The first South West Crucible took place over three intensive two-day residential workshops during 2013. Each workshop, known as a ‘Lab’ was held in venues in the Bath and Bristol region.
During the programme not only did Crucible participants mix with their peers from a wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds but they also had a unique opportunity to network with senior representatives of science, policy, government, media and business in our region.
Each Lab was broadly themed along the following:
Lab 1: Looking outwards – working with non-academic communities.
The first lab focused on getting participants to consider the role of researchers and research in society. It included activities on policy making, public and media engagement.
Lab 2: Interdisciplinarity and grand challenges – working with researchers from other disciplines.
Important questions such as ‘How can you collaborate with others in your research community?’ and ‘What are the cultural and infrastructural challenges to collaboration?’ were addressed.
Lab 3: Individual skills: innovative and creative researcher.
The final Lab helped each participant to become a more innovative, enterprising and creative researcher.
All three participating Universities (University of Bath, University of Bristol and UWE) utilised funding from the EPSRC to organise South West Crucible 2013.