University-community partnership celebrates success at THE Awards 2025
16 December 2025
A Cardiff University community project, set up to foster links and improve civic action in partnership with local people has been recognised for its impact at the Times Higher Education Awards 2025.
The joint submission by Community Gateway, Grange Pavilion CIO and Grange Pavilion Youth Forum was highly commended in the awards’ Outstanding Contribution to the Local Community category.
The team was recognised for its decade-long work to build equitable partnerships in the community of Grangetown, yielding social, cultural and economic benefits to university staff, students and local people along the way.
Professor Mhairi McVicar, Community Gateway Project Lead from the Welsh School of Architecture at Cardiff University, said: “We’re really pleased to have received recognition for the hard work of everyone across our partnership from Times Higher Education.
“In the spirit of our collaboration, our submission was made jointly with Grange Pavilion CIO and Grange Pavilion Youth Forum, and it really celebrated the last decade of transformative partnerships we have fostered collectively in the community of Grangetown.”
I want to thank everyone involved in getting us this far for their help, their support and for challenging us every step of the way too. We’ve come a long way together and I can’t wait to see what the next steps hold for our community-university partnership.
Over the past decade, Community Gateway has brokered, initiated and supported more than 90 projects by prioritising the voices and knowledge of Grangetown residents to take action on what matters to them most.
Among the partnership’s many achievements, their submission to the THE Awards highlighted:
- a thriving and ‘fiercely loved’ community-led facility where local communities and University members can pursue passions and trial social innovations which are being adopted by the third and public sector
- an increase in students’ connectedness to Cardiff’s communities and nurturing students as compassionate citizens
- success in communities influencing University strategy and policy
- increases in challenge-led and coproduced research in local communities
- enhanced community belonging, ownership and civic action in Grangetown
- mobilisation of a movement of young leaders in Grangetown
Professor Wendy Larner, Vice-Chancellor of Cardiff University who joined the team at the awards ceremony, said: “The Community Gateway project captures the imagination of anyone who is fortunate enough to hear about it. I think that’s because of its authenticity.”
Colleagues at the University have earned the trust of local people by continuing to show up, by sticking around and by working together to deliver benefits that work both ways. It’s a real credit to Cardiff University and the communities we serve here in Wales. I’m so glad to see that recognised by THE.
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