Drawing upon over 25 years of academic activity at HE level funded by WRL, this plan frames the collaborative programme of activities in four key areas chosen by the independent trustees of WRL. These activities are undertaken by the University of Lancashire at Westlakes Science and Technology Park in Cumberland using managed staff embedded in local networks and engaging in local issues connecting them with regional, national and international experiential and expert resources. This plan gives an overview of these activities scheduled for the five-year period 2023-2028 covering the research topics, finances disseminations and governance.
The areas of research are the themes of:
Over the course of the decades and especially in the focussed investment period and applied scholarship since 2007, a substantial body of work has been developed across all four areas of activity. A key element of this business plan is the dissemination of this back catalogue of work for wider benefit.
Trustees’ focus on these areas reflects their importance to Cumberland, their consistency with WRL’s charitable objects, and their portability and scalability to the wider public sphere reflecting the fact that though WRL is based in West Cumberland its activities are in no way limited to this area.
These areas of research are not to be seen as new to WRL, but building on previous work on Place, Community, Health and the Political economy neither are they to be seen in isolation, but as components of an integrated body of work which impacts on the sustainable (in its fullest sense) governance of places and communities through identifying public value with them on their own terms rather than through externally imposed a priori definitions.
