Happy New Year and we hope you have all had a restful break. 2020 is a year we can all agree we can put behind, in the hope that 2021 brings more joy and light.

As we step into the new year, we are looking forward to continuing to serve our community and providing value to researchers. This blog shares five of our intentions and areas of focus for 2021.

We hope to have you on this journey with us and we look forward to collaborating. 

Events and workshops

We will continue to deliver research communication workshops to universities and research organisations. Beyond this, to support those individual researchers looking to develop their skills, we are launching our own schedule of workshops for 2021.

We are currently exploring what the best options would be.

We know we want to create a series of free events focused on research communication workshops, each with a different theme. We are still in the process of deciding what themes and the schedule, but we know that we want these events to provide value as well as an opportunity to network and meet new people, especially in this time of social isolation.

Another idea we are experimenting with is that of putting on our own schedule of paid workshops. So far we have only adopted the model in which the organisation would purchase a workshop and give access to its researchers. However, we want to see whether launching our own series of workshops would be something that the community would be interested in.

Keep your eyes peeled for that and sign up to our newsletter to stay up to date with our events.

Developing V2 of the Guide to Communicating research beyond academia

We are currently developing the second, updated and upgraded version of our bestselling guide to communicating research beyond academia. This will be a comprehensive guide covering more than just visual summaries – such as infographics, videos, policy briefs, animations and more – as well as aspects to do with social media, and communication plans. We are collating a lot of the amazing information we have developed this year and combining it into this amazing resource – coming to you in 2021.

The plan to develop this guide to communicating research beyond academia will most likely also incorporate a research element. We are planning to launch a scoping review or at the very least an assessment of the evidence that already exists on research communication, and the various formats that this can come in. This is set to be a much more comprehensive edition than our current guide, and we hope to offer as much value as possible in this resource.

Strengthening our core team

The end of 2020 saw the onboarding of new team members for research retold. Despite not being able to work in an office together, we found the internal communication tools we had set up very useful. Our main tools for internal comms are Slack and Trello, two brilliant resources for communication and project management. We are delighted to start 2021 with in-house support from our graphic designer Sam Brown and research communicator Phebe Bonilla PhD.

Securing medium to long term collaborations

As we step into our 4th year as a company, we feel ready to commit and serve our clients on a more medium to long term basis. We are in the process of developing some exciting collaborations spanning 3 – 6 months and we hope to be able to become a partner for more organisations in this way in 2021.

The benefits of more long-term partnerships are numerous. First, there is more time to develop ideas in more depth.

Second. They allow us to develop stronger relationships with our clients. Finally, they give us space to experiment with different ideas and be more flexible in our process.

Launching our new brand and website

We are working hard behind the scenes to develop a completely new website and brand for Research Retold – and we are so excited to share this with you in the coming year!

The process to create a website requires a series of iterations and refinement as well as a trusted team to take the brand and the website in a new but familiar direction.

To chart this new territory for us we are relying on support from Sam, our internal graphic designer, as well as the experts from Marketing Optimist, a Leeds-based communications company. The rebrand will include an updated logo, over a black brand, and an updated website. We’ve learned a lot from this process so far and are excited to see what the final product will look like (below you can see a sneaky preview!)

As part of this new direction, we are also planning to share more video content in 2021 across social media channels, with tips and answers to FAQs as well as information about our products and services.

Thank you for reading this post.

We’d love to hear what your intentions are for 2021. We wish you a New Year filled with light and joy.