Festival23

Aspect Festival23 is a celebration of the Aspect community!

Over the course of the coming weeks, starting on the 14th of June 2023, we’ll be airing a wide range of informative and inspirational content gathered over the last few years of Aspect activity. From webinars to podcasts, deep-dive reports to illustrated case-studies, “how-to” guides, online and physical events, interviews, blogs and performances, we’ll be sharing all things SHAPE research commercialisation.

So forget Netflix this summer and tune in with us to celebrate the work of the Aspect community.

#thisisSHAPE

What /who is Aspect?

Aspect (A SHAPE Platform for Entrepreneurship, Commercialisation and Transformation) is a network for organisations looking to make the most of commercial and business opportunities from Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts (SHAPE) research.

We aim to do this through a series of events and meetings to exchange of good practice; funded projects to test ideas and pilot new approaches and the development of toolkits (including case studies and resources) to share our insights and learnings with the broader community.

Aspect seeks to:

• Raise the profile and significance of commercialising social sciences, arts and humanities research

• Build engagement between academics, business and industry

• Inspire and encourage SHAPE commercialisation

• Grow capacity & expertise in SHAPE research commercialisation

• Develop, share and exchange knowledge and good practice

Aspect currently exists of 47 member organisations and growing. If you are interested in joining Aspect or being involved in any of our activity or simply have questions and want to get in touch, then visit our website here.

Our funding

Aspect is one of 14 projects funded by Research England’s Connecting Capability Fund. Aspect was launched in 2018 and received a £5 million funding award for the first three years of operation. In 2021 Aspect received follow on funding of £2.4 million to mobilise the learnings from the first three years of the programme by expanding the membership, creating further additional good practice in social sciences, arts and humanities (SHAPE) commercialisation, capturing that practice and embedding it across the HEI community. The Connecting Capability Fund supports universities working together with businesses and other partners, to commercialise research, share good practice and build capacity. The Fund is highlighted in the UK Government’s Industrial Strategy with the aim to enhance the UK’s industrial competitiveness and productivity.