NCCPE Partnership Tools

The Museum-University Partnership Initiative (MUPI) was funded by the Arts Council England Museum Resilience Fund and delivered by the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) in partnership with the Share Academy project and Paddy McNulty Associates. It ran for two years between October 2016 and 2018, and was built on learning from a successful pilot project from 2016. The MUPI pilot project demonstrated how the higher education sector can be opened up to smaller and medium sized museums whose unique collections and engagement expertise are often an underutilised resource, whilst at the same time adding value to the work of the museums involved and contributing to their long term resilience. 

During the two years that it ran, the MUPI project created connections between museums and university partners. Working alongside Museum Development Professionals, 7 regional and 2 National MUPI Match events were held, and were attended by over 200 people. These facilitated networking events brought together museum staff and academics, and cumulated in the opportunity to pitch for small amounts of ‘thinking funding’ to explore potential project ideas and build relationships. 77 MUPI Match projects were funded, involving 107 museums and 59 universities. A programme of symposia ran alongside these events, and were an opportunity to share best practice and explore learning from the project.

You can find out how to run a Match Event in the guide below, as well as reading about some of the MUPI Partnerships.

In addition to the MUPI Match Events, this programme created tools to support museum-university partnerships and share the learning from the project. These tools are available below.

In 2013 UKRI initiated the Schools-University Partnerships Initiative (SUPI) to explore how teachers and university researchers could work together to bring cutting-edge research into the classroom, and find effective ways to do this in a sustained way.

Following a competitive awards process 12 partnership projects, involving universities working with local schools, were tasked with developing long-term school-university partnerships that made a difference to school students, teachers, researchers, and research. Over four years the programme benefited from £2.4 million RCUK funding and this investment was matched by actual and in-kind contributions from the universities and schools involved.