CLP Blog

Family Learning Fest. Fri 28 Oct. 2011

2011-05-24T07:50:00.000-07:00

Community Learning Partnership way ahead with planning the Family Learning Festival 2011: 10am-3pm

The Family Learning Festival is returning to The Centre, Gosforth Lane, South Oxhey.

We are bringing back the provider market place and all the fun activities we had last year - but making it even bigger this year.

About Activities
For those who haven't been to the Family Learning Festival, you don't know what fun you are missing. We have a huge amount of taster sessions. These include: arts & crafts, karate, boxing, Rugby, Zumba, Urban Street Dancing, Face painting, make a wish balloons, face painting, Hena and Pampering. These activities are growing so come back to this page to keep up-to-date.

About the Market Place
We also have a market place where you will find information, advice and guidance on all the free courses that are available in South Oxhey and other wards in the County. The Market place also has a section of affordable games, gifts and jewellery.

Prize draws, competitions & the mystery game
Bring along the Promotional Business Card for the Festival, because if you participate in events and visit specific stalls to complete all six boxes, you will be entered into a competition where you can win: a digital camera, an android touch screen smart phone and a mystery box containing further prizes. We also have a tombola and other prize winning games. We will also be having a mystery game with a corresponding mystery prize. Initial Clues will be left on this page in due time.

Map & Directions to get to The Centre
Please see the google map below for details on how to get to The Centre Gosforth Ln, Watford, Hertfordshire WD19 7AX.

View Larger Map

You may also wish to visit The Centre's website to see what the building looks like and what other facilities are available. Click here.

The Festival is brought to you by the Community Learning Partnership & CLP Angels
Community Learning Partnership delivers adult and family learning throughout South Oxhey and other parts of Hertfordshire. We are able to reach new learners and deliver this annual Family Learning Festival thanks to the tremendous efforts, planning and contributions by our fantastic community Learning Champions (who are and were former learners).

CLP's NEET Piece of Research

2010-04-29T12:51:00.000-07:00

CLP carries out NEET research as part of national LSIS project

Serving our communities

Here at CLP, we’re always focused on serving our communities and making a difference to people’s lives. We love our learners and they love us right back.

Not in education, employment or training (NEET)

When we heard about the opportunity to bid for funding to carry out research for LSIS (Learning and Skills Improvement Service) with adults not in education, employment or training (NEET), we jumped at the opportunity. Why? Because we work mainly in areas of deprivation, we wanted to contribute to the bigger picture and use our expertise to help other providers meet the needs of adults in their localities. Here was a chance to get paid to do what we wanted to do anyway, but had never managed to find the time for. It’s a funny thing how funding can focus the mind!

Making our service even better

So, if you’re an adult interested in returning to learning, a community learning organisation, or even a funder interested in our work, please read on. We’re going to use our findings to make our service even better than it already is. Not just because we take pride in our work at CLP, but because it will benefit all of our current and future learners. It’s not just our story, it’s a collective one, and we’d like to thank everybody who contributed to it and made the project happen.

NEET Interviews

Time was short – we had only two and a half weeks to complete it. This involved interviewing 30 NEET adults over 25 in the South Oxhey area. All interviews had to be audio recorded, transcribed and encrypted before being sent off to the research team. Additionally, participants had to provide testimonials about their experiences. Could we convince the powers-that-be that our organisation could pull it off in such a short period of time? Well, over 600 organisations applied and only 200, including CLP, were successful.

Partnerships and social networks

We called in favours, and found that our partners were more than happy to help us. It wouldn’t have been possible without the help of South Oxhey extended schools (the fab Kerry O’ Connor, parent support adviser); our consultant at Campaign for Learning (William Doust) and our energetic and loyal CLP Angels (community learning champions), who used both their virtual and physical social networks to target participants.

Learning Experiences

The aim of the research was to find out more about the experiences, aspirations, motivations and behaviours of NEET, and recent NEET, adults. The questionnaire asked about past learning and employment experiences, and what they hoped to achieve in the future. We found some common patterns running through the responses, which backed up what we had long believed to be barriers to learning.

aspiration mood boards

School memories

What sort of experiences did the adults have at school? Some had happy memories, but these were amongst the minority. By far, one common experience was bullying by both teachers and other children and young people. Being taught in a way that would appeal only to visual learners – the ‘chalk and talk’ style – was another biggie. As were learning difficulties. For example, both diagnosed and undiagnosed dyslexics reported that the education system had been unable to cope with their needs.

Barriers to learning and work

Why would anybody want to take up learning again, when such negative experiences are very much alive in the hearts and minds of these adults? How many times would you allow yourself to be bitten by a dog? Despite this, most people interviewed had aspirations, although these didn’t necessarily fit any government agenda, but there are other barriers to learning and getting jobs such as lack of childcare; unavailability of term-time work and poor local transport.

Testimonials

Adults who took part also expressed themselves creatively by providing us with testimonials. No, this wasn’t as boring as it sounds.... they included aspiration mood boards; Flip video recordings; photos; illustrated journeys and, CLP being CLP, cake!! Intrigued? Check it out on flickr, the photo uploading website at www.flickr.com.

Overcoming hurdles of the past

We hope that our findings help LSIS with this important research, as well as our partners. For CLP, we will continue to build relationships of trust with learners in our communities, providing fun, friendly and creative learning experiences that include all learning styles. But we are now actively planning to support adults beyond course-end, helping them to increase confidence, self-esteem and skills. We aim to create pathways to education, employment and training, working closely with adults to help them to overcome the hurdles of the past.

We'd love to hear from you

Did you find this blog post inspiring? If so, we’d love to hear from you. We’d also like to hear from funders keen to help us build social capital in deprived areas. In the future, we plan to summarise our findings in more detail, and would be happy to share these with you. If you’d like to receive a copy, please ring or email us.

Contact Elizabeth or Christine on 020 8421 5544 or clpfamilyfun@gmail.com

Engaging service users through Facebook

2010-02-05T09:51:00.000-08:00

How CLP directors got collared into speaking at a national conference about technology via a text message!

On 10 November, I got a text message from our enthusiastic Campaign for Learning (CfL) development adviser, Will Doust: "could you set aside 9 & 10 of dec for conference? Cfl want u 2 2 be show ponies:-) go up night B4 hotel paid & travel expenses. Ashford." Well, the conference turned out to be in Stratford-Upon-Avon, but what do you expect from someone who confuses Nottingham with Northampton? Christine and I wondered what on earth Will was going to involve us in this time around. He's always full of fantastic ideas that help CLP to grow and develop, but sometimes the show ponies struggle to keep up with the pace! Sometimes, we also wonder if we deserve the nickname of show ponies - why would anybody want to hear what we had to say at a national conference?

How it all turned out
Well, as it turned out, delegates at the National Family Learning Network conference (NFLN) DID want to hear what we had to say in the two workshops that we ran with Will. In fact, the morning group was even prepared to miss the start of lunch in order to hear more about the work we do with our lovely group of community learning champions, aka the CLP Angels. And do you know why? Because we are passionate about supporting these volunteers, who are burning with enthusiasm to empower other parent/carers to step into learning. And because we have used technology (Yes, we mean Facebook, Twitter and good old texting) to spread the word about courses we're running; arranging meet-ups; letting contacts know about our first-ever family learning festival and just chatting to you to share ideas and even worries.

Hear what Steve had to say
Listen to what Steve Jackson, Community and Skills for Families consultant, had to say: ‘I really found the workshop in Stratford, with regards to using technologies to engage with families and building partnerships, inspiring. The software you demonstrated looked so powerful and the way (CLP) had used technologies to really engage with parents through the Angels was awesome!! I only wish it could have been a whole day’s workshop (Can one be organised?).

Facebook
It sounds fairly obvious, doesn't it, that we'd keep in touch with each other using the kind of stuff we use in our everyday lives? But, what's obvious to us, certainly wasn't to others, and we blew their socks off! It wasn't even obvious to the giant Coca Cola corporation who wasted squillions trying to set up their own social network site - only to fail miserably and end up going to where their drinkers were already hanging out - on Facebook. Coca-cola now has a facebook group.

Blog or website? Now that we're getting our very own blogsite up and running, we're sure that we're going to have lots more to share in the future because it's going to be fun, funky and interactive. In fact, we're not certain, but we may even have created a new word. Have you ever heard of a blogsite? No, neither had we but, what with all of the bickering that we do, and with one of us calling it a website and the other a blog, we decided to compromise - which is what we always do - .....eventually:-)

CLP Community Learning Champions graduate

2010-02-05T05:40:00.000-08:00

CLP Community Learning Champions, CLP Angels, graduated to the deafening sound of cheering, laughter and wolf whistles at ASCEND's award evening on 19 November 2009.

ASCEND is a local community-based charity, and we really enjoy working closely with their team - especially at fab events like this.

We'd like to thank their lovely project manager, Christine Wyard, for letting us join them in their celebration of learning. Angels were presented with their wings by BBC2’s Unsung Town choirmaster, Gareth Malone, as you'll see from the photo.

CLP's co-directors also had an unexpected surprise when Christine and Elizabeth were called up to the front by the Angels to share their limelight. It really wasn't about us at all, and we were soooo embarrassed, but we got really buzzed up by all of the energy you were giving out....and we had our picture taken with Gareth, too!