Hello friends, I need help!

As many of you will know I have been working on a PhD research project since 2021. I have been funded by Northumbria University, for which I feel very lucky and am very thankful, but I am at a precarious and critical point where my funding has ended and I still have 7 months full time UNPAID work to do to complete my thesis, plus time for the examination (viva) and potentially corrections before the project is finished and I am Dr Katie. I will subsidise this through part time lecturing but will not receive pay for this work until the end of November.

I have always done my best to use the funding that I have had to put time, energy and money into the wider community, and now I need some support from my community to help me across the finish line. I have been lucky to get to know many people through my work, through my many creative interests and through giving a lot of time to community volunteering, and this is the support I want to draw on now to help me through this, and I am asking you as a community, if you are able to, please send me some financial support. Every penny will be appreciated and please only send something if you genuinely can afford it. If you can’t afford financial support but want to help me then words of encouragement or about how something I have done has helped you would really help me with my motivation to complete this challenge.

What is place-based social design?

Through my research I am creating a new design method called ‘place-based social design’ which draws on 20 years of professional experience and research with other designers working around the world to develop ways of working with communities on social and environmental change. It only becomes more and more important to work on supporting communities to address the many issues that come with environmental crisis. This new approach is advocating for more sensitive and responsible ways of working with people, listening carefully to communities, working with the complex politics of places and helping designers to making more informed and responsible suggestions and interventions. The research is in a very good state and is going well, but due a range of factors including a challenging family life, disabilities that I didn’t know I had, some structural disadvantages and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic I find myself in a vulnerable and precarious position where completion of this important work could be affected by the stress of losing income if I don’t speak up and ask for help now.

I am asking for help because I have no income this month (September 2024) due to the outdated sick leave policy for postgraduate funding at my university. In summer 2022 I had an operation to remove a large lump from my breast, thankfully not cancer, but still a significant surgery that required me to take 6 weeks paid sick leave. The policy is that paid sick leave for sickness over 4 weeks is provided but the duration of the sick leave is then removed from the end of the bursary. This is an unjust policy that I believe unfairly discriminates against mature and disabled students who are more likely to need paid sick leave, but affects all postgraduate students who should not be financially penalised but having significant periods of ill health during their studies. A student at Cambridge wrote about these policies so you can read about some of the issues https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/student-cancer-survivor-urges-funding-bodies-guarantee-phd-candidates-right-sick-leave

I have challenged this policy and written to the Pro-Vice Chancellors for Research and for my subject area, and to the Dean of the Graduate school and they have agreed to review this policy for future students, but they have refused to extend my funding as they said that I had agreed to the terms and conditions of the bursary when I started in 2021. This is a policy that has been changed in many other universities after it was changed by the UK Research Councils (RCUK) in 2019 to provide paid sick leave and to still pay students for the full term of their bursary. In a quick search I found 11 universities that have changed the terms of their own funding schemes to match the new RCUK terms but this does not include Northumbria University, yet.

There are lots of long and complicated reasons why I have funding directly through the university and not through RCUK which I believe boil down to structural inequalities and disadvantages beyond my control. I have been substituting my bursary with paid lecturing, which the terms of the bursary limit to 6 hours per week, but as this is on 0 hour contracts and term time only, I only get paid for that work in November/ December/January then March/April/May. The timing of my funding ending in August means that I have a gap in September and October until I will be paid for teaching work in November. To add further precarity I have not yet had confirmation of my contract for teaching this year, and with the higher education sector in turmoil this is not guaranteed.

I am a strong and resilient person, and am resourceful. I have always worked since I was teenager, but am of a generation that has seen horrendous wage stagnation, high cost of living and therefore no capacity to build up any significant savings that would get me through a difficult patch like this. I live with a wonderful partner who ultimately can keep a roof over my head, but I need some basic income to keep being able to cover my own living costs, traveling for work and study, the cost of ongoing support for various health needs etc. Most importantly I need to practice recognising when I need help and asking for that help, which is difficult! I am much more comfortable giving help and support than asking for it.

Here's a list of some of the work I have done to ‘pay back’ to my community while working on my PhD, all of this is part of the work that informs my research and enables me to develop the skills and knowledge that I will be putting out into the world through my doctorate, and I want you to know that by investing me you are supporting a range of other projects and communities. Over the last three years I have:

- Organised and run seven low cost, highly supportive residential academic writing retreats for women who face barriers to progressing with their (very important) research;

- Many hours of voluntary and community work in York, Newcastle and Leeds;

- Provided free community workshops in York and Newcastle;

- Run multiple community arts projects in York including a garden mosaic and ‘pom-pomming’ Southlands Methodist Church;

- Set up a new community organisation in York for South Bank Studios and Southlands Methodist Church to collaborate on community arts projects;

- Supported the set up and worked as a Volunteer Coordinator for Southlands Community Garden;

- Continued as a volunteer Trustee at Space2 arts and social change charity in Leeds;

- Many hours of volunteer work organising groups for peer support of family and friends affected by alcoholism;

- Undertaken training and gained qualifications in Mental Health First Aid and Understanding Autism to enhance community work skills.

My hope is that lots of people will feel that they have benefitted from my work and will be willing to support me to continue it. I really appreciate any support you are able to offer and thank you for considering this.