Money should not be the only KEF metric

There cannot be a creative industries institution in the UK that is happy with the way the Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) works. There: I’ve said it. The existing set of metrics means that the arts cluster is missing out on vital credit. An urgent review is needed to level the playing field and to protect our reputations and financial futures.

When the KEF was unveiled in 2017, it set out to assess how an institution’s research, and how that was applied and used by others, was valuable to both the economy and society. Perhaps that intention is deliberately vague; our perspectives on social value depend on our own opinions and the issues of the day. What is clear, though, is how heavily the KEF measures success in mainly monetary terms.

Income is a valuable outcome of knowledge exchange, but should it be the ultimate marker of success? We believe not, and this isn’t some tantrum from the arts cluster – when our reputations are judged on a scale that so commonly works to our disadvantage, our question is a vital battle cry from the group of specialist institutions that, according to Times Higher Education, “performed poorest in the [2024 KEF] results [because of] very low engagement in the research and partnerships and the working with business categories”.

As it stands, unless we earn money from our knowledge exchange, we will largely be unable to represent our valuable work in this year’s HE-Business and Community Interaction (HEBCI) return, the main source of data for the KEF. This will be made especially challenging given discussions around the pausing of data-gathering on the number of people who have engaged with public-facing activity events – such as audiences or listener numbers – and in which we placed in the top 5 per cent nationwide last year.

Yes, we have the KEF dashboard and the narrative statements, where we can enthuse about the ways we use the drive for knowledge exchange to make an impact, but who actually reads these? Instead, we need true recognition and reward for what is world-leading impact.

The HEBCI return is designed to be easily auditable; figures must match institutional annual financial returns. But when the Research and Teaching Excellence Frameworks are rigorous, comprehensive exercises that base reward on a holistic suite of submissions and evidence, why is the KEF so heavily based on income?

Our work has a powerful indirect economic impact. We relieve costs in the NHS, for example, through preventative and complementary interventions. And we lower the cost of crime through interventions that are a catalyst for social cohesion. Moreover, the government has identified the creative industries that we directly support as one of eight growth-driving sectors in its new industrial strategy.

But while large Russell Group institutions might focus their efforts on start-ups and high-profit intellectual property, many of my institution’s most long-running initiatives are student-led, with strong social impact. Examples include composing new music to help people with Parkinson’s disease overcome freezing and making music with hospitalised children to improve their quality of life.

At an institutional level, we’ve also entered into several non-commercial knowledge exchange partnerships. Most recently, this has included my co-design of the Turn It Up: The Power of Music exhibition for the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester, which subsequently moved to the Science Museum in London and attracted almost 147,000 visitors over two years.

Are we avoiding a proper review of KEF because it’s difficult, and the numbers of people outside our institutions impacted by our work are too hard to evidence? This isn’t good enough.

If we see the KEF as being solely about turning research into a sellable product, we miss the opportunity to create wide-reaching transformation in our sector, our graduates and our world. Conservatoires are incubators for student knowledge exchange, for specialist skills and facilities that our communities and businesses benefit from. And we use every opportunity to connect with people outside our four walls.

We must start thinking of knowledge exchange as making an impact that may generate income, rather than the other way around.

Michelle Phillips is head of enterprise (academic) and a senior lecturer in music psychology at the Royal Northern College of Music.