Working for more and
different adult learners
different adult learners
The Adult and Community Learning Fund, a fund from the Skills Funding Agency, administered by NIACE in 2011/12, funded 87 adult and community learning projects across England. Summaries of these projects are below. Each has a link to a "Project in a Box" which gives more information about the project. These links are correct at October 2012. If you require further information about any of the projects, please contact the lead organisation named.
Project Title: Learning through our Heritage
Lead Organisation: Nottingham City Museums and Galleries, Nottingham City Council
Region: East Midlands
Project Summary: 60 volunteers from diverse local communities will learn how to re-open and run Nottingham's unique Industrial Museum in Wollaton Park. The Arkwright Society, a voluntary group of heritage enthusiasts, have negotiated with the City Council to take over the closed museum which exhibits collections from Nottingham's important local industries. The IACL fund will enable the volunteers to learn all the necessary skills to ensure the museum can be run as a successful and sustainable venture.
Project Title: Community Roots
Lead Organisation: Shaw Trust
Region: East Midlands
Project Summary: Our Community Roots project will provide vulnerable adults in Chesterfield and Bolsover with vocational training in horticulture. Working in partnership with several local charities, the project will focus on supporting vulnerable adults, including returners from homelessness. The project will offer a clear progression path for participants towards employment, helping them build new skills and overcome barriers whilst making a valuable contribution to their local community. The project will build towards a new sustainable social enterprise.
Project Title: Alone We Survive, Together We Thrive
Lead Organisation: Jobs Education and Training (JET)
Region: East Midlands
Project Summary: "Alone We Survive, Together We Thrive "is a project located in the heart of Derby's most deprived wards. The project focuses on getting local people involved in informal and formal learning, volunteering and mentoring. It helps existing and emerging BAME communities to improve their job prospects, to enrich their social lives and to enhance their confidence through learning new skills and experiences to develop better community harmony and cohesion.
Project Title: Growing Together
Lead Organisation: Southwell Care Project
Region: East Midlands
Project Summary: Southwell Care Project - a community organisation for adults with learning disabilities - and Nottingham Trent University, ARES, Brackenhurst college will pilot a new partnership project to enable adults with learning disabilities to: - Learn about land-based studies including basic horticulture, animal production and welfare, conservation and wildlife issues - Gain personal and social development skills to promote independent living and transferable life-skills Learners will be supported by local community volunteers.
Project Title: Workplace Learning Champions in non unionised workplaces
Lead Organisation: Workbase Training
Region: East Midlands
Project Summary: This project will create Workplace Learning Champions/Employee Learning Advocates in non unionised workplaces. Piloted in Lincolnshire and applied nationally, the project will aim to mirror the success of ULRs in non unionised workplaces. It will set up a national model to stimulate informal learning in non unionised workplaces and create local networks of workplace learning champions supported by a dedicated website. Local communities and workplaces will benefit from a more engaged, cohesive and informed community.
Project Title: LILI: Inspiring Women (Learning into Leadership on the Internet)
Lead Organisation: Workers' Educational Association East Midlands Region
Region: East Midlands
Project Summary: LILI aims to inspire diverse women to become involved in voluntary leadership roles in IACL provider organisations to enable providers to become more responsive to its target communities. It will begin with a series of real world inspirational guest lectures by women leaders, these will also be filmed to form content in the online course; 'Learning Into Leadership on the Internet', which will provide all women with free access to the course online.
Project Title: Move-In4ward
Lead Organisation: South Northants Homes
Region: East Midlands
Project Summary: Move-In4ward is a 7week training programme delivered by local partners to support disadvantaged tenants in temporary accommodation and hostels to maintain their tenancy and equip them with life skills to help them take control of their lives and prevent further risk of homelessness. Neuro linguistic programming techniques will be used to engage and motivate learners. Modules include, managing tenancies, healthy living, money matters, DIY and getting digital for everyday life.
Project Title: BOLD - Better off Learning Directly
Lead Organisation: Leicestershire AIDS Support Services
Region: East Midlands
Project Summary: The project will engage with people who are HIV positive, offering a menu of accredited and non accredited courses in healthy living and well being to manage their condition better. The courses will contain up to 6 hours of guided learning per week, delivered over 6 weeks. The learning will be embedded through theoretical and practical implementation, with Expert Patient self Management Skills, budgeting, remaining an active citizen through volunteering or progressing onto further learning.
Project Title: Fresh Start Project
Lead Organisation: Community Resettlement Support Project
Region: Eastern
Project Summary: Fresh Start Project will recruit and train volunteers to enable them to effectively provide befriending and mentoring support to ex-offenders. Volunteers will provide regular face-to-face support for ex-offenders addressing barriers to accessing learning and employment and financial literacy. Volunteers will undertake 35 hours of learning including skills for working with ex-offenders, reducing barriers to learning and employment and financial literacy. The project will produce learning materials enabling volunteers to support ex-offenders to improve their skills
Project Title: Digital.AGE
Lead Organisation: Digital AGE
Region: Eastern
Project Summary: A digital inclusion project designed to promote democratic action and social cohesion. Underpinned by service learning, it aims to confront issues surrounding the digital divide encountered by the over 65's. It harnesses and builds capacity within a volunteering cohort to meet these aims. . By uniting two disparate populations within a local community, it allows a pathway for the fulfilment of civic responsibilities for two normally disconnected generations and promotes independent living in later life.
Project Title: DCAP: Digital Carnival Arts Project
Lead Organisation: UK Centre for Carnival Arts (UKCCA - Carnival Arts)
Region: Eastern
Project Summary: A unique programme to support 80 young disadvantaged adults (19+) and their families, who have informally experienced the street skills of Carnival (through digital/urban music, dance creation and performance) to engage in learning and establish progression routes. It works at both a personal and community level, using informal learning to move participants towards formal learning opportunities, whilst also developing civic engagement and wider community participation as a catalyst for street based learning/engagement in carnival towns.
Project Title: MoneySmart
Lead Organisation: Bury St Edmunds Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB)
Region: Eastern
Project Summary: Voluntary and public sector partnership to: - Increase money management skills of particularly vulnerable groups - Proactively target individuals most likely to use high cost lenders/expensive utilities etc - Devise methods for assessing ability of individuals' pre/post training - using immediate interactive exercises as opposed to form completion - Empower individuals to access accredited skills from partner through confidence building/raising awareness - Partners learn from each other's expertise in delivery
Project Title: Dyspraxia Dynamo
Lead Organisation: Dyspraxia Foundation
Region: Eastern
Project Summary: A sustainable informal learning project to increase employability and self advocacy skills of adults with dyspraxia in needy areas and to make widely known and available innovative learning resources for employers, health and education professionals who commonly misunderstand this learning disability.
Project Title: Hidden Talents Creative Recycling
Lead Organisation: The Yard Project (Community Interest Company)
Region: Eastern
Project Summary: The aim of the project is to provide informal creative learning opportunities using recycling and making new from old to provide the environment for innovation. The project would work with those most excluded from society and work opportunities to enhance existing skills, gain confidence, develop new practical skills and the skills for employment. The project would support the establishment of four new creative social enterprises which have the potential of becoming sustainable.
Project Title: Sound communities: Action through community-led music-making in Kingston
Lead Organisation: Kingston Adult Education
Region: London
Project Summary: The project will empower and enable deprived communities in Kingston to improve their lives through active engagement in, and leadership of musical activities in their neighbourhood. Music professionals with local support organisations will deliver music-making opportunities in community settings engaging marginalised adults, and training local volunteers to sustain and take responsibility for the groups. The project will encourage informal education in the community, enabling residents to learn from each other and support their children's development.
Project Title: Lambeth Green and Sustainable Communities Project
Lead Organisation: Employment, Learning and Skills, LB Lambeth
Region: London
Project Summary: This project aims to empower local people to gain a better understanding of environmental issues which impact on the community and what residents can do to reduce the impact. The project seeks to give learners a better understanding of green issues, practical learning to improve energy efficiency in the home, the importance of recycling, working together as a community, and the fundamentals of growing and preparing their own food.
Project Title: Healthy Food Volunteers
Lead Organisation: Poplar HARCA
Region: London
Project Summary: Volunteers, supported by staff, will deliver healthy eating shared meals and other activities with local mums. All participants will "learn by doing", planning, preparing and eating shared meals with their peers at our community centres, and participate with their children in shared learning activities. Learning includes Food Safety, healthy eating, basic budgeting and organising events. Numerous progression opportunities at our community centres and with partners include learning, structured volunteering and employability support / opportunities.
Project Title: Growing London
Lead Organisation: London Civic Forum
Region: London
Project Summary: Growing London will enable 60 disadvantaged Londoners to develop the confidence, skills and knowledge to lead positive change in their communities and across London. In five neighbourhoods, local people will learn through participation in a container food growing project, building motivation and ability to effect positive change. Alongside this, they will participate in active citizenship learning sets and visits to central London, supporting them to engage in civic life in their neighbourhood, borough and London-wide.
Project Title: Signing Art: informal learning for adult British Sign Language users
Lead Organisation: Tate Gallery
Region: London
Project Summary: 'Signing Art' will be an informal learning programme for adult British Sign Language users wishing to become presenters within cultural institutions. Tate will create a new programme of monthly BSL events at Tate Britain, which will provide a platform for 'Signing Art' learners to showcase their skills and facilitate access to art and heritage for the wider Deaf community. The project will be an innovative model of best practise that will be shared and replicated.
Project Title: The Digby Estate 'bring and share' learning community
Lead Organisation: Quaker Social Action
Region: London
Project Summary: Working through an established community development model on the Digby Estate in Tower Hamlets, QSA will facilitate a learning community shaped by participants' needs and interests. The project will build on work done to increase engagement, confidence and cohesion among hard-to-reach estate residents. A menu of relevant, informal learning sessions will cover themes of financial literacy, community involvement and digital inclusion. Trained facilitators and volunteers will support residents in onward progression to other learning provision.
Project Title: WELL Windmill Estate Learning Leaders
Lead Organisation: Catalyst Gateway
Region: London
Project Summary: WELL brings together partners who will reach out and inspire disadvantaged and hard to reach residents of the Windmill Housing Estate, an urban housing estate in Southall, London, to get involved in informal learning activities and groups. Activities will focus around the Windmill Community Centre, which is in the centre of the estate. WELL will also capacity build a group of residents, giving them training, support and confidence to ensure the groups continue and flourish.
Project Title: Online for Better Lives
Lead Organisation: NOVA new opportunities
Region: London
Project Summary: This digital inclusion project unites three community organisations, the local authority and a social enterprise to work collaboratively for the first time to bring digital learning to two of the most marginalised communities North Kensington - people from the Traveller community and Moroccan women. The project builds on the substantial experience of partners, with a flexible participant-led curriculum to maximise engagement and create strong pathways to wider community involvement, volunteering and formal learning.
Project Title: Celebrating 2012 - Enhancing the Fabric of Community
Lead Organisation: St. Barnabas church
Region: London
Project Summary: Local community groups will contribute to celebrations around the 2012 Olympics with textiles and paintings created in workshops run by a professional artist, experienced community textile tutors, local volunteer assistants, and an outreach worker linking across Newham and with people unable to access classes. Training support from Morley College. A website will be constructed as a publicity and teaching tool. Work will be exhibited locally and in central London, and project merchandise marketed.
Project Title: Kick Start Your Life
Lead Organisation: Adult Education College Bexley
Region: London
Project Summary: The Project is aimed at attracting disaffected and disengaged adults, families and communities from the more hard to reach areas of the borough into a broad spectrum of activities and interest that are designed to engender and encourage more sustained levels of commitment and learning. Using a sport and physical activity / healthy living theme initially, the project will then provide a range of relevant progression opportunities including education, training, volunteering and employment opportunities.
Project Title: Create It
Lead Organisation: Mind in Tower Hamlets and Newham (MITHN)
Region: London
Project Summary: Create It offers a combination of key skills training within a range of creative courses for those with mental health needs residing in Tower Hamlets and Newham. The courses will include Woodwork skills, Creative Writing, IT, Sewing Skills, Soft furnishing, and Creative Recycling; delivered four evenings per week at MITHN's evening services. Initially supported by sessional workers the project will train volunteers to deliver the creative courses and support clients.
Project Title: Southwark Park Community Learning Centre
Lead Organisation: Groundwork London
Region: London
Project Summary: Southwark Park Nursery Community Learning Centre will provide informal learning and volunteering opportunities linked to the revitalisation of an underused area of Southwark Park. The project is a partnership between Groundwork London, the London Borough of Southwark and Contact a Family (charity providing advice and support to the parents of all disabled children) and will provide community food growing, family learning activities, environmental skills training, horticultural volunteering and actions to enhance biodiversity.
Project Title: Sewing for Education and Work - SEW
Lead Organisation: Esqua
Region: London
Project Summary: Based on the Broadwater Farm estate in Tottenham, SEW will engage residents from excluded backgrounds and train them in the skills of sewing including: machining, cutting, making, designing, textiles, retail, photography, modelling, PR and fund-raising. This soft engagement, training and mentoring will be linked to Haringey's employment programme, The Haringey Guarantee. The project aims to engage marginalised residents, build skills, have a good reason to use English, and raise aspirations and opportunities to find work.
Project Title: All Together Now
Lead Organisation: Mary Ward Centre
Region: London
Project Summary: Learning opportunities including arts, health, IT and volunteer training will be provided for students from under-represented groups or experiencing barriers to learning. Learners will be engaged by working in partnership with voluntary & community sector organisations. At the centre of the project will be a celebration event which will bring the groups together, showcase the achievements of students, and promote the opportunities for and benefits of informal adult learning within the community.
Project Title: Take 5
Lead Organisation: Limehouse Project
Region: London
Project Summary: Utilising the skills of 25 existing voluntary Community Learning Champions, "Take 5" will deliver a structured informal arts appreciation programme consisting of 5 learning activity clubs for women stemming from financially excluded communities, with a view to equipping them with the skills and confidence they need to progress to formal learning programmes. 10 learners will be nominated "Community Ambassadors" and trained to continue running each activity club, beyond the lifetime of the funded project.
Project Title: Newham Parents - GI (Get Involved)
Lead Organisation: East London Skills for Life
Region: London
Project Summary: This project aims to empower a diverse range of disengaged parent-carers living in Stratford, Newham, by involving them with their local children's centre. Through the variety of support activities it provides, they will be able to communicate more effectively with their children and others, have a greater awareness of what the community has to offer them, develop their confidence, basic and personal skills to achieve and progress on to further learning or job opportunities.
Project Title: Family Learning through Football
Lead Organisation: SAFC Foundation
Region: North East
Project Summary: Little Dribblers Family Learning is innovative, exciting and fun giving families the opportunity to learn together, improve their own skills and introduce health advice at any early stage within the family consequently helping the most disadvantaged parents regenerate their own lives and communities. It encourages and empowers parents to develop a deeper understanding of how to extend their children's learning and promotes benefits of family involvement whilst challenging attitudes and behaviours in a safe environment.
Project Title: Women's Health Volunteers - Sharing Good Practice
Lead Organisation: Workers' Educational Association - North East Region
Region: North East
Project Summary: Four Award-winning Women's Health voluntary sector organisations in disadvantaged communities in the North East are beginning to work together. They want to build on their links with each other and the WEA to share their expertise in specialist health volunteer activities by developing a learning forum and shared training programme for volunteers. Volunteers will learn new skills and contribute to Big Society by raising health awareness and improve take up of services in their communities.
Project Title: Silver Lining
Lead Organisation: The Sage Gateshead
Region: North East
Project Summary: Silver Lining is an enjoyable, accessible and confidence building music project supporting the health and well being of volunteers over the age of 50, care home residents and their carers. Professional musicians and volunteers from The Sage Gateshead teach carers new skills enabling them to enjoy well known songs with care home residents who have dementia.
Project Title: Weardale Community Play project
Lead Organisation: Jack Drum Arts
Region: North East
Project Summary: A community history and heritage project offering a variety of arts and media activities as a means to explore the legacy of lead-mining in the Dale leading up to the creation of a large-scale community play. The project will provide opportunities for all kinds of adult learners to try new things and develop transferable skills whilst contributing to a cohesive collective celebratory initiative under the tutelage of professional arts practitioners and community historians.
Project Title: Learning for Living
Lead Organisation: Endeavour Housing Association
Region: North East
Project Summary: We wish to deliver a series of information and training to people who have experienced homelessness which will help develop skills in managing a tenancy, gaining an understanding of the responsibilities of being part of the wider community and how caring from themselves helps develop confidence and self esteem. We also wish to encourage involvement in volunteering as a route to employment and identify skills and abilities needed to gain employment.
Project Title: Partners in Education for Empowerment and Social Inclusion (PEESI) Project
Lead Organisation: developing partners cic
Region: North East
Project Summary: Working together with people who experience social exclusion to deliver experiential learning we will facilitate diverse learners in an empowerment process in order to make positive changes in their life, their relationships, their organisations and their communities that will ultimately increase their social inclusion, integration and participation and their level of satisfaction with their life, their health and well being, their organisations, their voluntary or paid employment and the communities in which they reside.
Project Title: A Taste for Learning
Lead Organisation: New Era Enterprises (E. Lancs) Ltd
Region: North West
Project Summary: The overarching aim of A Taste for Learning is to open adults to learning and its benefits. The project offers adults the opportunity to take a flexible programme of "taster" workshops giving them an introduction to learning in different subject areas. Four short courses will then be offered in the most popular subject areas identified above. Participants will have an individual learning plan documenting how they can continue learning, volunteering or moving towards employment opportunities.
Project Title: Rossendale Community Net TV
Lead Organisation: CAR Video Unit
Region: North West
Project Summary: An accessible video production training project giving rise to video content of local interest. A net TV channel - www.rossendaletv.co.uk will be developed alongside this to serve both as a showcase for the work produced and as a means of generating sufficient local advertising revenue for the training to become self-sustainable. If successful, it will provide a model which could be replicated nationwide.
Project Title: COSCade
Lead Organisation: Workers Educational Association
Region: North West
Project Summary: A project run by members of COSC (an activity centre for people with physical disabilities in West Cumbria) offering support, advice and information to others wanting to access learning opportunities and activities in the area.
Project Title: Neighbourhood Action Program
Lead Organisation: Blackpool Wyre and Fylde Council for Voluntary Service
Region: North West
Project Summary: The Neighbourhood Action Program trains and supports Blackpool Residents to work independently of any statutory bodies to involve their neighbours in realising and building upon the assets and opportunities for improvement in the areas in which they live. In line with the Big Society Agenda the project aims to guide, empower and support neighbourhoods to effect change at street level.
Project Title: LGB&T Academy: Building skills for lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people
Lead Organisation: The Lesbian & Gay Foundation
Region: North West
Project Summary: Our project will provide informal learning opportunities to lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGB&T) people through a series of 24 varied learning session. Topics will range from radio skills (such as producing and presenting) to interest based activities such as DIY, photography and healthy cooking sessions. Our project aims to increase the skill and confidence levels of LGB&T people, with the intent to re-engage them in positive learning experiences.
Project Title: Litherland Partnership for Learning Activities & Community Education PLACE
Lead Organisation: Sefton Metropolitan Borough Council
Region: North West
Project Summary: PLACE will work on new multi tenure estates in an area which is in the top 20% of indices of deprivation in Litherland. This is a new community with no community infrastructure, collective organising or community spirit. The project aims to bring residents together to support the development of community learning opportunities to build the capacity of local people to take active roles within their own community, building social capital and promoting community cohesion.
Project Title: Peripheral Vision
Lead Organisation: Workers' Educational Association, North West
Region: North West
Project Summary: Peripheral Vision is a project aimed at those on the edge of society. Through the innovative use of new digital media and visits to cultural venues in Manchester, learners will determine the content of their creative film, art and photography courses and the ways in which the outcomes will be displayed. Culminating in a film festival, and a book launch, this project will encourage those on the periphery to challenge other's visions of society today.
Project Title: Our City. Our Community. Our Club. Passing it on - learning from each other
Lead Organisation: Chester Football Club
Region: North West
Project Summary: Chester Football Club is community-owned. The project will utilise its unique 'community reach' to draw members, supporters and wider community into action-focused learning environments designed to build volunteer capacity. This informal learning will enable participants to play an ongoing role with Club and wider community. We will become a learning hub for the whole community, particularly those often least likely to participate in traditional learning. We will share learning with other Clubs, organisations and government.
Project Title: Stars and Stuff
Lead Organisation: Beauty In The Universe
Region: North West
Project Summary: Stargazing, Rocket Building and Magnetix introduce adults and community learners to Astronomy and Science in a fun, accessible way. Delivered in community venues over 6 months these 3 taught time sessions will spark interest, culminating in weekend practical challenges. Head Space climaxes with a huge event bringing everyone together at ScienceFest. Trips to Alston Observatory and introductions to further Astronomy at UCLAN will run concurrently. Participants volunteer 1 hour and 1 weekend's time in return.
Project Title: Open Doors Project
Lead Organisation: Wirral Metropolitan College
Region: North West
Project Summary: The project aims to deliver a personalised experience course of learning for particular categories of offenders due to be released from their sentence, or on community service. The project will offer an exciting menu of IACL opportunities in order to ease their transition and resettlement into formal training and employment. In order to facilitate this programme a model of good practice for protocol, information sharing and risk assessment, will be established between the partners.
Project Title: Eighteen Adventures
Lead Organisation: InnerSense
Region: South East
Project Summary: A programme of multisensory workshops of dance, music, and drama for around 100 people with complex needs. Each week participants enter a different theatrical environment, filled with sensory resources designed to help them discover new ways of communicating and explore teamwork and creativity. Support workers will receive hands-on arts & disability training to develop their own community creative projects and learn more about their clients' artistic needs and aspirations.
Project Title: The Insiders' Guide to journeys for learning and living
Lead Organisation: Amaze Brighton
Region: South East
Project Summary: Working with 72 parent carers, 3 local authorities, we will:- • kick start pathways to further learning by piloting pre/post course materials around a parent training and support course called Insiders' Guide • enable parents to explore and practise new skills, lead fuller lives and raise a disabled child more resiliently, • consolidate learning of newly trained parent co-facilitators, • extend understanding of lived outcomes for family and community using SROI tools and standardised scales.
Project Title: Dementia care learning groups for rural communities
Lead Organisation: Oxfordshire Adult Learning
Region: South East
Project Summary: This project investigates how learning can help rural communities to address social needs. The project establishes sustainable community learning groups in rural areas of Oxfordshire to learn about dementia care and develop practical ways to support members living with dementia and their care partners. It promotes community empowerment, self-reliance and partnership working between local people, education and other service providers.
Project Title: Learn With Confidence
Lead Organisation: Isle of Wight Council - Adult and Community Learning
Region: South East
Project Summary: 'Big Society' will be central to the provision of IACL on the Island. This Project will train and support a network of 100 community learning champions who will represent their communities, identify need, organise and promote learning activities through learning fairs and reach over 1000 learners. Champions will influence and shape provision on the Island through the IW Adult Learning Network. Network members will co-ordinate and broker a responsive and efficient learning offer.
Project Title: The Valley Shift in Alver Valley (AV)
Lead Organisation: Groundwork Solent Limited
Region: South East
Project Summary: Engage the community across the generations to learn about and enjoy their surroundings, improving their quality of life and quality of environment. They will learn new skills and be more independent, while developing a better understanding of their families and their community.
Project Title: Pass It On
Lead Organisation: Angel Radio Limited
Region: South East
Project Summary: Our community broadcasting project will target vulnerable and hard-to-reach elderly people to reduce social isolation, improve health and independence. Angel Radio, the award winning radio station for the over 60's will be working with two Local Authority Adult Learning Services to support listeners to become volunteers. Using digital technology volunteers will share on -air and on-line their interests, debates and skills across West Sussex, Portsmouth and Hampshire.
Project Title: MacIntyre Wellbeing Project
Lead Organisation: MacIntyre Care (trading as MacIntyre)
Region: South East
Project Summary: MacIntyre's Wellbeing Project will develop materials co-produced with people with a learning disability to support other people with disabilities to understand, explore and learn about well-being and how it can be measured and positively promoted. Working with a specialist organisation, the project will produce transferable learning materials that can be accessed by people with disabilities including those who do not use speech to communicate.
Project Title: CAMEO - Come and Meet Each Other
Lead Organisation: Voluntary Action Within Kent
Region: South East
Project Summary: This project provides a dynamic and innovative 12-week programme to address the practical needs of those who have become isolated due to the death, divorce or separation of a partner. CAMEO aims to make a difference to isolated individuals by providing them with the practical skills to carry out tasks that may previously have been performed by their partners thus increasing their levels of confidence and self-esteem
Project Title: The Move Up Project
Lead Organisation: The Rising Sun Arts Centre
Region: South East
Project Summary: People with learning disabilities will create and manage a programme of informal learning activities designed to meet the needs of others with learning disabilities. A core group of people with learning disabilities with a proven track record in community development and project management will undergo training and be supported to create a dynamic learning environment in a mainstream venue. The project will deliver a range of creative activities to disadvantaged adults.
Project Title: Open to Non-residents - Learning in Adult Social Care Dorset
Lead Organisation: East Dorset District Council - Partners in Care
Region: South West
Project Summary: Encouraging the development of a sustainable culture of learning in care settings, this project engages and trains care staff and volunteers to promote and support meaningful learning activities. Following training, staff and volunteers will support informal "taster" sessions and more formal progression courses, delivered by qualified tutors. The courses will be open to residents, their families and carers, delivered in a cluster of residential settings for older people and adults with learning disabilities in Dorset.
Project Title: Empowering Local Communities
Lead Organisation: City of Bristol College
Region: South West
Project Summary: 'Empowering Local Communities' will enable Bristol's 14 Neighbourhood Partnerships to become better able, and more effective, when engaging with civic decision making. The project will ensure that individuals in these groups have the skills they require to undertake this work (including managing meetings, priorities, actions and peer support), as well as providing future sustainability of the project beyond the lifetime of the funding by providing a 'Train the Trainer' element.
Project Title: Devizes Stories - A digital story telling project for Devizes
Lead Organisation: Wiltshire College
Region: South West
Project Summary: Devizes Stories is an experiential learning activity using digital storytelling to connect the personal to the public. A small town on the edge of the plain, Devizes was once a trading point connecting with the world. Today everyone in Devizes has a story to tell that connects them to the town but often not to each other or beyond their community. This innovative Wiltshire College-led project will help build community cohesion and develop participant's employability.
Project Title: Preparing for SUsie!
Lead Organisation: Victim Support in Cornwall
Region: South West
Project Summary: Preparing for SUsie! aims to support women affected by domestic violence/abuse to take the first small steps on their journey to recovery and a new life. Through supportive peer mentoring from women who have already moved on and informal learning opportunities we help them prepare to join the SUsie Project which, with its more structured and formalised approach to learning, will assist them in achieving their longer term aspirations.
Project Title: Soundskills The Music Maker
Lead Organisation: Plymouth Music Zone
Region: South West
Project Summary: Soundskills The Music Maker is an innovative music programme aimed at disabled adults, adults experiencing mental health issues and adults deemed as NEETs. It enables Plymouth Music Zone to extend its work to respond to the unmet needs of vulnerable adults who find it difficult to access and engage with music education and to address an identified gap in progression from non-formal to formal education opportunities for those individuals.
Project Title: New Leaf Allotment
Lead Organisation: BCHA
Region: South West
Project Summary: The New Leaf Allotment is a 1.2 acre site in Throop, Bournemouth, focussed on engaging local families, community groups and schools in horticultural activities. New Leaf has a range of volunteering and educational opportunities, from our 30 tree orchard to our numerous vegetable plots and polytunnels. The produce cultivated by our learners and volunteers includes a range of healthy fruit and vegetables and is returned to the plates of our local community!
Project Title: Bristol Gets Energy
Lead Organisation: Centre for Sustainable Energy
Region: South West
Project Summary: Bristol Gets Energy is a Bristol-based adult learning and volunteering project run by the Centre for Sustainable Energy. Learners explore how home energy use can become more sustainable to tackle climate change and help people respond to rising fuel costs. The course links learning with practical skills and opportunities to put learning into practice through a wider supported volunteering programme - enabling learners to help their friends, families and neighbours to save energy at home.
Project Title: Volunteer Scilly
Lead Organisation: Council of the Isles of Scilly
Region: South West
Project Summary: The Volunteer Scilly project is about islanders joining together to create new ways of harnessing and sharing the talents of Scilly islanders for the benefit of the wider community and in doing so building the volunteer base, networks and learning culture needed to support the Council of the Isles of Scilly 'Big Society'.
Project Title: Skills-Swaps
Lead Organisation: Eat That Frog C.I.C.
Region: South West
Project Summary: Bringing the community together to share existing skills and build safer, stronger communities. Skills-Swaps will connect with people, helping them identify the skills they have, and how these can be shared with others. People will be supported to provide learning opportunities to others and to take part in learning provided by others. In many instances Skills-Swaps will bring people together who would never normally meet, working intergenerationally, across genders, disabilities and valuing different cultures.
Project Title: Learning for Growth
Lead Organisation: The Magdalen Project
Region: South West
Project Summary: The project provides the opportunity for intensive learning on starting and improving a smallholding or becoming self sufficient in food. The project will deliver weekend-long training (15 guided learning hours followed by evening sessions to consolidate learning), in all aspects of establishing a smallholding, in managing it sustainably using organic methods, and in enabling families to become self sufficient. In addition, it will provide a vegan option focusing exclusively on fruit and vegetables.
Project Title: What makes a good place?
Lead Organisation: MADE (Midlands Architecture and the Designed Environment)
Region: West Midlands
Project Summary: Through practical, fun and participative learning sessions, residents will gain the confidence, skills and language to influence the design of their local neighbourhoods, working alongside architects and planners. 8 half-day sessions and 1 'day school' will include site visits and practical sessions, using photography, CAD, model-making and digital media, to learn what makes a good place.
Project Title: Crisis Skylight Birmingham Adult Learning Engagement Project
Lead Organisation: Crisis Skylight Birmingham
Region: West Midlands
Project Summary: Crisis Skylight Birmingham's Adult Learning Engagement Project will engage single homeless adults with meaningful learning activities. Learners will be offered the opportunity to gain qualifications (NOCN / OCR) in a wide range of subject areas that will make positive and direct impacts on their journey towards independence. The main focus of the project will be using our one to one Smart Skills Step Up programme.
Project Title: Individuals, carers and personal assistants learning together
Lead Organisation: time 4 people
Region: West Midlands
Project Summary: To provide information and training to both users of social care support and prospective personal assistants. For people to have choice about spending their funding in different ways as embodied by 'Personalisation'. To provide a group of trained personal assistants who have knowledge and skills in working for individuals who use self directed support. To involve Voluntary Sector Organisations in making this happen. To build in ongoing support for sustainability.
Project Title: Health Maintenance for Men
Lead Organisation: Workers' Educational Association (WEA), West Midlands Region
Region: West Midlands
Project Summary: The project will engage predominantly Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) working men in Stoke-on-Trent in health literacy, education and fitness activities to address health problems for improved health and wellbeing. The project will promote sustainable lifestyle changes through a tailored, practical and culturally appropriate health education and exercise programme that can fit around a busy lifestyle and impact others through wider social networks.
Project Title: Working Well - a learning journey
Lead Organisation: Community First
Region: West Midlands
Project Summary: This project uses the workplace setting as a supportive learning environment to help people understand and manage mental health issues. Using the workplace is a good way to reach people without the skills or confidence to take advantage of learning opportunities. They will be supported to take an innovative and exciting 'learning journey', moving from informal to more formal learning, which encourages positive mental health and promotes learning as the key to improving health.
Project Title: My Community
Lead Organisation: Stoke-on-Trent City Council
Region: West Midlands
Project Summary: This project uses community arts as a way of engaging people in informal learning. The project will engage with 375 people in Phase I to learn skills in ceramics and digital photography, producing community art works and a digital image bank. Phase II will take 55 learners into to more formal learning with the aim of forming a sustainable Social Enterprise and a Community Film Production Company that will be supported in the long term.
Project Title: Learning for Health
Lead Organisation: SIFA Fireside
Region: West Midlands
Project Summary: Learning for Health: a comprehensive programme of health learning opportunities adapted to the needs of homeless people facing significant barriers to learning including poor health; previous school exclusion/lack of qualifications; and chaotic lifestyles eg problems with substance misuse or offending backgrounds. It demonstrates best practice in engaging service users in learning through on-site health clinics; a football league; cooking/eating healthily on a budget, and supporting progression via literacy, ESOL and IT.
Project Title: INSPIRED
Lead Organisation: Birmingham Adult Education Service
Region: West Midlands
Project Summary: Introducing New Skills, Providing Information & Resources for Education, Employability/Development." A unique service whereby learning mentors offer specialised information, advice and guidance to hospital patients affected by acute And chronic conditions. Training will be identified and delivered in order to bridge education, employability and life skills gaps
Project Title: Communities ARC - Action, Reflection and Change
Lead Organisation: Federation for Community Development Learning (FCDL)
Region: Yorkshire and the Humber
Project Summary: This is a partnership project between Federation for Community Development Learning, Maan Somali Mental Health Sheffield, Manchester Refugee Support Network, Sunderland Black and Minority Ethnic Network, and Northern College. It will involve community members in exploring links between community development learning and community action and participatory citizenship; increase understanding and capacity for taking action around social and environmental justice, individual and community well-being, and celebrate the strengths and cultural wealth within diverse and marginalised communities.
Project Title: Encore! A family-friendly way to find out more about classical music
Lead Organisation: Music in the Round
Region: Yorkshire and the Humber
Project Summary: Encore! will engage learners and their families in a programme of informal, classical concerts, community-based talks, films and workshops, complemented by online resources. Linking to Sheffield City Council's family learning and volunteer training programmes as well as formal courses at Red Tape Studios, participants will be encouraged to progress to courses at Open College of the Arts, and Sheffield University's Institute for Lifelong Learning as well as continued engagement with our programmes.
Project Title: Building financial capability in Doncaster's deprived communities.
Lead Organisation: Doncaster West Development Trust
Region: Yorkshire and the Humber
Project Summary: Our project will engage and recruit tenants from Doncaster's largest social housing provider, St Leger Homes, on to a new training programme. Our programme of workshops will include training to help tenants build their financial capability and improve their health & well-being. The programme will be delivered in partnership with DMBC's Adult, Family and Community Learning team and will be used to aid progression on to further learning.
Project Title: Community Law Education Project
Lead Organisation: Hull Community Legal Advice Centre
Region: Yorkshire and the Humber
Project Summary: The project will establish a programme of learning opportunities all of which will fit within the theme of community law. This programme will cover a broad range of civil legal matters that citizens must contend with but rarely understand. The programme of learning will teach communities about legal rights and responsibilities in an increasingly complex and changing society.
Project Title: Perfect Harmony
Lead Organisation: Bilton Grange Community Association
Region: Yorkshire and the Humber
Project Summary: Perfect Harmony will enable people with learning disabilities to achieve high quality musical performances and recordings using traditional and self-constructed instruments. These recordings will be sold in the community on CD, developing enterprise skills. For some, it will provide a bridge into formal learning; for others it will improve quality of life, communication skills and self confidence. The project will offer all participants a voice in the development of further community learning.
Project Title: TWP Learning to Mentor
Lead Organisation: Together Women Project Yorkshire & Humberside (TWP)
Region: Yorkshire and the Humber
Project Summary: TWP Learning to Mentor is a training programme designed to equip women who have met the challenges of leaving behind an offending lifestyle to help other women to do the same. Volunteers will be supported and trained to become Peer Mentors using this bespoke training programme. The training will be delivered in partnership with System Training. The project will help individuals, families and communities by promoting learning and providing inspiration for change.
Project Title: Scunthorpe - New Futures with Digital Learning
Lead Organisation: Communitas EU Ltd
Region: Yorkshire and the Humber
Project Summary: Utilising a mobile IT resource, and a network of community stakeholders, the project will engage community members by providing both informal learning opportunities and formal progression routes. The project will also establish peer supported community learning groups, and community based learning champions.
Project Title: Local Food Builds Strong Communities
Lead Organisation: Incredible Edible Todmorden
Region: Yorkshire and the Humber
Project Summary: Learning about the importance of local food can make every community stronger. So many of us need help in understanding how to grow it, cook it, and the importance of supporting local food producers. A series of taster sessions in friendly settings will introduce a wide range of residents, young and old alike, to different ways of making local food part of their way of life and increase their interest in learning new skills
Project Title: Live4Less
Lead Organisation: Marches Energy Agency
Region: West Midlands
Project Summary: In an 'age of austerity' with income and inflation pressure Live4Less will develop and deliver training to equip Social Housing tenants with practical skills in collaborative consumption; using less energy; utilities and healthy eating on a budget; cutting travel costs; getting the best deal; budgeting skills; income maximisation and advising others. A pilot course with residents will be followed by a Train the Trainer course for Housing Association and Local Authority staff and resident volunteers.
Project Title: Creating Capacity for Craft and Land-based Support
Lead Organisation: Craven College
Region: Yorkshire and the Humber
Project Summary: We will create a network of local providers who offer support to Learners with Learning Difficulties and Disabilities (LLDD) to enhance the offering to learners and increase capacity to face the challenges of future funding cuts: Informal learning opportunities within and across institutions will be developed, supported by access to formal qualifications and a register of employment/voluntary opportunities for learner progression. A volunteer training programme will be designed and delivered to meet organisational needs.
Project Title: Make Your Mark: The Travelling Suitcase Project.
Lead Organisation: Leeds College of Art
Region: Yorkshire and the Humber
Project Summary: A travelling Arts project designed to fit in a suitcase. Working in unusual places to engage difficult to reach communities in Leeds most deprived areas. Practitioners and student volunteers will work with individuals to decorate fabric with print and text, whilst giving guidance on progression. Project ends with an exhibition of fabric linked together to form a large scale bunting to be displayed in the community.
Project Title: SmartMove Tenancy Handbook- Smart4Life.
Lead Organisation: Calderdale SmartMove
Region: Yorkshire and the Humber
Project Summary: Working with vulnerable adults (either homeless or socially excluded), we will research, develop and print a booklet on how to maintain a tenancy with links to informal/formal education and work opportunities. It will be a practical learning experience involving clients and volunteers with contributions from partners. Being previously homeless, therefore experts by experience, it will be a best practice guide on how to maintain a tenancy and the steps to get back into education/employment.
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