Racial Equity Action Learning Programme Handbook
Welcome to Phase 2 of NCCPE's Racial Equity Action Learning Programme. Here you will find all the information you will need to take part in the programme.
Programme Background and aims
The NCCPE is committed to inclusive engagement practices. We are keen to support individuals and organisations to develop effective approaches to inclusive engagement work involving universities and research organisations.
Working with an inclusion working group, the NCCPE published a statement on inclusion detailing our organisation’s commitments to inclusion. We are currently implementing an action plan to enable us to review and, where necessary, improve our own practices and the guidance and resources we provide to the sector.
We are extending our Action Learning programme, with a specific focus on Racial Equity, to support public engagement professionals who are developing their inclusion work. We recognise the intersectional nature of many exclusionary practices and that such exclusionary practices cannot be tackled in isolation. Our focus on racial equity provides a lens to begin working on these intersectional issues in an action learning context.
The key aims of this programme are:
- To offer public engagement professionals an opportunity to develop their understanding and approach to inclusive and racially equitable engagement practices through an action learning process
- To build capability in reflecting on race equity and how this might be achieved in public engagement professionals’ work
- To reinforce networks of public engagement professionals committed to race equity in their work
- To draw out learning to share with others including the action learning project participants and public engagement professionals (PEP) network members
Other Programme Dates
Launch Event - 16 April
In-Person Launch Event including Action Learning Set 1
1st Floor, The Studio, 7 Cannon St, Birmingham, B2 5EP
Wednesday 16 April 2025, 09:45 – 16:00
A view from the inside – Lessons from leading on anti-racism in HE
Supplementary Workshop - Online
Date & Time TBC
In this workshop, Xavier Baker will share insights from working in academic and civic engagement roles to push for anti-racist change in a university setting.
Closing Event - 19 November
In-Person Share and Learn Event, Birmingham (venue TBC)
Wednesday 19th November 2025, 09:45 - 16:00
Action Learning group 1 Focus Group - 04 December
End of programme focus group (group 1) - Online
Thursday 4th December 2025, 14:00 - 15:30
Action Learning group 2 Focus Group - 04 December
End of programme focus group (group 2) - Online
Thursday 4th December 2025, 11:00 - 12:30
Evaluation Tools
We are keen to monitor and evaluate the impact of this programme on your personal and professional practice, as well as the practices of your institution.
We have already collected some insights from the questions you answered in your programme enrolment form and will end the programme with an online focus group on Thursday 04 December 2025.
We are offering access to an anonymous Padlet which you can access below for you to share any feedback, reflections or concerns with the project team throughout the process.
We also encourage you to make use of our Reflective Journal template to track your progress following each session, you can download the template below.
Meet your Fellow Participants
Emma
Emma is most looking forward furthering her understanding and experience of action learning and developing a better understanding on how she can work with her organisation to further race equity. Emma hopes the programme will support her to develop a better understanding of action learning and to be able to use it to facilitate sessions within her organisation. She also hopes to understand how her own role is limiting race equity and look for ways in which she can diversify her own practice.
Jenny
Jenny is looking forward to having the opportunity to dedicate time to the topics and consider how she could support and improve her work. She is hoping the programme will support aspects of her role, from embedding the public into decision making, through to strategy development and engagement activities.
Natt
Natt is most looking forward to the continuation of the critical, and frank, challenge to the practice and holding our work in this area to a group account. Ensuring it always gets the space it should hold even when priorities start competing. The UCLPartners PPIE Strategy (2025-2028) commits to 'Build equitable involvement across our communities' which acknowledges the need to work with the communities who are facing the largest health inequalities in our programme areas. In many cases, this is linked to race and ethnicity. This entire portfolio of work thinks about inclusive practice for the PPIE Team work, the wider staff group, and also the organisation policies. Natt believes it's important to have challenge, account and development of this practice in the space like the Action Learning Programme.
Stacey
Stacey is looking forward to continuing to have safeguarded space to reflect on best practices and share conversations about important but difficult topics in a safe space with like-minded individuals. She is also looking forward to being challenged to think from new perspectives. Stacey is hoping that the programme will support her in managing an outreach / engagement project and give her the skills to improve the university's offering to underrepresented groups. She hopes she will be able to create a public engagement strategy for the department based on best practices.
Claudia
Claudia is excited to deepen her learning and develop better tools to support inclusion in her engagement work and in her team. Claudia is the EDI Data lead for her team and supports the EDI strategy across the board in her role, so this programme fits right with her job role and interests.
Debbie
Debbie is looking forward to having the opportunity to talk with peers facing similar issues. She is hoping that the programme will support her to embed EDI into the university's outreach practices.
Kevin
Kevin is most looking forward to continuing the discussions and learning from the first action learning programme; meeting new PE colleagues. He hopes that the programme will support him to address structural barriers within his institution relating to race.
Zoe
Zoe is most looking forward to learning from others about how they approach issues around racial equity in their work and having the space and time to reflect on how she approaches these issues. She hopes that the programme will help her to know how to support PEPs with developing their understanding of this work and how to approach issues around racial equity in her own work.
Meet the Facilitation Team
Carol Sidney (Action Learning Facilitator)
Suri Patel (Action Learning Facilitator)
Dr Peggy Warren (Guest Speaker)
Peggy has decades of experience developing, facilitating and evaluating Leaders and Managers programme for the National Health Service in the UK and a range of organisations in the UK and overseas. She is the lead facilitator on the double award winning Elevate leadership programme for Bristol University and the partnership group. Peggy is a storyteller and utilises the sharing of lived experience as a method of seeing and engaging with nature and each other’s humanity.
Xavier Baker (Guest Speaker)
Equity and racial justice are central to Xavier’s work. Previously, he was Mentor and Cohort Manager for a multi award-winning Green Skills programme, supporting young people from global majority backgrounds to access opportunities in the sustainability sector. He also spent three years as a trainee lecturer in UWE Bristol’s Law School, contributing to efforts to close ethnicity awarding gaps. A former trustee of a Multi-Academy Trust with 5 primary schools, he now sits on an independent board that scrutinises Avon & Somerset criminal justice agencies’ efforts to tackle racial disproportionality.
Xavier has recently accepted a brand-new EDI Business Partner position at UWE Bristol and will transition into his new position in the middle of May.