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Community Engagement: Theory into Practice. A new interdisciplinary IATL module

Mark HintonThis module will investigate how university undergraduates can apply their developing discipline-specific theoretical understandings and perspectives to practical, non-discipline-specific problems in communities outside the academy, and consider what can be learned from engagement with community-identified problems, and with communities, that cannot otherwise be learned within the academy. Students on the module will be invited to become co-investigators of these questions in relation to their own experience and disciplinary background, as they themselves test the relation of theory and practise, and reflect collectively and individually on the emergent learning that results. Students will be assisted to explore the linking of academic study with community engagement, within a framework of respect, reciprocity, relevance and reflection.

Mark Hinton is the Community Engagement Officer for Centre for Lifelong Learning, working with the third sector to raise awareness of opportunities for adult learners at the University of Warwick, and to build long-term relationships between the University and communities across the region. He teaches Developing Community Leadership to diverse communities, primarily in disadvantaged neighbourhoods in Coventry and Warwickshire. Mark has a degree in Drama, and has 25 years' experience working in community settings as a community artist, a social entrepreneur, a participation process designer, a trainer of elected officials and senior officers, and a community engagement consultant. From 2005 to 2010, he was sponsored by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust as a 'Visionary for a Just and Peaceful World' to develop innovative and effective new approaches to intercultural community bridge-building, locally and internationally.