Student partnership programmes can’t be copy-and-paste – and here’s why

When another university finds a formula that works for them and develops a strong programme, it can be tempting to try to follow in their footsteps. But here’s how a collaboration between our two London universities pointed us in a more holistic direction.

The collaboration began through conversations between colleagues at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London (UAL) and London Metropolitan University about student partnership, equity and institutional change.

At UAL, the Changemakers programme has evolved beyond a traditional student voice initiative into a creative partnership model that uses storytelling, dialogue and co-creation to explore belonging, institutional culture and curriculum enhancement.

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Rather than asking students simply to provide feedback, the programme invites them to examine the systems, narratives and structures shaping their educational experience. Over time, this work demonstrated that storytelling is not simply a communication tool, but also a method for understanding how institutions construct ideas of participation, legitimacy and success.

This shifted the emphasis away from consultation models and towards creative enquiry and collaborative knowledge production.

What became clear to us during the programme was that:

• institutional frameworks often prioritised measurable outputs over the complexity of experience
• student voice initiatives sometimes struggled to move beyond representation into transformation
• issues of belonging, identity and power frequently remained difficult to discuss within formal institutional spaces.

What we learned from working together

At London Met, our interest was never to replicate Changemakers exactly, but rather to understand what principles could translate into its own institutional context. The conversations prompted us to question whether student partnership should focus on improving existing systems or creating space to rethink them altogether.

While UAL’s approach offered valuable inspiration, its success is rooted in its own culture, creative disciplines and institutional history. The challenge became one of translation, asking what forms of partnership were meaningful for us, rather than attempting to reproduce someone else’s model.

As we embark on this process of reimagining what truly bold partnership can look like beyond the Office for Students’ B3 performance metrics, we must recognise that discomfort and uncertainty are not barriers to success but integral to it. In a sector defined by constant change and complexity, our old ways of thinking and working will not equip us for the future.

Three lessons for the sector

1. Co-creation is translated, not replicated

One of the most important insights emerging from this collaboration is that co-creation cannot simply be transferred between institutions as a ready-made framework.

While methodologies, language and examples may travel, institutional cultures do not. Each institution carries its own histories, governance structures, student demographics, strategic priorities and political sensitivities. The practices that emerge organically in one setting may encounter resistance, ambiguity or reinterpretation in another.

This becomes particularly visible when working with approaches connected to storytelling, identity, power and institutional critique.

2. Institutional culture matters more than methodology

Creative and justice-oriented pedagogies often operate in spaces of uncertainty. They can generate meaningful dialogue and engagement, but they may also surface tensions around legitimacy, authority, ownership and risk.

As a result, the collaboration prompted several important questions:

• How can institutions support critical and creative student voice without reducing it to performative inclusion?
• How do practitioners balance institutional alignment with the need for experimentation and disruption?
• What forms of co-creation become possible when institutions allow ambiguity, reflexivity and lived experience into formal spaces?

Rather than viewing these tensions as barriers, this collaboration suggests that they may actually be central to the work itself.

It’s rare that institutional change is linear. Co-creation involves negotiation, translation and adaptation, not replication. One of our insights from this collaboration is that co-creation may be better understood as a process of translation rather than implementation.

Partnership models are often discussed as scalable frameworks capable of being reproduced consistently across different institutional contexts. We felt, from our experience, that something more relational and adaptive would work better.

Our collaboration suggests that what transfers successfully between institutions is not a programme but rather a set of principles: relational trust, dialogue, creative experimentation, critical reflection and a willingness to embrace uncertainty. In this sense, storytelling becomes especially significant.

3. Storytelling reveals things that metrics cannot

Stories do not simply document institutional experience; they shape how institutions understand themselves. They reveal whose voices become centred, whose experiences remain invisible and how belonging is negotiated within educational environments.

Creative methods, including visual practice, sonic storytelling, photography and dialogic encounters, can function as forms of institutional enquiry. They create reflective spaces that move beyond metrics and formal evaluation processes.

For both institutions, the collaboration has highlighted the importance of building environments where students and staff can collectively interpret institutional life rather than simply respond to it.

Rather than presenting a finished model, the partnership between UAL and London Met reflects an ongoing conversation about how creative co-creation practices can support more reflective, relational and inclusive approaches to institutional learning.

As higher education continues to navigate questions of participation, belonging and student engagement, cross-institutional dialogue can help practitioners to share successes, as well as tensions, uncertainties and unfinished thinking.

Co-creation is often presented as a toolkit that institutions can adopt. Our experience suggests something different. The most valuable aspect of collaboration is not replicating another institution’s practice, but translating shared principles into local cultures, relationships and communities.

If universities are serious about student partnership, the question is not “How do we copy what works elsewhere?” but rather “What kind of institutional culture allows meaningful partnership to emerge here?”

Kevin Brazant is senior educational developer at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London; and Mia Nembhard is senior inclusive communities manager at London Metropolitan University.

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