaries”
This perspective has implications for the way in which HEIs engage with society. As NESTA points out this embraces changes in the process of knowledge creation and capture, different entrepreneurs such as students being involved , new ways of selecting projects such as competitions with a social value dimension and different ways of allocating and people to enterprises which have public as well as private good dimensions.
This implies extending the dominant model for university external collaboration from the so called ‘triple helix’ of university, business and government to a ‘quadruple helix’ which

embraces civil society. More specifically to quote two recent reports for the European
Commission:
“The Quadruple Helix, with its emphasis on broad cooperation in innovation, represents a shift towards systemic, open and user-centric innovation policy. An era of linear, top-down, expert driven development, production and services is giving way to different forms and levels of coproduction with consumers, customers and citizens.”
“The shift towards social innovation also implies that the dynamics of ICT-innovation has changed. Innovation has shifted downstream and is becoming increasingly distributed; new stakeholder groups are joining the party, and combinatorial innovation is becoming an important source for rapid growth and commercial success. Continuous learning, exploration, co-creation, experimentation, collaborative demand articulation, and user contexts are becoming critical sources of knowledge for all actors in R&D & Innovation”
Although the role of digital technologies is central to this perspective, this does not necessarily mean that geography no longer matters. Indeed the city as a living lab for testing new ways of organising the delivery of services in a sustainable and inclusive way, for example to an ageing population, is influencing public policy all over Europe. This has been captured very nicely in an interview with one of my colleagues for our book on the
University and the City:
“The notion of treating our city and its region as a seedbed for sustainability initiatives is a potent one… the vision is of academics out in the community, working with local groups and businesses on practical initiatives to solve problems and promote sustainable development and growth”
“This necessitates that we proceed in a very open manner, seeking to overcome barriers to thought, action and engagement; barriers between researchers and citizens, between the urban and the rural, between the social and natural sciences, between teaching research and enterprise”
This quotation refers to the connection between teaching, research and the third mission of the university. I would therefore like to return to this pillar in my mechanisms diagram to provide some further examples of the ways in which the universities and college engage with civil society in Newcastle, specifically as part of their teaching and learning agenda. The first two examples are from the area of legal studies. They exemplify how community service can enhance the skills of students who may subsequently join one of the City’s successful law practises and thereby contribute to the success of the knowledge intensive business service sector here which also form part of the knowledge infrastructure of the
City.

The first example is Northumbria’s ‘law clinic’ in which students work with academic staff to provide free legal services to members of the public, businesses and community groups.
This develops students’ professional legal skills and the work improves access to justice for the vulnerable and disadvantaged within society. Up to 200 Student Law Office students and staff contribute many thousands of hours of pro bono advice each year and since 2005 they have represented more than 1,200 clients, securing over £1 million on their behalf in judgements and, more importantly, ensuring that clients understand their legal rights and are able to secure access to justice. The Student Law Office at Northumbria is successful in involving higher education in the latest thinking about clinical legal education and what law clinic.
The second example is Newcastle University’s street law project. This is a pro bono initiative which aims to work with children and young people in the region to raise awareness of, educate, engage, and encourage participation in issues surrounding children’s law and children’s rights. Law students from each stage of study are recruited and trained each year to deliver interactive sessions to groups of local children and young people. Street Law
Ambassadors (SLAs) develop material on legal issues such as police powers, access to legal advice, rights at school, street drinking and transitions to adulthood.
A key bubble in my diagram relates to the role of HE in cultural development and place making. In our book we identify four key features here:

Diversity of cultural sector in cities mirrored by diversity of creative and artistic disciplines taught, researched and practised in universities
 Academic units and the constituent communities of students and staff with strong identity with and connection to urban cultural life

A field where the hierarchy of research ratings between ‘old’ and ‘new’ universities does not apply – practise led research and teaching used in art, design and media fits with mission of new universities
 Campuses as cultural venues – university museums, theatres, art galleries, media labs and shared use of off campus sites where practise, teaching and research are linked
The essence of this link between artistic endeavour in HE and the city was captured for us by one of our interviewees for our book from Northumbria University:
“I think what we are attempting to do is to try and crack that nut that a lot of fine art departments have to crack, which is how do you work in a professional practice environment that’s recognised by students and postgraduates, but also works to the needs of a research culture. What kinds of resources do you need? ... Really the model you want to put forward is a sort of relationship of art and the city; so very metropolitan, very urban. It’s not on
campus, its right in the middle of town.”

Newcastle and Gateshead are globally recognised as a cultural hot spot but the role of the
HE sector in this is not so well known. This includes Newcastle University’s folk music degree that begun its life in the Sage Gateshead, concert programmes and the galleries and museums of both universities.
I would particularly like to highlight the College’s Live across Newcastle programme. This was developed as both a festival of student performance and as a work based project for the HE performing arts students. The programme was designed to give young professional performers, directors, writers and technicians a chance to work in a real theatre environment, venue or new experimental performance space outside of the safety of the college. Live Across Newcastle serves as a valuable nurturing ground for new creative acting talent and companies to show off their skills to industry and prospective employers providing them with feedback and actual experiences that they can take with them when they leave to join the creative workforce. It has been held every April, May and June for the last six years and is now accepted as an integral part of the cultural life of the city. It is significant that Newcastle University and the College are collaborating in a Foundation degree that exploits the complementary strengths of both institutions and facilitates the progression of students across the levels in the HE system. Indeed music is one of the ways in which creative young people from a poorer home background find their way into higher education.
My final two examples of community based learning also come from the college and which indicate how it is linking the three missions as part of the learning city.
The first is the 1914 project which will involve students researching stories of the 151 individuals recorded on the Rutherford College memorial through archival research and community engagement in tracing descendents and using this to produce a play. There are links with the Lit & Phil, the two universities and the Imperial War Museum’s Centenary
Partnership Programme.
The second aims to combine the technical expertise of Newcastle College with the knowledge of local conservationists to develop mobile applications which will support local conservation efforts through allowing members of the public to record and report sightings of specific species through their mobile phone. The development of the app will be conducted in partnership with the Environmental Records Information Centre North East, based at the Great North Museum. This body carries the responsibility for maintaining environmental records across the region. The Northumbria Mammal Group is also collaborating on the project.
I could have provided many more examples of how the City’s HEIs are contributing to
Newcastle as a city of learning, working with a range of organisations outside. Most of these examples are based on the initiative of individual academics of departments. I now want to

ask what these bottom-up activities mean for how the HEIs manage their own affairs as institutions in order to maximise their contribution to civil society locally and globally. To answer this question I want to introduce our own model of what I call the civic university which is being evaluated in a strategic project within Newcastle University Institute for
Social Renewal. It helps if I start with a characterisation of the flip case – the non-civic university.
Such a university maintains a strict separation of its teaching and research with research performance judged by academic publications in peer reviewed journals and teaching judged by student satisfaction scores. There is a third mission on the periphery of the university and a hard boundary between the university and the outside world. The focus of management is on income generation from its external work, chiefly with the largest businesses. There are lots of unconnected bottom up external initiatives, largely below the radar screens of senior management.

In contrast the civic university integrates teaching, research and engagement with the outside world such that each enhances the other. Research has socio-economic impact designed in from the start and teaching has a strong community involvement with the long term objective of widening participation in HE. Most importantly there is a soft boundary between the institution and society
To turn this into a practical way in which institutional leaders and mangers can appraise their own organisations we have identifies seven dimensions of the civic university. These are:
1.
It is actively engaged with the wider world as well as the local community of the place in which it is located.
2.
It takes a holistic approach to engagement, seeing it as institution wide activity and not confined to specific individuals or teams.
3.
It has a strong sense of place – it recognises the extent to which is location helps to form its unique identity as an institution.
4.
It has a sense of purpose – understanding not just what it is good at, but what it is good for.
5.
It is willing to invest in order to have impact beyond the academy.
6.
It is transparent and accountable to its stakeholders and the wider public.
7.
It uses innovative methodologies such as social media and team building in its engagement activities with the world at large
I and a number of colleagues are working with eight older so called ‘research intensive’ universities across Europe, including Newcastle, each of which aspires to be a civic university. We recognise that most are on a journey of institutional transformation and position themselves at different points along each of these dimensions from civic engagement being embryonic to fully embedded in the customs and practises of the

institutions. I think mush could be learned by different types of HEIs participating in such an exercise and we are fortunate that in one of our participating cities, Dublin, we have Trinity
College Dublin and Dublin Institute of Technology which is more akin to a polytechnic. As I hope I have shown one of the strengths of Newcastle as a learning is that it has three very different types of HEI which when working together and with the wider society can really make this a learning city. I would therefore like to conclude by examining the drivers and barriers to connecting HEIs to city and regional development, some of which will be internal to the higher education sector and others external. This analysis is based on our work for the European Commission and adopts a triple helix perspective that I admit now needs to be modified to incorporate civil society
As in the case of the civic university I would like to start by characterising the disconnected city and region. In terms of higher education we might observe the following:

Seen as ‘in’ the region but not ‘of’ the region
 Policies and practices discourage engagement

Focus on rewards for academic research and teaching
In terms of the public sector we might observe:

Lack of coherence between national and regional/local policies
 Lack of political leadership

Lack of a shared voice and vision at city region level
In relation to the private sector the picture might be:

No coordination or representative voice with which to engage
 Motivated by narrow self interest and short term goals

Dominated by firms with low demand or absorptive capacity for innovation
Lastly in terms of the mechanisms for connecting Higher Education into the development of the city and region the following might be observed:
 No boundary spanning people

Focus on supply side, transactional interventions

Ineffective or non- existent partnership

Lack of a shared understanding about the challenges
 Entrepreneurs ‘locked out’ of regional planning

In the connected city region the following might be observed in higher education:

Generating intellectual and human capital assets for the city region
In the case of the public sector:

Developing coherent policies that link territorial development to innovation and higher education
For its part the private sector would be:

Investing in people and ideas that will create growth
The three pillars of this triple helix would be connected by HEIs providing skilled people and commercialisible research for the private sector and analytical work to work to underpin public policy interventions . All three pillars would work together to shape evidence based policies that support smart specialisation.

Thus the European Commission has observed in its white paper
“Supporting jobs and growth; an agenda for the modernisation of Europe’s HE system”
“In assessing the role of HEIs in the region it is useful to identify the steps needed to create a ‘connected region 'in which the institutions are key players. Through this connection process institutions become key partners for regional authorities in formulating and implementing their smart specialisation strategies. They can contribute to a region’s assessment of its knowledge assets, capabilities and competencies, including those embedded in the institution’s own departments as well as local businesses, with a view to identifying the most promising areas of specialisation for the region, but also the weaknesses that hamper innovation”
I make no judgement as to where Newcastle and the North East figures in relation to these two extremes . Instead I will conclude with some observations as to what might be the way ahead for Newcastle developing further as a city of learning in the current public policy environment of marketisation of higher education, of localism and public sector austerity.
These are national issues with which I will now conclude.
I have referred to HEIs as anchor institutions in cities. But universities may be becoming unmoored from their communities. Higher education is increasingly subject to the challenges of a global market, both reflected and fuelled by the World University Rankings.
In this marketplace, and in a time of austerity, English universities may lack the resources to deliver public goods that embed the university in the city and contribute to its economic, social, cultural and environmental development. If such activities do not directly feed into a university’s bottom line it may be forced to disengage.

While some universities may thrive in the global marketplace for research, the mobility of academic staff and national and international students will create a ‘Matthew effect’ (after the apostle) whereby the strong get stronger at the expense of others. As a result, institutions that play a key role in promoting local economic growth may become vulnerable. Markets produce winners and losers; in the case of higher education, this has inevitable geographical implications.
No part of government seems equipped to tackle this issue. HEFCE has no formal responsibility for what higher education is provided where. It does not publically identify at risk institutions, and takes no view on their importance as anchor institutions in less dynamic places. It is unlikely to have the resources to bail out faltering institutions, which may be a real issue in places with single institutions and no scope for local mergers. FE is funded via a different route
The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has national industrial and innovation strategies but these lack a sub-national dimension. BIS sponsored Andrew Witty’s
‘Independent Review of Universities in their Communities: Enabling Economic Growth,’ the final report of which was published in November with the title the Encouraging a British
Invention Revolution. This last-minute change of title suggests that within BIS there is a limited view of the role of universities in local economies.
Witty acknowledges the importance of “a sound understanding of a locality’s comparative economic advantage”, but he champions “arrow projects”, or globally competitive ideas
“uninhibited by institutional status, geography or source of funding”. His aim is to make

British higher education industrial sector-led not place-based, with funding flows directed
“by technology/industry opportunity—not by postcode.”
The Government must respond to Witty, and some coalition ministers do seem to be looking to universities to contribute to rebalancing the economy geographically, for example through their inclusion in City Deals and their contribution to delivering the innovation strand within the next round of European regional structural funds. Witty refers to the
European funds, but he does not acknowledge that they are linked to reducing interregional disparities in rates of innovation.
What is the way ahead? I would like to suggest that turbulent times for both higher education and city authorities should drive each to identify key areas of mutual interest, for example by using the city as a living laboratory for research and social innovation or addressing societal challenges such as an ageing population and environmental sustainability—challenges that present economic opportunities with both a local and global dimension, and which for universities also feed into the Research Excellence Framework’s impact agenda. Other possibilities include work-based learning in small and medium-sized enterprises, as a way of enhancing graduate employability and establishing the social relations between academics and business; student enterprise programmes to boost numbers of potential new businesses; attracting mobile investment through global research links; and collaborative endeavours to create cities with ‘buzz’ like we have here in
Newcastle.
This is not just a local agenda for universities, cities and LEPs. It requires universities to connect bottom-up initiatives supported by LEPs, local authorities, local business interests and civil society to top-down mechanisms like those of the Technology Strategy Board and its Catapult Centres.
But we also need to think about how to reinvent the civic universities that were so crucial to the development of cities outside London in the 19 th century, and sustain a world-class higher education system with an explicit territorial dimension, not just a few global players within an hour of the capital. In short we need to more systematically link higher education and territorial development policies nationally as well as locally.