EUTOPIA Inclusion Manifesto

Eutopia MORE pledges to transform its structures, practices and culture to foster openness and inclusion, which it recognises as fundamental to the creation of a socially relevant university alliance, geared towards inclusive excellence.
To this end, its governance will be inclusive and it will build a model of higher education, shaped by five core practices. 

Practice 1: Co-creating the Alliance
Eutopia MORE commits, from the outset and throughout, to co-create its structures, culture and practices with students, staff and external stakeholders who are representative of its communities.

Practice 2: Building Inclusive Mindsets
Eutopia MORE develops policies and practices to educate, engage and empower its community to promote inclusion, respect and dignity.

Practice 3: Designing Inclusive Learning, Working and Research Environments
Eutopia MORE reviews and ensures the inclusiveness of its curricula and research programmes, as well as its research culture, working and educational environments within and beyond the classroom.

Practice 4: Adopting a Process-approach to Change
Eutopia MORE builds in a process for it to systematically identify, reflect on and effectively address existing and arising barriers to inclusive access, participation and representation.

Practice 5: Being Accountable and Transparent 
Eutopia MORE develops governance mechanisms to monitor and report on the effective implementation of the above practices. It is accountable to its community and stakeholders.

This Manifesto was developed in Gothenburg, Sweden on September 29-30th, 2022. It grew out of three years of work in the Workpackage 5 - Promoting Inclusion and Equal Societies of the EUTOPIA 2050 pilot project.
It was developed by Al Mehraj, Cheyma; Beer, Lewis; Borne, Katarina; Celis, Karen; Field, Lisa; Gillo Nilsson, Catherine; Nassar, Fasiha; Sand, Jimmy; Shergill, Kulbir; Sobočan, Ana M.; Videmšek, Petra and Vigmo, Sylvi.

Defining inclusion

The EUTOPIA Alliance embraces the diversity and fluidity of the term ‘inclusion’, which is always situated in a specific time and place. Inclusion can mean different things in different contexts and for different people. It can be defined positively in terms of empowering individuals and groups and enhancing their sense of belonging, or negatively in terms of reducing the factors that exclude individuals and groups based on markers, and their intersections, such as gender identity, ethnicity, race nationality, culture, religion, mental and physical functionalities, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status. Inclusion policies further empowerment and a sense of belonging, and reduce barriers and exclusion. The extent to which inclusion policies reach these goals, defines and measures their success.

Eutopia 2050 - Promoting Inclusion and Equal societies

WP5 included six partners that shared, analysed, and reflected upon their inclusion policies. We agreed on common definitions of inclusion and disadvantage, and explored ways of identifying best practices. Staff in all partner institutions were surveyed to collect best practices inside and outside the curriculum. Twenty-seven students were recruited to participate in the Inclusion Project, a series of co-creative workshops, where students shared their experiences of inclusion and exclusion, proposed new ideas for inclusive practices in EUTOPIA, and suggested substantial revisions to the work of WP5. In the duration of the project, in WP5 we developed an Inclusion Framework presenting the Core Principles, a Roadmap to Inclusive Practice in HE, and Inclusion Case Studies, all published online to accommodate new and expanded versions of all the above outputs, as well as Inclusion Testimonials provided by the students themselves. The final output, the Inclusion Manifesto, distils the key actions required of EUTOPIA in its next phase.