Careful Collaborations: Ethics and Care in Cultural Knowledge Exchange and Trans-Disciplinary Research

This piece draws on a presentation given as part of a GuildHE and UKRIO webinar, ‘Research Culture: Environments & Accountability’, 22 February 2023. This collection of writing and resources has been inspired by conversations with members of the NCACE Knowledge Impacts Network. Many of our discussions through 2023 focused on how we can make our partnerships and collaborations more equitable, ethically thoughtful and mutually beneficial, as well as deeper, richer and more effective. Many of those who are trying to build careful, ethical and lasting partnerships find that they are working within systems and silos that are not supportive of best practice, and can further challenge the ability to embed ethics and equity at the heart of the work. However, there are many who are delivering inspiring ethical knowledge exchange, developing their own frameworks or hacking models from other sectors to put care and ethics at the heart of collaboration between the arts and higher education and the wider communities involved. It is also worth observing that this publication underlines that the delivery of excellent and ethically centred knowledge exchange and research collaborations with a wide range of partners, draws on an extraordinarily wide range of skills, competencies and resources. In this publication we have drawn together a series of commissioned essays from a range of researchers, artists and cultural practitioners who are placing ethics at the heart of their work. We also signpost to a wide range of existing cross sector resources, tool kits and further reading for those who are interested in embedding ethics into their knowledge exchange practice. We are aware that this publication only scratches the surface of relevant research and resources, and as always warmly invite you to bring other opensource assets to our attention so that we can share them through the NCACE Evidence Repository.
Leighton and Barrett (2023) Careful Collaborations: Ethics and Care in Cultural Knowledge Exchange and Trans-Disciplinary Research; The National Centre for Academic and Cultural Exchange.