What are Sponsored Student Projects at UAL?  

UAL defines a Sponsored Student Project (SSP) as a project where a group of students are invited to respond to a live brief as part of their curriculum-based teaching. Staff – often unit or course leaders – are supported through organising and running SSPs by college Business and Innovation teams.  

How do Sponsored Student Projects work at UAL?  

There are three parties involved in a Sponsored Student Project at UAL – the college, the student or group of students and the external organisation or ‘client’. The client could be anything from a large global corporation to a small creative business. As every SSP is different a lot of work goes into the planning and organisation from due diligence through to reflection and further development.  

What is the aim of Sponsored Student Projects?  

SSPs delivered within the curriculum at each of the colleges are important mechanisms for delivering teaching, enhancing the learning experience and delivering high quality work to the external organisations. SSPs are developed and delivered collaboratively to ensure they are tailored to the needs of our students and the clients. The B&I teams work closely with course teams to ensure that the developed projects are relevant and bring value to all parties. SSPs offer an enhanced learning experience for students and provide benefits to organisations through the creation of new knowledge and innovative concepts, products, services and experiences. On the SSP Canvas page UAL outlines that ‘SSPs provide transformative value for all involved’.  

How are SSPs funded and how are these decisions made?  

The client is charged a project fee for their involvement in the SSP, and this typically ranges from £10,000 to £60,000. This fee is agreed before the proposal is developed once the requirements of the project have been clarified by the client. The project fee should cover base costs and additional costs such as travel, additional tutors, and potential filming costs. At the contracting stage it is also essential to consider what the project deliverables are, how the work might be commercialised by the client, what the client’s marketing plan is and whether IP discussions need to be had.

How is intellectual property managed at UAL within Sponsored Student Projects?  

Whilst studying at UAL students own the intellectual property rights (IPR) in their work and it is essential for UAL to ensure that it is capable of transferring the IPR in the work created for the project to the client. UAL asks students to transfer their IRP for the project to UAL at the beginning of the unit by entering into a Student Agreement. UAL outlines two key methods of managing student IP within SSPs – IRP assignment or IPR license.  

  • IPR assignment = the assignee will permanently acquire ownership of all the IRP contained in the student work. In practice, this means that the client can freely do what they wish with the work.  
  • IPR licensing = the licensee receives permission to temporarily use the IPR in student work for a fixed amount of time. In practice, this means that the client will have restricted usage rights.  

On the UAL Canvas page for SSPs the following is quoted: ‘the legal services team recommends the IPR assignment option which is a faster route in terms of the contractual process and is not as complex as a licensing arrangement’. This sentence forms a key part of my rationale for wanting to explore SSPs as part of my APR as it assumes that student work needs to be assigned due to ease rather than making considerations based on the value of student work.  

How do student IP fees work within Sponsored Student Projects?  

Any student IP fees that might be involved within an SSP are negotiated between UAL (B&I team) and at present the reasoning for this is described as ‘so that students are fairly compensated for the value of their ideas’. The factors that influence this fee decision is based on a number of factors including market rates, clients intended usage (e.g., commercial or not), the volume or work included in each deliverable, how long it took to create and whether students are BA or MA. The SSP guidance available to staff outlines that typical IP assignment fees range from £500 – £5000 although it is mentioned that these are not straightforward to standardise. The key underlying principle is that students must be paid is their IP is being assigned to the client within an SSPs.  

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