CEO INTERVIEW

Over the next 16 pages we focus on the theme of developing the workforce of tomorrow. Falmouth University certainly has a key role to play in this, so to kick this feature off, we meet the recently appointed vice chancellor and CEO, Professor Emma Hunt.

EmmaHunt

CEO feature and cover photographs by Toby Weller

As we’re talking it’s the summer holidays. Is this quite a quiet time for you?

Not at all. We’re planning for our welcome week for the new students joining us in September; I’ve been doing a lot of work on the strategy refresh, and we’re appointing new board members, and I have just rushed from an interview for one of those. And annual planning for next year takes place now. So yes, it is quite a busy time. And, of course, every day is a new day for me at the moment. Having been here for less than a year, I don’t have that sort of cycle of activities.

Yes, you started in January. How have things gone?

I’ve really enjoyed it; Cornwall is such a welcoming place. It has always been my intention to meet as many people as quickly as possible. And everybody’s just made me so welcome. The whole territory isn’t unfamiliar to me because I was a deputy vice chancellor before, but every institution has its own way of doing things. I’ve come in with a need to refresh our strategy because the world’s changed massively with the pandemic and everything. And then, of course, we’ve got a Government that’s in an ‘interesting state’, I think we had three education ministers in three days!

You were most recently with the Arts University in Bournemouth, so your background is very much on the creative side of things Has it matched your

Help Cornwall expectations over the past few months? become the Largely, yes. I think there county for creative are things that need to be done and that’s not necessarily learning because Falmouth did anything wrong in the past, but because the world has changed. Not just because of the pandemic, but Brexit, the Department for Education and the way in which the current financial crisis is impacting. There are challenges about how we might want to consider moving forward, and how you consider that in a fairly uncertain environment. But that’s also quite liberating in a strange sort of way, it can lead to huge opportunity.

I’ve worked in universities pretty much all of my career now. Going down the classic academic route into universities and then taking the management and executive leadership roles as part of that. But it’s always been in higher education, on the arts side. My interests are in creativity. My background is in design and business.

What attracted you to Falmouth?

I’ve always had my sights on Falmouth. I mean, Falmouth is and was a competitor for Arts University Bournemouth, so you were always looking over your shoulder to see what’s going on over there. I knew a lot of people who either worked at AUB and who had worked here, or vice versa. But there were so many things that attracted me to the role and one was that I’m a West Country girl. I grew up in north Devon in Biddeford. So, north Devon, north Cornwall was my patch when I was growing up. I knew the creative arts side of education well, I knew Falmouth’s reputation well, but my PhD and doctoral work was also in entrepreneurship. So, the way in which Falmouth had developed a lot of that entrepreneurship was really of interest to me and ticked another box. In the end, it was ticking too many boxes for me not to apply!

What are the goals for the year ahead?

There are several things and we’re just about to relaunch our new vision statements. The first one is around cementing our already leading role and really taking that forward and building a reputation around creative technology. That is developing on the brilliant work we do in our Games Academy; the brilliant work that we do in film and photography and also understanding technology and new technologies that will impact on our design courses and on our fine art courses. It’s not that fine art only works with paint brushes and paint, there is a lot of technology in terms of new ways of looking and creating artwork. So, it’s right across the whole curriculum.

The second area, which I think is really interesting and I’ve shared this with quite a few people externally, is around taking a role in how we help Cornwall become the county for creative learning. There’s a big UNESCO programme out there around ‘Cities of Learning’, but this is taking that idea further and that the county becomes this place for creative learning.

Our particular role is in higher education, but can we use our research in creative innovative pedagogies to help support schools, to help support retraining and upskilling. We know some of the challenges in aspiration and attainment lower down the educational levels. Can we help that in some way by being aspirational? Can we help with the understanding that creativity can help attainment in other subjects, not just creative subjects. But it is also about the whole idea about our place as an anchor institution for Cornwall, and the importance of that for Cornwall’s economic productivity going forward. That’s a really key part and something I’m really wedded to.

The third one is around reinforcing the role that we can play around employability. That’s not just our graduates going into jobs, but trying to retain those students to help with productivity locally, getting good jobs, but also being good employees. And that includes entrepreneurship, it includes enterprise, it includes business startups, and building on the success of Launchpad and everything that Launchpad does.

We have a role to play with employability, upskilling and retraining, particularly in the digital creative sectors, which became crucial through the pandemic. How can we maybe help people come back into the workforce by using some of those skills? What role can we play in all of that?

And then the final one is around the role we play in research and innovation, which is obviously key to being a university - teaching, research and knowledge exchange. A recent national assessment classed every single thing we did here in Falmouth as world leading. That is fantastic, but it’s through the lens of creativity that we’ve become world leading in our research. We have to demonstrate the impact of our research through particular case studies. We put in six case studies, every single one of those was world leading, and every single one of those started with research that impacted in Cornwall, but could then be replicated and taken outside of Cornwall.

These vision statements aren’t in isolation. They all interrelate. Our brilliant research, including innovation and research in creative pedagogies feeds into creative learning, which can then create better opportunity and ambition for employability that then feeds into the growing sector around creative technologies. So it’s building on this really fantastic strong position and taking it to the next stage. subjects, but they do branch out into other aspects of the business of creative industries.

We have our formal business school. Lots of arts universities have a business side of things, because it’s around production, it’s around events, it’s around how you become an account manager for those areas. Our sense of it, is it’s just not a pejorative view of art, it actually feeds into the whole production cycle of the creative industries. Other universities will have another mission related to their particular role in their particular region, and I think we play that as well.

We have a particular role around supporting the next generation of employees into the vibrant industries across Cornwall, including Spaceport for example. You might think we don’t do engineering, we don’t do physics, we don’t do space science. But we do a lot through our immersive business lab around AI and AR. We’ve created and designed the content and the visuals to simulate that experience of the plane going up and the satellite being launched, for example. And that’s a creative industry route into the space sector. And I think we’ll do a lot more of that as well as we go forward.

What percentage of students stay in Cornwall after they’ve graduated?

Over 25% of students stay in Cornwall to start their own businesses, which is higher than Oxford and Cambridge, it’s a phenomenal percentage. Now we know there’s a journey that business startups go on. They develop, some fail, some continue, some regroup, merge, and all those sorts of things. But that is where Launchpad is so important. And it’s more than just leisure type startups, or social startups, they are businesses doing real things. And that’s been a big ambition for Cornwall and a really important one. And I think that’s where we can really build on those strengths.

Is it a growing trend across universities where they specialise more in particular areas?

Every university up and down the country differs and has a particular mission as to what it does. There is a group of universities that are more specialists towards the creative

Through the lens of creativity we have become world leading

I assume you must work quite closely then with the business sector in general in Cornwall?

We do and I’ve already met quite a few people. I’ve been invited on to the LEP board and I’m going to chair the creative industries task force. I’ve always worked really strongly with the local business community. I don’t think any university can ignore its business community.

As vice chancellor of the university, you have a huge remit, lots of difference

roles, because you’re running a business as well as an education establishment. it more competitive now than it used to be traditionally?

It’s in the title. My title is vice chancellor and CEO. So yes, the CEO bit is running the business, the vice chancellor bit is really being the lead academic. That’s a crude way of putting it, but that’s sort of how the two roles come together. And to me, it’s an exciting combination. For the CEO part of the role, you really are looking at your corporate responsibilities, your financial, and your HR responsibilities, and that is significantly challenged at the moment with educational policy and with the financial situation of the country. So the two roles are separate, but then they cross over very, very carefully. Some people will talk about students as consumers, some people talk about students as a financial model. I never do that, because they’re students in my mind; they might demonstrate consumer behavior in terms of what they want, and when they want it and there’s quite a lot in that in terms of trying to provide the very best that you can. So, you can see how those things cross over. And we are in a more marketised environment in the university sector in the UK, generally. But I think that’s quite positive in a way, it keeps you on your toes. But I have a great team around me.

How many people work at the university?

About 700. So, we are a very big employer. We are an anchor institution in Cornwall and we take that responsibility really seriously. I think we’re putting about £100 million back into the economy each year, it’s a significant operation.

You spoke about a marketised environment. Is it a competitive process getting the students in the first place? Is

It’s difficult to say because the number of 18-year olds is increasing. Up until 2030, the demographic has shown a huge rise in 18-year olds. So that means in one way the competition is for the quality of that student experience and the quality of the students and what they’re bringing to us and for us to then nurture that creative talent into promising careers. But I suppose it is competitive. We tend to attract students largely from the south, south east and Midlands. We don’t attract so many students from the north.

What’s the main reason students come to Falmouth? Obviously the course, but does location also play into it?

I think Cornwall is really attractive if you have a creative mindset. We talk a lot about the big sky, the heritage of the artistic economies of Newlyn and St Ives. So there’s a lot that attracts because of the environment. The two campuses we run are also very attractive. They’re the only ones I know that have these most beautiful tropical gardens. And then the other thing is because the county is very creative, and the rise in creative and digital industries means there’s a lot of attraction to that. And then when you think about the cutting edge research that our staff do, there’s some real currency there that is also going to be very, very attractive. And the facilities. If you’re a creative student, you want to know about the kit, what you’re going to use, and we have really good resources. And we have space. Not all universities have the same amount of space that we have, which again, is very important when you’re creative. The other thing which is a real bonus for us is you’re going to be rubbing shoulders with your future work colleagues. So, if you’re a fashion designer, you’re rubbing shoulders with textiles, you’re rubbing shoulders with business, you’re rubbing shoulders with photography and film. All of these interrelate in terms of making a piece of creative content. So you’re collaborating with other like-minded disciplines, which you will naturally work with when you are in the workplace.

Help people come back into the workforce

How many students are there now?

We take about 1,700 each year at undergraduate level. We have some online provision as well, so in total we’re close to 6000 students.

And it’s still a growing university, isn’t it?

Yes. And I think that’s good. There are challenges that come with that in all sorts of different ways. But being a really good player and a serious player in the creative education, higher education space, is exactly what Cornwall needs and exactly what we all want it to be.

Going back to the creative economy, its importance is often talked about by the LEP and things like Games Academy are hugely successful. Talking about the workforce of tomorrow, I guess this ticks a lot of boxes?

Creating future skills for the workforce of tomorrow is about bringing the connectivity and the collaboration of all those different skills together. And the Games Academy is a really good example of that, where we’ve got real creative insight.

So you have the game art side of it, the aesthetic side, but you’ve also got to understand the back end of that, which is computer science and the programming and coding. Bringing all those together. Now, you might not end up working in the gaming industry, but those skills could lead to the gamification of training and contribute to the science of businesses generally. Those skills are really in hot demand at the moment. If you’re creating a virtual flythrough, for example, that can be used in the space context, in an architectural context, all sorts of different business contexts. So those skills are needed more than maybe people realise. Those greater skills are often used in other industries, not just the creative industries.

Is the notion of ‘employability’ more important than ever now? Do courses tend to be more vocational?

I think employability is important. And I use the word employability rather than employment because employment always implies that you’re going to be an employee with a company. And we know the world of work is changing. Our students are probably more resilient to career shock, when they might change jobs or need to change jobs, they’ll have a really good portfolio and we know the world of work changes hugely.

So, our students are more able to ride that wave through the employability skills that we give them. And some of those skills are around good problem solving, good critical thinking. We often talk about the ‘T shaped’ student or the T shaped employee. So they have really strong creative, technical skills as a filmmaker, as game designers, fashion designers, but then you’ve got the way in which they can critically solve a problem, the way in which they’ve got the soft skills, team working skills, collaboration skills, and it’s that sort of combination, that T shaped person, that we’re developing, and those are the skills that are needed for the future.

Do you often have these conversations with businesses, about the sort of people that they need to grow?

We do, and I think that’s really important. We have good connections with our industries and the different industries that we serve. And I think that’s where we’re trying to do two things, I think one is trying to anticipate the future need for those industries. And we rely a lot on those industries to help us decide on that. A good example is around converging technologies, particularly in screen-based industries. There’s a lot of convergence of different technologies coming together. We’re anticipating that and taking that into our curriculum. There’s always a little bit of a gap between the student leaving and then being fully fledged in their particular industry, but I think that’s slowly changing. The more we talk to those industries, the more we can actually then adapt.

You’ve been here since the beginning of the year. Has it been a pretty full-on time? Have you had time to step back and relax a bit?

Yes, it has been full on, my feet have hardly touched the ground! And I’m not sure I want them to, because it’s such an interesting place. The more you dig deep, or the more you meet people, the more you realise what an interesting job this is. I’m absolutely rooted in my belief that education is transformational. And I love meeting people, love finding out what’s going on and what’s making everybody tick. And I think that’s why I’m enjoying the role so much at the moment. It is challenging, there are huge challenges ahead as there are in all sorts of businesses. But I’m working with a group of really creative, interested, passionate, loyal,

I’m absolutely connected people. And you know, that’s got to be a big tick! rooted in my belief that education is transformational

When you do have a bit of downtime, how do you like to relax?

I like walking, I like the coastal paths. And like finding all those hidden coves. And I love gardens as well, absolutely. I’m not very good at gardening, but I like sitting in them and exploring gardens! And joining in January meant that I was here right at the beginning of spring, I hadn’t witnessed those massive Bluebell fields like at Enys before. So, that’s been brilliant being there at the beginning of spring and then into summer. That’s a real bonus. And I was at the Minack Theatre the other night. I enjoy going to those sort of performances and events and exhibitions that are on.

And your ambitions over the next five years or so?

It sounds rather boring doesn’t it when we say we’re just going to continue being brilliant and building on the bedrock. But actually, in this moment in time, that’s exactly what’s needed. But it is moving much quicker, much faster in that creative technology space. And then really being a deep, deep anchor for Cornwall. And my passionate belief in that transformational power of education, which I think is good for Cornwall and good for the country.