Green Gown Awards 2021: Student Engagement - University of Gloucestershire - Finalist

Live Smart

Live Smart is our new student experience programme connecting students’ immediate concerns (e.g. money, wellbeing, isolation) with bigger picture issues the world faces for the future. It moves past the ‘green silo’ approaches to student engagement - and embeds a visibly connected triple bottom line from the grassroots into mainstream student experience and informal learning. Live Smart is unique in that it was co-created from scratch with students - and student partnership remains at its heart. Students design and deliver core communications, events and community challenges that get credibility with peers – and work closely with the sustainability team to align their impact with university strategy and influence staff to adopt their ideas.

This innocent looking co-curriculum programme smuggles change in at many levels – student-facing staff teams, formal course experiences and action with local partners. In 2020 Live Smart won an ‘outstanding flagship project’ award by the UN University Regional Centres of Expertise for its community/student learning partnerships.

Top 3 learnings:

1. Co-creation is key - students are powerful voices - empower them with systems and strategy insight.
2. Mainstreaming gets past green echo chambers – ask different questions, start with different people.
3. Community matters - build it, use it, benefit from it, internally and externally.