Adult learning beyond the campus

In response to its Learning Revolution white paper, the Government has a £20m Transformation Fund to support informal adult learning - learning for pleasure, self-development and community development - which has been awarding money to a wide range of projects "all with the objective of seeing creative learning flourish across the country." These funds are enabling collaborations between museums, galleries, universities and colleges to offer particular schemes for adult learners. The emphasis, I guess, wil be on social empowerment and cohesion, which is already central to how museums (but not so much universities) think about their role.

In fact have recently been re-visiting the Museum, Libraries and Archives (MLA) Inspired Learning for All website, which lists the various learning frameworks put together by different quangos for schools and adult education; why do I feel that these groups - rightly or wrongly - are much more willing to give explicit definitions of what learning is than any university academic...


Image of Turner Contemporary, designed by David Chipperfield Associates and currently under construction in Margate, which has won one of the transformation awards for a project bringing old and young people together under the title Teenage