A local community education and heritage organisation with its own research infrastructure
A Manchester-based, community-led organisation whose work attracts researchers from around the world needs a research infrastructure that can meet their needs. We’ve been helping to build it.
Making Education a Priority (MEaP) is a consortium created by and for people in Greater Manchester who have African and African-Caribbean heritage. It provides education programmes that are rooted in cultural traditions, improve lives and give people skills and confidence to regenerate their own urban environments. It supports children and adults of all ages and encourages its teachers, who are all from the community, to develop their teaching practice and build better careers via quality continuing professional development (CPD) opportunities.
MEaP’s training and research institute MaCTRI designs and delivers its own innovative training and research programmes. It also champions the value of community-based approaches to learning – advocating at the highest levels, including within the United Nations. MaCTRI’s director Dr Ornette Clennon has served as an advisor to both the European Commission and the UK Government’s Department for Education. Researchers from across the sector beat a path to MEaP’s door to experience its transformative programmes first-hand.
However, when it became independent from Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) in 2021, the institute lost access to a high-quality research infrastructure, and so Dr Ornette turned to Jisc. MaCTRI began working with our trust and identity consultancy to implement the open source identity management software Shibboleth to support smooth, secure access to its e-library resources.
Partnership
Dr Ornette says:
“I knew Jisc from my time at Oxford Brookes University and MMU, and because they have that deep knowledge of higher education the conversations about what we need are seamless.”
With the scoping conversations done, we worked with MaCTRI on deploying Shibboleth on a dedicated server on institute premises. Day-to-day the institute has a staff member who now manages routine maintenance, updates and patches.
And the institute has opted for a retained expertise package to give extra help when it’s needed. It means we can access their systems remotely and make sure patches are always applied quickly. Retained expertise packages are tailored to each customer’s needs, whether that’s for an occasional extra pair of hands, skills development or an opportunity to sound out ideas with a subject expert.
A university environment in miniature
Currently the e-library is only needed by about ten individuals at any one time, all of whom are working in community placements. They include Master's and PhD students from the Federal University of Amazonas (UFAM) in Manaus, Brazil, where Dr Ornette is a visiting professor. Their placements are sometimes in Greater Manchester but occasionally in London and other UK cities.
The number of users is set to increase, explains Dr Ornette:
“We’re well on the way to becoming a degree-awarding body, starting with three degree courses that we’ve already developed in education, youth and community – and complementary medicine. We’ll be a micro-provider, and then we will have about 170 people relying on the highly specialised, licensed resources in our e-library.
“The work we’re doing with Jisc is important because it has allowed us to create a robust university environment in miniature.”
Get in touch
Want to know more about trust and identity consultancy?
Speak to your relationship manager or email (trustandidentity@jisc.ac.uk) our trust and identity team.