Creative City-Regions & the Role of their Creative Universities

Over the last decade the University of Salford has responded to the national and global challenges in quite a unique way.  This reflects the particular academic strength of its staff and the situation in which it found itself in the middle of the late nineties.  This strategy, developed in the light of a changing environment, focuses in particular on its development of Academic Enterprise (Æ) as a means of promoting not only better work with industry and commerce, but also with other stakeholders, such as  those in civil and voluntary organizations, in the community at large, and, not least, those within the University itself.  This keynote paper, given to the Pascal International Observatory Conference in PEC Hungary entitled, 'Life Long Learning in the City-Region' Conference in PECS, focuses its attention on how, through better knowledge sharing and co-creation with business and community partners, universities might become real drivers of creative change in developing socially inclusive projects, which are truly fit for purpose in the global knowledge economy.  In particular, the paper condenses findings relating to the development, and formative evaluation, of over 200 case studies into how universities have succesfully built mutually beneficial relationships with their local businesses and communities, giving them the confidence to develop, for themselves, successful social and community enterprises.