ID270 The Keele Ideas Festival

The Idea

The core idea is establishing an organic link between summative assessment and public exhibition. Rather than a bolt-on event, participating programmes/Schools reverse-engineer Y2/Y3 curricula so that core summative assessments produce public-facing, exhibition-ready artefacts — digital exhibits, policy briefs, data visualisations, prototypes, performances, community projects. These assessed artefacts percolate from the seminar room to a curated, festival-style civic showcase staged across the Keele campus and Keele-in-Town facilities, attended by students, staff, and regional stakeholders. Each showcase assessment has two components — the public artefact and an accompanying analytical piece (methodological rationale, critical commentary) — so that learning outcomes not evidenced by exhibition are fully covered, as in the arts degree-show model that pairs exhibition with contextual study. 
 
The audience is itself part of the assessment design: non-exhibiting students attend as critical interlocutors, and their structured review of peers’ work forms the final piece of their own programme assessment. Every Y2/Y3 student therefore participates either as a public knowledge producer or as an assessed critical audience — closing the epistemic loop and resolving end-of-year disengagement. 

One assessment design delivers across five fronts at once: education (authentic, research-connected learning and exam-free assessment integrity); skills and employability (portfolios of publicly exhibited work mapped to professional deliverables); university reputation and civic profile (a recurring, Keele-branded festival that draws employers, alumni, schools and regional partners onto campus); recruitment (an immersive Open Day environment); and a permanent digital estate (a curated public gallery that markets Keele year-round).

Why This Idea Should Be Considered

Four reasons. First, assessment integrity: having removed written exams, Keele needs a confident answer to gAI — artefacts produced for a named public audience, exhibited and answered for in person, are among the most robust assessment-security responses available. Second, it uses what Keele already has: the Research Institutes (DSI, ISF, KISI, Global Health, DBC etc) bring ready external audiences, established annual events, and purpose-built facilities like IC7; and the single integrated campus allows a multi-venue festival on our own grounds. Aligned with Open/OH Days, prospective (alongside current) students experience Keele through exhibited student work, which then lives on as a digital gallery across programme and institute webpages. Employers contribute briefs, attend, and give structured feedback; artefacts map to recognisable professional deliverables and are recorded on the HEAR. Third, distinctiveness: no UK institution has routed public exhibition into the summative assessment architecture of a whole curriculum and routed it through its research institutes. Keele can be first. Fourth, research alignment: an Institute-anchored festival strengthens two REF elements directly: evidencing a research-shaped education environment for the new institution-level statement; and generating partnerships, public engagement and beneficiary reach that supply impact case studies with material. 

The outward face of this is a marketing and civic asset in its own right. The festival generates a permanent, curated digital gallery (student work tagged by programme, institute and theme, embedded across course and institute pages and refreshed each cycle) that markets Keele with real graduate output the year round, not a prospectus. In person, it draws employers, alumni, schools and regional partners onto campus into a recurring, Keele-branded civic event: the ‘degree show’ universalised as a standing fixture in the regional calendar. Prospective students meet the University through exhibited work at Open Days; that work then converts, and keeps converting, as a living portfolio for recruitment.

How We Would Implement This Idea

Building outward from the 2025–26 L6 GCP experience: 

Delivery — Institute-Federated Showcase: each Research Institute hosts a themed strand at a time suiting its calendar (e.g. DSI’s Revolution Week), spreading exhibition points across the year and easing marking-calendar collision. This lets programmes without their own industry links borrow the institutes' — DSI's IC7 partners, KISI's community networks — with a general strand for programmes having no institute home. 

Curriculum — Programme Capstone Showcase: participating programmes designate one Y2 and/or Y3 showcase module, the artefact replacing an existing assessment. Programmes or pathways leverage existing external connections and align with the University’s new employability strategy. 

Assessment — How it Works. What is marked is a submitted package - the artefact plus the analytical commentary, marked by the module team under standard anonymised processes. Exhibition is a threshold requirement, not a graded event. Each programme maps its own learning outcomes and evidences through the commentary whatever the exhibition cannot. Exhibition precedes submission of the commentary. Afterwards, students must analyse the reception their work actually met. Audience response is not an input to the mark in any weighted form; what is assessed is the quality of that analysis. Employer and visitor feedback is captured in structured form and returned to students and to programmes. Inclusive participation routes are equivalent by design — in-person, digital gallery or mediated presentation, with an identical marked package on each. 
 
Shared — coordination function, campus and institute venues, inclusion safeguards, early resolution of IP questions. 

What Success Would Look Like

A distinctive Keele signature: national recognition for scaling exam-free, authentic assessment into a pioneering civic festival — the ‘degree show’ universalised and a genuine USP in a structurally homogeneous market.

Recruitment and employability moved to the core of the curriculum: an immersive Open Day environment, a permanent digital showcase, and graduates holding portfolios of publicly exhibited work - trackable through conversion and engagement data. 

The campus/estate earning its keep: festival weeks driving estate, accommodation, and catering utilisation as the calendar empties. Integration of campus with KiT. 

Progress measured through NSS scores, recruitment, conversion and Graduate Outcomes data, continuation and attainment, and stakeholder attendance.