Our Strategy
At the heart of our Strategy 2020-25 is a vision to deliver real and tangible change through a close collaboration to address pressing issues of sustainable development.
We will focus our radical and collaborative principles on four areas of strength and opportunity, creating interdisciplinary networks that will stimulate and galvanise research with social, environmental and economic impact.
The four themes are:
- Culture, connection and creativity
- Health systems, social care and wellbeing
- Human rights, equality and conflict
- Sustainability, natural resources and food
To achieve this, Eastern Arc has three objectives:
- to develop a strong collaborative core within our themes
- to support experimental, risk-taking activity, and
- to engage with external policy-makers and end-users.
We recognise that fulfilling our Strategy will not be simple. In the past fifty years higher education has become increasingly competitive and combative, and this has been exacerbated by the rise of league tables.
We must work to counter the most corrosive effects of this. To do so, we will be guided by four basic principles: trust, understanding, creativity and risk.
- Trust: Each university, each individual, must trust each other and see the mutual benefit of collaboration.
- Understanding: We must understand our individual strengths, as well as the contexts in which we work, and the needs of our regional, national and global communities.
- Creativity: we must be creative, flexible and adaptive in the way we work.
- Risk: we must be willing to take risks, and we must be willing to fail.
Realising our vision will be difficult, but our shared history has shown that we can take a disruptive idea and create a new way of thinking. By coming together as the Eastern Arc, by sharing our resources, our knowledge and our skills, we will seek to overcome the specific challenges of our time to help create a sustainable, peaceful and equitable future.