In Greg Burke’s recent blog reflecting on his journey from Whitehall to the heart of place-making, he asks, ‘how can we embed civic activity into institutions?’, sharing that ‘all too often, things fall away when individuals leave the institution.’
For us at Student Hubs, the heart of this answer on how we can embed civic activity into institutions is to start with students themselves. Individual staff may leave institutions, but universities’ role in engaging students is a constant in higher education and our place-making approaches should be designed around the power and potential student leaders have to facilitate and lead civic activities in our local communities.
To briefly introduce ourselves, Student Hubs is a national charity that works in partnership with universities to deliver place-based social action opportunities, supporting students to tackle social and environmental issues by working directly with the community in local schools, libraries, community centres and retirement communities. Student leaders are integral to this approach, with many of our volunteering programmes supported by student leaders: working with our staff to recruit and train volunteers, delivering projects, and shaping our local work and activities.
In this blog, we want to use our experience to explore what the role of student leaders in civic activities can look like, and what practitioners need to consider to bolster their student engagement and support students to thrive in these opportunities.
1. Start with why
We know how powerful social issues can be in driving students to want to make change. Students care deeply about many challenges our local communities face: issues such as climate change, educational attainment, and social isolation; the challenge for many students is not their understanding or awareness of these issues, it’s the frustration of not knowing where to start to tackle these deep problems.
As part of our Theory of Change, we see active citizenship as being the ultimate outcome of our student engagement, and developing active citizenship starts with students being able to imagine a future that is better than it is now. By framing your civic activities with why they matter and how local action is the first step in making change, you’re more likely to engage students with your civic vision and how they can be a part of it.
2. Lead with how
Students are facing increasing barriers to their university experience, especially to anything which may be perceived as ‘extra’ to their degree study. We believe both in-curricular and extracurricular social action experience is fundamental to creating highly skilled and socially aware graduates, with the ‘skills for life’ to make change on a local, national and global level.
In order to get there, students need to be convinced that they should participate in your civic engagement. They need explicit information about your opportunity and how they will fit it into their lives, and what they will get from it. So, when sharing your opportunity, ensure you’re giving as much information as possible about where, when, how long for, the level of commitment, and what students will need to do during the activity. Support students to imagine exactly how they will engage in this activity, and this will help them to know if they can commit.
Many of our student leaders get involved to boost their CV, or get real world experience with groups they want to work with in the future (such as young people). Beyond this initial motivation, many remain engaged for much longer than a term because of the wellbeing benefits, their improved university experience and the peer network they create. However, without giving clear information at the first decision-making point, students won’t see those additional benefits – so focusing your energy on making your student recruitment accessible, inclusive, and informative is time well spent.
3. Be person-focused and open minded in your student engagement
Take a look at your civic activity and ask yourself: how open-minded are you about the capabilities of students for supporting you to deliver it? Student leadership at Student Hubs goes beyond participation: student leadership involves individual action, and when we recruit students specifically to lead, we ask them what they want to get out of the opportunity, which skills they’re looking to develop, and how we can support them. We understand what journey our student leaders are looking to take, and we facilitate that.
For your institution, this could include:
● Students helping you to interview other students for an activity, particularly if the student(s) participated in a previous cohort or activity.
● Students supporting you to deliver training. They could be a table ‘leader’, helping to facilitate or conduct group activities, or could deliver selected slides based on their skills and experiences.
● Students being team leaders, with specific training. If your activity involves groups or teams, your team leaders can be a vital resource in helping you manage the activity, keeping connected with how the cohort is doing, and flagging potential issues.
● Students helping you to contact local organisations. This could include them shadowing you in meetings, using an email template to reach out to new potential partners, or being proactive in reaching out with your guidance.
Ultimately, the opportunities for student leadership in civic activities are endless. But they cannot be implemented without considering what scaffolded support students need (such as specific role training, inductions, 1:1s and regular check ins), and evaluation of what is and isn’t working.
Remember that each student you work with is different: where some leaders might thrive with a high level of responsibility, some might need more support. What is needed is a level of resilience and capacity that your activity can adapt to the needs of the student leaders, and adjust accordingly.
The secret to effective student leadership in civic activities is student-focused design. All that’s left is for you and your team to implement it.
Don’t miss Fiona’s presentation at CiviCon24, where she will be sharing a case study of Student Hubs’ place-based activities (including student leadership) in action within Bristol.
In Greg Burke’s recent blog reflecting on his journey from Whitehall to the heart of place-making, he asks, ‘how can we embed civic activity into institutions?’, sharing that ‘all too often, things fall away when individuals leave the institution.’
For us at Student Hubs, the heart of this answer on how we can embed civic activity into institutions is to start with students themselves. Individual staff may leave institutions, but universities’ role in engaging students is a constant in higher education and our place-making approaches should be designed around the power and potential student leaders have to facilitate and lead civic activities in our local communities.
To briefly introduce ourselves, Student Hubs is a national charity that works in partnership with universities to deliver place-based social action opportunities, supporting students to tackle social and environmental issues by working directly with the community in local schools, libraries, community centres and retirement communities. Student leaders are integral to this approach, with many of our volunteering programmes supported by student leaders: working with our staff to recruit and train volunteers, delivering projects, and shaping our local work and activities.
In this blog, we want to use our experience to explore what the role of student leaders in civic activities can look like, and what practitioners need to consider to bolster their student engagement and support students to thrive in these opportunities.
1. Start with why
We know how powerful social issues can be in driving students to want to make change. Students care deeply about many challenges our local communities face: issues such as climate change, educational attainment, and social isolation; the challenge for many students is not their understanding or awareness of these issues, it’s the frustration of not knowing where to start to tackle these deep problems.
As part of our Theory of Change, we see active citizenship as being the ultimate outcome of our student engagement, and developing active citizenship starts with students being able to imagine a future that is better than it is now. By framing your civic activities with why they matter and how local action is the first step in making change, you’re more likely to engage students with your civic vision and how they can be a part of it.
2. Lead with how
Students are facing increasing barriers to their university experience, especially to anything which may be perceived as ‘extra’ to their degree study. We believe both in-curricular and extracurricular social action experience is fundamental to creating highly skilled and socially aware graduates, with the ‘skills for life’ to make change on a local, national and global level.
In order to get there, students need to be convinced that they should participate in your civic engagement. They need explicit information about your opportunity and how they will fit it into their lives, and what they will get from it. So, when sharing your opportunity, ensure you’re giving as much information as possible about where, when, how long for, the level of commitment, and what students will need to do during the activity. Support students to imagine exactly how they will engage in this activity, and this will help them to know if they can commit.
Many of our student leaders get involved to boost their CV, or get real world experience with groups they want to work with in the future (such as young people). Beyond this initial motivation, many remain engaged for much longer than a term because of the wellbeing benefits, their improved university experience and the peer network they create. However, without giving clear information at the first decision-making point, students won’t see those additional benefits – so focusing your energy on making your student recruitment accessible, inclusive, and informative is time well spent.
3. Be person-focused and open minded in your student engagement
Take a look at your civic activity and ask yourself: how open-minded are you about the capabilities of students for supporting you to deliver it? Student leadership at Student Hubs goes beyond participation: student leadership involves individual action, and when we recruit students specifically to lead, we ask them what they want to get out of the opportunity, which skills they’re looking to develop, and how we can support them. We understand what journey our student leaders are looking to take, and we facilitate that.
For your institution, this could include:
● Students helping you to interview other students for an activity, particularly if the student(s) participated in a previous cohort or activity.
● Students supporting you to deliver training. They could be a table ‘leader’, helping to facilitate or conduct group activities, or could deliver selected slides based on their skills and experiences.
● Students being team leaders, with specific training. If your activity involves groups or teams, your team leaders can be a vital resource in helping you manage the activity, keeping connected with how the cohort is doing, and flagging potential issues.
● Students helping you to contact local organisations. This could include them shadowing you in meetings, using an email template to reach out to new potential partners, or being proactive in reaching out with your guidance.
Ultimately, the opportunities for student leadership in civic activities are endless. But they cannot be implemented without considering what scaffolded support students need (such as specific role training, inductions, 1:1s and regular check ins), and evaluation of what is and isn’t working.
Remember that each student you work with is different: where some leaders might thrive with a high level of responsibility, some might need more support. What is needed is a level of resilience and capacity that your activity can adapt to the needs of the student leaders, and adjust accordingly.
The secret to effective student leadership in civic activities is student-focused design. All that’s left is for you and your team to implement it.
Don’t miss Fiona’s presentation at CiviCon24, where she will be sharing a case study of Student Hubs’ place-based activities (including student leadership) in action within Bristol.
