Our Place

Launched in 2022, the Academy for Sustainable Futures enables the University to make a step-change in its drive towards educating, advocating, and influencing our collective sustainable futures. Responding to the climate crisis, the Academy pushes forward the University’s approach to sustainability, leveraging our wider influence and civic duty.

Our Canterbury campus falls within the outer precinct of St Augustine’s Abbey, part of Canterbury’s UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS) that also includes Canterbury Cathedral and St Martin’s. Its green spaces and the species that live there are nurtured for their own sake, but also provide resources for learning, for community engagement, and for health and wellbeing. 

Green Heritage is an approach to heritage sites that values nature (wild, semi-natural and cultivated environments) and seeks to provide a distinctive place for it that improves both human wellbeing and the health of the planet. Through it, we advocate taking responsibility for present and future generations, for the legacy and remains of the past, as well as for the living world. Green Heritage sites are often located close to or within human settlements, often providing accessible spaces where people can develop a deep ‘sense of place’ incorporating both cultural heritage and the living world. Our Green Heritage Manifesto , developed through conversations with partners including Canterbury BID, Canterbury Cathedral and University of Kent, outlines the key principles we work to and our call to action to government agencies.

Bioversity is our response to the need to nurture the environment in which we work. It involves the stewardship of our green spaces within the Canterbury UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS) which in our case involves part of the outer precinct of St Augustine’s Abbey. The Bioversity Initiative focuses specifically on cultural aspects of biodiversity in relation to the history and heritage of the site, explicitly linked to the fact that it has been a centre of knowledge and community in our city for over fourteen hundred years.

Supported by £28 million of public and industry funding, as well as private donations, the Engineering, Design, Growth & Enterprise (EDGE) Hub was launched in 2020 in response to the skills and innovation shortages faced by businesses and organisations in the South-East. Headquartered at the flagship £65m Verena Holmes STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Medicine) facility, it has distributed centres of excellence across Kent and Medway.

It is also:

• Holder of the South-East - STEM Learning schools network contract (STEM Hub)
• Nominated Women in Science & Engineering (WISE) Hub for the South-East
• Part of the international CDIO (Conceive, Design, Implement & Operate) community
• Primary Engineer’s education partner for the South East.

With a strong focus on recruiting more women and those from disadvantaged backgrounds into STEM and acting as a catalyst for inwards investment, the EDGE Hub has created 52 full-time direct jobs, injected a total of 1,694 highly skilled engineering and technology graduates into the local economy, creating a sustainable and diverse regional talent pool with 40% + of graduates coming from disadvantaged backgrounds since its launch in 2020.

Furthermore, as one of the few universities in the UK to offer the pioneering CDIO international engineering education model, organisations have prospered from fresh and inventive solutions to business problems through access to expertise, specialist technology and equipment, with 420 CDIO projects delivered to date, contributing to the regional research and development.