Posted by Alfiya Yermukasheva
20 October 2025Written by Ben Parker, Research Fellow, University of Exeter
This short blog post summarises the main findings of the Networking activity carried out at the last Town Hall event (Design Museum, London). These data were collected for reporting purposes and also to help the FFN+ team identify ways to improve future engagement within the network. Key findings suggest that engagements within the network have grown but also highlight an opportunity to better engage non-academic members of the FFN+. The FFN+ team are using these findings to inform future activities and media.
What was done?
On 3 June 2025, attendees of the second Town Hall FFN+ event opted-in to a short in-person activity to map engagement with other event attendees. Participants supplied some basic information to aid in identifying themselves then reported if they engaged with each of the other participants before, since the FFN+, or not at all. Engagements were defined as collaborations, meetings, emails or conversations inclusive of that day and participants also self-identified as “academic”, “industry” or “supporting organisations”.
Data were anonymised and then used to make network diagrams and compare engagement within and between self-identified groups.
What was found?
Of the 41 participants, 29 identified as Academia, 7 as Industry and 5 as from Supporting organisations.
Prior to the FFN+, participants engagements were low with 142 engagements reported (average = 3.5) which increased to a total of 496 engagements (average = 12.1) since the FFN+ (Figure 1).
Figure 1-Network diagrams displaying engagements between the 41 participants before and since the FFN+. Circles represent anonymised participants and are coloured by self-identified stakeholder group: red = academia, green = industry, blue = supporting organisation.
Analyses showed a statistical increase in the number of engagements for participants which remained even after excluding 11 participants “new to the network” who had not engaged with any participants prior to the FFN+. The number of new engagements made was unrelated to the number of engagements before the project which suggests the FFN+ was generally useful in fostering engagements between participants.
Breaking the data down by stakeholder group, participants identifying as academic had a statistically higher number of new engagements than industry with supporting organisations intermediate. Overall, most new engagements were between academia-academia then academia-supporting and academia-industry with fewest industry-industry and industry-supporting organisations. Of the 354 new engagements since the FFN+, 253 were made within groups compared to 101 between different stakeholder groups.
What are the limitations?
The sample size was low and therefore does not reflect the network as a whole or even the event attendees. The participants were biased towards academia especially, likely due to the research-focused format. It is also possible that industry and supporting organisations felt less comfortable opting-in to the activity. There were large variations in the number of engagements and it is likely that participant memory underestimated engagements. The quality and number of engagements was not evaluated and so the data are only for presence/absence of engagement.
What does this mean?
The data are largely positive and demonstrate increased engagements between participants since the FFN+, even after excluding the impacts of the “new to the network” individuals. The number of new engagements was also encouraging and unrelated to the number of engagements before the FFN+ suggesting all participants are engaging with new people within the network.
Less encouragingly, these data also highlight potential soloing within groups with many more new engagements within than between self-identified groups and particularly few engagements with industry participants and supporting organisations, underrepresented in the activity. One participant completed the activity reporting no engagements before or since FFN+. These results demonstrate an opportunity to better engage event participants in future and to increase representation by industry and supporting organisations.
We are very grateful to all those who attended the event and who took part in this activity.
