Community engaged research and practice

Climate Impact Lab 

The Climate Impact Lab brings UTS researchers and academics together with community, industry and environmental entrepreneurs to find innovative solutions to climate challenges. The pilot project is focused on social housing in Glebe where we are co-designing approaches with residents to decarbonise housing stock including rooftop solar and energy efficiency retrofits, and empowering community to make informed sustainable choices. We are currently connecting with subjects including those within the Bachelor of Creative Intelligence and Innovation, Design Honours and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences to work on equity issues in relation to sustainability and social housing. This initiative builds on UTS’s existing work over several years with the local Glebe community, exploring opportunities to generate local social value. This project is a partnership with the Institute for Sustainable Futures. 

Darlinghurst project 

Listening to Darlinghurst is a public history project delivered in partnership with the Australian Centre for Public History about the lived experiences of Darlinghurst. The project is focused on deep listening in order to amplify the often-unheard community voices, particularly in the face of gentrification, such as people from low socioeconomic backgrounds and those experiencing housing insecurity. Community engagements involve conducting interviews with Darlinghurst and Woolloomooloo community members and service providers. The project is funded by the Paul Ramsay Foundation. 

Digital Mentoring Program

The Digital Mentoring Program was a response to the first COVID wave in 2020 to support two traditionally disadvantaged groups in our community: our international students and senior citizens living in our local precinct of Glebe. UTS employed international students who were under financial stress and without government support to teach over 55s in Glebe digital skills so they were able to access services which were moving online. The need for this was identified in earlier consultations with the over-55 Glebe community. In November 2020, we were awarded a City of Sydney grant to scale up the program in 2021 in Glebe as well as Pyrmont, Ultimo (bilingual sessions in Mandarin and Cantonese) and Camperdown. 

Yarning in Glebe 

Yarning in Glebe is a place-based engagement project facilitated by a grant from the National Indigenous Australians Agency. Glebe First Nations community members have been engaged by the us in partnership with Glebe Youth Service to run conversations with their community to understand what supports they need and how UTS can use its resources to unlock that support, particularly following the impacts of COVID and sorry business within the community. 

Ageing in Glebe 

Ageing in Glebe is a longstanding project to understand vulnerable community members in Glebe over-55, including those in social housing, and what we can do to support their ageing in place. It began with interviews of community members and co-design sessions to identify community needs. The understanding we gained from these sessions allowed us to act quickly when COVID hit in order to support seniors with digital mentoring as we knew many did not have the digital skills, did not have family support, and experienced multiple health challenges. The initial research has been shared with the community and we will continue to do further engagement sessions in our ongoing relationship with the community.

Pyrmont-Ultimo Network 

Pyrmont-Ultimo Network is a capacity building project for the Pyrmont-Ultimo community whereby we facilitate and support services the community needs, including organising evaluation workshops and linking them to the UTS Shopfront program for support.