Southern Culture
Did You Know?
Worship
Rochester is England's second oldest cathedral
Action for Communities
Jenny Williams, NIACE Regional Development Officer, writes:
Whether it’s through sport, music, the arts, or libraries and museums, culture
offers a great gateway to lifelong learning.
The Government acknowledges the fact – through its adult learning policies which
include a commitment to supporting personal and community development learning;
and its priorities for culture, for example through the role that libraries are playing
in supporting the Skills for Life strategy. But with increasing pressure on resources
and a growing need to break out of policy and public service silos, how can we
maximise the opportunities to link culture and learning?
Gosport Discovery Centre
Discovery is the name of the game in Gosport. Whether you want to find the latest
blockbuster, dig up information on your ancestors, watch a dance performance, or
learn to surf the net, it's all under one roof at the new ‘Discovery Centre’ in
Gosport.
It’s proving to be a successful concept: combining the best of traditional libraries
with fun, learning and leisure. There are books, art, local history, reference
materials, museum exhibits, film, music and events - something for all ages and
interests. There are special zones for children and young people, plus comfy
seating areas for reading or relaxing. For those who want to study, there are quiet
areas, as well as a full range of library services.
Gateway to opportunities …
In fact, arts and culture based projects are a great way to engage learners.
Participation in cultural activities provides many people with a gateway to develop
skills. And evidence suggests that arts, music and sports projects play a significant
role in building confidence and in developing pride in the place where people live.
They also help to promote healthy, safe and active lifestyles, and contribute to the
development of employability skills.
For example, the library development team offers very popular individual and small
group IT enabling sessions with learners who can then progress to learndirect
programmes or other learning opportunities. Some adult learning courses have been
offered on site by the local community arts centre. This has meant that courses can
be tailor-made to fit a need reasonably quickly and offered locally. New
opportunities are being investigated to offer blended learning – offering some face
to face learning with a facilitator and access to a whole range of online learning.
Engaging with the community
One of the secrets of success has been the importance of informal links with local
organisations and groups which has built up a feeling of the centre belonging to the
local community. This means that groups and individuals ask for what they want
rather than the Centre having to market its programme of activities.
A sub group of the Testbed Community Learning group is looking at supporting
family learning groups in the area and how they can interface with the work of the
Discovery Centre. This is one way of keeping local schools in touch with their
communities. For example a group of families from the Gosport area who took part
in a weekend residential in the New Forest have recently given feedback to local
family learning providers about their learning priorities for the coming year.
The partnerships
The success of the Discovery Centre is built on close working between partners.
The diverse range of opportunities at the Centre could not be offered by one
partner alone. Local people have initial easy access to services they want and a
feast of other ideas and opportunities to explore. There are people who can
signpost and support, and activities can be enriched by links with the neighbouring
arts and museums facilities.
Hampshire County Council Recreation and Heritage Department have worked closely
with a number of organisations on the development of the Centrek, including
Gosport Borough Council, Arts Council England, South East, and learndirect. The
Discovery Centre is an excellent example of what can be achieved when learning
and cultural organisations come together to invest jointly in a community project
and plan complementary activities which open up learning journeys for individuals
and families to discover.
Action for Communities
The Gosport Discovery Centre is a good example of how opportunities can open up
when culture and learning are linked with local community interests and
aspirations. Across the South East region, cultural agencies already offer a wide
range of projects to engage reluctant adult learners. These include sport and arts
projects to support people recovering from mental illness to build confidence, and
video projects and a range of projects which engage older people. The possibilities
for using culture to support learning are endless: the only limit is our imagination!
In the past, however, many of these initiatives have taken place outside the
mainstream structures of post-16 education. Work is now starting in the South East
to develop a model which could bring cultural activities, as well as other learning in
the community, within a framework, in order to make joined-up working easier,
more efficient and more effective.
Action for Communities is an emerging regional and local partnership framework
which aims to maximise opportunities for adults to learn in their communities, and through this learning to support the development of social networks and sustainable
communities where people stay and thrive. A range of impact measures are being
developed within an ‘Every Adult Matters’ framework to reflect wider benefits of
learning in relation to health and wellbeing, feeling safe and confident, and being
part of a community, as well as the contribution learning makes to skills and
employability. It is particularly focused on supporting people with multiple needs
that are not easily met from one type of provision or service provider.
For this reason, the Action for Communities model will encourage collaborative
working both regionally and locally between local networks of statutory and
voluntary and community sector partners. Building on the best of projects like the
Discovery Centre, the idea is that, adults will be supported and helped right from
the stages of outreach and first contact, through the learning experience itself and
onwards to progression opportunities. Providers will also be supported in shaping
their learning offer to ensure it meets learners’ needs.
The aim is to develop an Action for Communities framework that can enable
opportunities for discovery, like those in Gosport, to become more widely available
and place learning and culture at the centre of approaches to securing community
and economic well-being. As a contribution to the development of the Action for
Communities framework Culture South East and NIACE (the National Institute of
Adult Continuing Education) will be working in partnership, over the next few
months, to explore the links between culture and learning in communities in the
South East in more detail to feed into the wider Action for Communities
developments.