Re-Culture Programme, GW4 Alliance
A three-workshop programme that brought researchers, students, technicians and professional services staff from four universities together to work out what good research culture looks like on a typical Tuesday, and start building it.
The brief: Transform research culture strategy
"Research culture" is now vigorously debated across UK universities. The term appears in every strategy, review and funding call. What's far less clear is what it looks like day to day: in team meetings, on lab floors, in the way colleagues talk to each other and disagree.
The GW4 Alliance of Bath, Bristol, Cardiff and Exeter asked us to help answer that question. They wanted a programme that would build the skills and behaviours behind a positive research culture, surface the work already happening across the region, and connect the people doing it, who were mostly working in isolated pockets, institution by institution, role by role.
What we did: A live, cross-institutional lab
We designed Re-Culture as a live lab. The cohort was deliberately mixed, with researchers, postgraduate students, technicians and professional services staff from all four universities in the same room as peers, and rather than study conflict resolution or facilitation in the abstract, participants were continually asked to notice how those dynamics were playing out in the room itself.
The skills strand covered distributed leadership, conflict resolution, interpersonal communication and group facilitation, so people could lead bold conversations about culture back home, not just take part in ours. And because it's how we work, creativity ran rampant: groups cooked up dastardly fictional crises for other teams to solve, borrowed a brainstorming technique from Walt Disney, and learned from the behaviour of bees to ask each other better questions.
What emerged was something research culture work often lacks: a cross-institutional space where people who would never otherwise meet could trade ideas and build on each other's work.
What changed
Participants left with a network, a shared vocabulary and a set of collaborative ideas. GW4 then opened an impact fund of up to £5,000 per project so those ideas could become real. Two cross-institutional projects were funded, running from September 2026 to February 2027:
Valuing Supervisors, Recognising People, led from Cardiff with colleagues from Bristol and Bath, strengthening recognition and support for postgraduate research supervisors.
When the Future is Hard to Find, led from Bath with colleagues from Bristol and Exeter, building futures-literacy skills across the Alliance to imagine and shape the research cultures people want.
Both are led by Re-Culture participants, and both cross institutional lines that the programme helped dissolve.
What people said
“Honestly incredible. I’m so impressed by how safe and exciting they made all the workshops feel.”
- Participant“They ensured everyone felt heard and encouraged participants to reflect on who spoke most often, while creating space for those who spoke less frequently. Their kindness, respect, and attentiveness made them ideal facilitators.”
- Participant"Improving research culture requires a holistic, system-wide approach. This partnership has created a creative space for individuals from different institutions and professional roles to connect, exchange ideas, and work across boundaries. As a result, participants are beginning to see themselves as part of a wider network, with a growing commitment to collaborative approaches to culture change."
- GW4 Alliance
Want to work together?
Say hello, and let's have an chat about how we can work together to spark creativity in your space.
Contact: [email protected]