On the face of it, the restoration of a classic car is an unlikely catalyst for community cohesion, but Nottingham City Council's Brough Superior project is a terrific demonstration of the difference learning can make not only to the lives of learners but also in breaking down barriers between individuals and giving them a sense of shared identity…

The learning and skills sector plays a critical part in working with young people disengaged from education, or at risk of becoming so, and supporting adults with low skills levels to achieve their ambitions in life, work and learning. In particular, the sector has a key role in enabling people to become engaged in education, training and work and…

Life is serious and serious literature can help people through it. That's the message of Jane Davis's remarkable Get into Reading project. Jane Davis's Get into Reading project is one of two main strands of work undertaken by The Reader organization, at Liverpool University. In 1997, Jane and two other continuing education teachers, Sarah Coley…

This summer Chris Wardley, Chair of Access to Community Education (ACE), a small charity run by and for disabled people in Torbay, wrote to Gordon Brown. She asked him whether his mission to "fulfil the potential and realise the talents of all people" was based solely on economic goals or whether everyone, including disabled people,…

The purpose of writing a charter is to show adult learners that the people providing learning for them are willing to sign up publicly to a statement of their entitlement to the very best quality of information, guidance, teaching and support--and not only to sign up to it, but to be ready to be called to account if they do not live up to the…

The Inquiry into the Future for Lifelong Learning proposes a strategy for lifelong learning for the next quarter-century. In this article, four of the Inquiry's commissioners--Leisha Fullick, John Field, Teresa Rees and Helen Gilchrist--reflect on some of the report's key themes. Fullick discusses the role of "local responsiveness" in…

This article features Crisis Skylight, a learning and activity centre, which opened in Spitalfields, East London, in 2002. Crisis Skylight was developed by Crisis, a national charity for single homeless people. It gives homeless people a chance to learn alongside other, non-homeless, members of their communities. Skylight's remit was…

A project known as SHAID, the Single Homeless Action Initiative, was founded in response to youth homelessness, a problem that had been growing since the 1980s, in a deprived area of County Durham. SHAID provides young people with advice, support, information, and life skills training on subjects such as home safety, budgeting, personal and food…

In the small ex-mining village of Langold, North Nottinghamshire, no one could have predicted the disruption a discovery of bats would cause, halting building work on the new Sure Start centre in West Bassetlaw. Further uproar ensued when it became clear that re-housing the bats would be an expensive--and, for many, a pointless--exercise. At the…

Although community-based adult learning can be enormously effective in drawing into learning those who feel excluded from the education system, little research has been done into how this potential can be turned to the advantage of disengaged learners. Researchers in Scotland hope to go some way to redressing this by providing, for the first time,…

The author talks about a vision of a "learning community" that is currently being trialled in 26 testbeds in England. As the first learning community testbeds develop across England, the author looks at some of the early issues that are emerging from the first few months of activity. The issues identified have emerged from early…