Joint STEM Networking Event

On Thursday 31 March 2022, CSES, The STEM Hub and ARU held a fun and successful networking session for STEM Ambassadors, teachers and school students.

Attendees were treated to entertaining tours of ARU's cutting-edge facilities – including the SuperLab, engineering workshops and clinical simulation suites – and a presentation by the Passmores Academy team on their Fresh Air, Fresh Thinking project work. There were careers sessions for the secondary students, hands-on activities for the primary students and a workshop on communicating STEM for the Ambassadors. A networking reception for all participants was well-received after two years of lockdowns and isolation!

STEM networking events are typically held once or twice a year; this was the first one post-Covid and the first of similar events that CSES intends to run, with its partners, in the future.

Our thanks to Peter Sutton (The STEM Hub); Fatima Bibi, Binh Le, Dr Maryam Imani and Prof Laurie Butler (ARU); and Jainna Bhalla and Lily Caskey (Leonardo) for their support and contributions to the event.

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Optimising the new normal: the central enabler of TRUST

Report from CSES Spotlight Event, 15 April 2021

In April 2021, CSES held a 'spotlight' meeting to discuss the role that trust plays in stimulating and enabling new partnerships between users and providers. Specifically, the event explored the role of trust in the context of emerging trends in the four sectors of focus: healthcare, planning, digital economy and education. This follows directly from the Covid recovery roundtable hosted by CSES and Essex County Council in October 2020.

The event concluded that:

• There is a clear case for multidisciplinary collaboration, and there is appetite among the group to establish a more formal model for this.
• Each sector's issues are connected and cannot be considered in isolation. Any collaborative initiative must adopt a "whole system" approach.
• Diversity and inclusion are not simply "nice to haves"; they are essential to getting things right. Whilst the existing stakeholder group is relatively diverse, the model that we adopt to bring about action must be fully inclusive.
• To achieve the necessary levels of system integration, inclusion, diversity and participation, trust among the parties is essential.

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Inclusivity: Closing The Gap

Report from CSES Spotlight Event, 15 September 2021

In October 2020, CSES convened a roundtable discussion between a wide variety of local and national stakeholders to share responses to, and lessons learned from, the Covid-19 pandemic. This revealed that in addition to the short-term "must do" activities there was also an emerging appetite for accelerating developments and embracing innovative change.

Following on from this, CSES is holding a series of "spotlight" events with the same group of diverse stakeholders and additional contributors. These events are on the themes of Trust (held on 15 April 2021), Inclusivity (the subject of this report), Resilience & Adaptability, and Sustainability.

This event aimed to answer the following question: "How can we tackle economic, health and education inequality within Essex using science and technology?" Specifically:

• How can science and technology businesses in Essex best create social value in a targeted and strategic manner?
• What applications of science and technology can allow us to deliver integrated and inclusive health and social care – and cater for differing needs and disabilities – efficiently, effectively and compassionately?
• How can we harness technology to deliver an integrated scientific, digital and creative education fit for today’s economy without the downsides of digital inequality?
• How can the different stakeholders work together to collectively tackle these issues?

From the themes raised during discussion of the above questions, a set of recommendations has been made. These include:

• Items for CSES, its partners and similar community groups to take forward, for example through the STEAM Commission.
• Items for Essex County Council and its partners to take forward, including by feeding into ECC's Digital Exclusion Working Group and/or Corporate Strategy team.

The next step is for CSES and Essex County Council to incorporate these recommendations into their planning for 2022 and beyond.

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CSES hosts Covid recovery roundtable

Has the pandemic accelerated key capabilities, and will some of these capabilities signpost the future means of service delivery?

On 22 October 2020, CSES was pleased to co-chair a roundtable discussion involving local and national stakeholders from across industry, the NHS, local authorities and academia.

The purpose was to explore the future of public service delivery post-Covid, and to find areas where the pandemic had in fact been of benefit by accelerating the development of technologies and collaborations by necessity.

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