2025 has been quite a year for all of us. Thank you for everything you’ve done to make it a good one.

Alongside all the brilliant things you’ve achieved individually, I hope you feel proud of the way we came together to create our new strategy From Manchester for the world.

When we began that work, we started with a simple question: what kind of university do we need to be in 2035?

From there, we listened. And listened. More than 12,000 of you – colleagues, students, alumni, partners – shared your ideas, stories and ambitions for the future.

The answer we arrived at together – the thing that has become our north star – is that we want to be a great civic university for the 21st century, creating knowledge for the public good, locally and globally.

Getting to this point has been energising – from listening and discussion, to developing the ideas, to finding agreement – with plenty of debate and honest challenge along the way. It was a shared effort from start to finish.

Now comes the exciting part. We get to bring it to life.

Today, we’re sharing two of the things that will help us do that.

First, a three-year work package that sets out what we’ll focus on first. Second, a practical handbook that looks at the how, and gives us a shared way of doing things.

The strategy works because we created it together. It will become a reality because we make it real together.

We won’t get everything right straight away. And we shouldn’t expect to.

We’ll reach the answers together as a community – of colleagues, students, alumni and partners.

• To help you get involved, here is the three-year work package and the handbook.

The three-year work package
We can’t do everything at once, so we’ve set out the things we need to get moving on first. We’ve looked ahead to where we want to be in three years’ time. We’ve set some clear priorities for this year. We’ve agreed simple ways to check whether we’re on the right track.

This work package isn’t fixed. It will shift as we learn and as the world changes around us. It gives us a strong starting point and helps us focus on the things you’ve told us matter: working out what comes first, involving the right people, managing our workload sensibly, and paying attention to the order in which things need to happen. And you’ll see more detail as the different initiatives kick off. Some things we’ve already begun. Others haven’t been started yet.

Next year we’ll share more about the different ways to get involved in making all this happen. Please lean in, speak up and keep driving us forward.

The handbook
The handbook explains how we’ll approach making improvements at Manchester – openly, with shared principles and approaches, involving our whole university community. It’s designed to be a practical and usable guide, with people at the heart of our approach.

Looking ahead
Next year we’ll keep working in the same open, collaborative way. We’ll need your ideas and your voice to help us turn this strategy into reality.

The world around us is changing fast – in our city, our country and far beyond – so we need to be more innovative, more engaged and more committed to excellence than ever before.

Our University is full of talent and energy, and we have the chance to make an even bigger difference. We should feel confident about what comes next.

Let’s keep going. Together.

Best wishes, D

• Join the delivery conversation at our next all colleague Townhall on Tuesday 13 January, 10am – 11am.

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