“We don’t believe you want a genuine partnership”: University work with communities

‘Community engagement’ has been slow to become a legitimate part of the work of Higher Education Institutions in the UK, and the extent to which different universities subscribe to this agenda is variable. This paper will draw on one part of a large five-University project on ‘knowledge transfer’ from Universities to the community around urban regeneration. We will describe of the participative processes of developing collaborative projects. Different stakeholder interests, as well as barriers to effective collaboration will be explored and discussed in terms of a model of organisational resource maximisation. The implications for embedding community work into Universities will be examined