IRCC x Studio Susegad

During 2023, The Wellcome Trust ran a scheme to provide institutional funding for research culture (IFRC Funding Call). From all of those who applied, twenty four organisations spanning the whole of the UK and Republic of Ireland were selected to join. Their respective projects cover a variety of research culture topics and each have a duration of two years, which have mostly begun in 2024. Wellcome convened a community of practice called Wellcome’s Institutional Research Culture Community (IRCC), which includes all 43 teams that applied to this funding, regardless of the outcome. The needs and aims of member teams are a driving force behind this community of practice.

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The IRCC’s main purposes are:

  • To share learning and insights, and address research culture challenges each institution has identified and is working on, within the community.

  • To drive positive research culture change at a sector level, by providing opportunities for collaboration, mutual support, coordinated action, and open sharing of knowledge and resources beyond the community.

Studio Susegad has been commissioned to hold this community of practice, and to report findings back to the community, to Wellcome, and the wider sector.

Who are Studio Susegad?

Who are Studio Susegad?

Studio Susegad is a creative studio producing innovative, inclusive and rest-centred events, research and strategy.

Roseanna Dias created Studio Susegad after developing strategies of radical care in cultural production for many years. Most of her work centred supporting people of colour, young creatives, and artists and organisations starting out or making changes to how they work.

Studio Susegad was built on years of experience in critical thinking, and curatorial, production, inclusion and engagement expertise. We adapt our approach for a variety of sectors, such as community settings, film and media, activism, tech, and academia.

Our clients include Greenpeace, The Wellcome Trust, University of Oxford, and our past work has involved:

- Planning, delivering and evaluating inclusive workshops and events for organisations
- Designing and carrying out community-led social research
- Co-leading inclusion programmes within institutional and community settings

+ more

Meet the IRCC project team:

  • Roseanna is a mixed British Indian woman with brown eyes and long dark hair. She's smiling and wears an orange jumper.

    Roseanna Dias (she/her)

    Studio Susegad founder / Creative Producer in facilitation of communities of care / Engagement and evaluation specialist

  • Furaha is a Black woman with mixed heritage, with curly black hair to her shoulders, wearing black-rimmed glasses, and slightly smiling at the camera with her head tilted at a slight angle.

    Dr Furaha Asani (she/her)

    Public academic / Scholar in public health equity and social justice / Public engagement specialist

  • Tony is a South Asian man with short brown hair, stubble beard and brown eyes. He wears a black top and smiles brightly at the camera.

    Tony Bjaham (he/him)

    Talent development specialist and cultural producer / Inclusion producer / Responsible innovation action researcher

  • Lexx is a white masculine-presenting person with short hair slicked back and a dangling earring in the right ear. They smile and rest their chin on crossed hands.

    Alexa Ledecky (they/them)

    Accessible Marketing Specialist / Event producer / Embodied Movement Facilitator and DJ

What are the project deliverables?

What are the project deliverables?

Studio Susegad are supporting the IRCC in exploring inclusive research cultures, sharing collective learning, and making impactful changes.

Over the course of 2024-2026, they are rolling out a four-step process with the IRCC and the wider sector:

A Black woman sits on an orange bean bag, a laptop placed on her lap. Her dark hair is tied up and she wears a gold earring. One hand is on the laptop keyboard and the other is balled up and rests on her chin, in a reflective position.

1. Grounding

  • Grounding ourselves. Conducting social research on the process, experience, and impacts of the IRCC.

  • Building context by taking time to build trust and make space to revisit initial research themes and aims which might have shifted.

  • We’ll get to know each other across teams, themes, geographies, and ground ourselves in shared terms of reference. We’ll explore our needs and expectations to co-create a caring community.

2. Shared goals

  • Providing community feedback and evaluation mechanisms.

  • Co-creating evaluation metrics and feedback mechanisms.

  • We’ll use the surfaced desires and shared language to build bespoke ways of understanding what's important to the collective. We'll support meaningful involvement in the IRCC via meetings with us, each other and sharing events.

3. Peer learning

  • Bringing together and presenting collective learning.

  • Sharing collective learning.

  • We’ll share updates and reflections via our quarterly newsletter and ensure there’s a mechanism for you to feed into these. We’ll establish a Multimedia Resource Library and Microsoft Teams folders and groups.

4. Connections

  • Communicating in an open and ongoing way.

  • Developing communication and storytelling.

  • We’ll share timely and engaging reports to help you experiment, work iteratively and secure as much impact as possible, and to inform the wider sector of your explorations.

Check out our reports so far to find out more: IRCC Kick Off launch event report (Summer 2024)

What Is Needed to Nurture Research Culture? (Summer 2025)

Get involved

Get involved

1. Sign up to our IRCC newsletter to find out about key learnings and opportunities around the IRCC:

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2. Get in touch to be added to the community’s online HQ, and connect with fellow IRCC members online at 1PM on every second Wednesday of the month (except July 2025):

3. Consult the IRCC Multimedia Library of resources and click here to add to it.

4. Find other IRCC members using the searchable team directory we’ve compiled, and click here to add your details to the database if you haven’t yet.

5. Join us IRL at events. Click here to find out about what’s coming up.

6. Check out your institution’s Free IceCream connection maps below. or click here for a folder view.

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