Bridging Learning
Partnerships and collaborations
to support learning in the community
Gerard Darby, Maddy Fisk and Suzanna Jackson
The Mary Ward Centre
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“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much”
Helen Keller
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Contents
Page
History of the Mary Ward Settlement
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Introduction
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Why we collaborate with other groups
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How we collaborate with other groups
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Who we collaborate with
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What we have learnt about collaboration
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What facilitates and hinders it
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What are the benefits of our collaboration for our partners
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Conclusions
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Appendix one: Case Studies
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Appendix two: Table showing some of our partners
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History of the Mary Ward Settlement
The Settlement Movement began in the early 1880s as a response to the urban poverty and
social problems caused by industrialisation. Settlement Houses offered social services to
the urban poor and campaigned for social justice and equality.
The founder of the Mary Ward Settlement was the best-selling Victorian novelist Mrs
Humphry Ward. Mary Ward’s declared aim was to give access for all to “the hundred
pleasures and opportunities that fall mainly to the rich.” She described this open access to
education where people from all backgrounds work and learn alongside each other as
“equalisation”.
The Settlement acted as a focal point for local people who came both to learn and to take
part in its social and self-help groups such as the coal club, boot club, and mother and
toddler groups. Young university graduates lived as Residents in the Settlement and shared
their skills and knowledge. Many of the Residents were training in law and a “poor man’s
lawyer” service along with training facilities for the unemployed and domestic economy
classes soon became part of the programme.
It was to be Mary Ward’s work with children at the Settlement that was to have the greatest
influence on the educational system in the UK and beyond. She was responsible for
initiating the Play Centre movement in England by providing care and physical activities for
children in England and the first such centre was opened in 1899 at the Settlement.
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Introduction
The Mary Ward Centre is an adult education college located in Holborn, London. We are a
Specially Designated Institute (SDI) which means that we are fortunate to have protected
funding for non-accredited learning and consequently are able to offer a diversity of courses
covering subjects in the arts, humanities, business, computing, languages and health. Our
aim today is the same as it was when we were founded in the 1890s: “to promote public
education and social service for the benefit of the community.”
In order to achieve this aim, the Mary Ward Centre has initiated or been a partner in a
broad range of collaborations and many of these have been through our outreach
programme which brings relevant learning courses to groups in Camden, Islington,
Westminster and Tower Hamlets who, often because of disadvantage or a lack of
confidence, are unable to access courses at main education centres. Some of these
collaborations have just involved one or two partner groups; others, such as our All
Together Now initiative, have engaged more than 20 partner organisations.
Our partners range in size and type from small groups with locally-targeted remits such as
the Millman Street Older People’s Resource Centre, through to larger local umbrella
organisations such as Camden’s Council for the Voluntary Sector, to very large and
renowned organisations such as the British Museum. A number of our partnerships have
continued beyond the life of the scheme for which they were originally set up for and some
have developed into other areas. In addition, the Mary Ward Centre is part of a settlement
and, as such, we share some of our resources and facilities with the Mary Ward Legal Centre
and this has mutual benefits.
Through our outreach programme we have learnt a lot over the years about partnerships –
how and why to instigate them, what is required to make them work for all parties, how to
assess their impact and what is involved in sustaining them. This publication includes some
of these insights and describes how and why we develop collaborations.
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Why we collaborate with other groups
The Mary Ward Settlement was incorporated in 1895 to provide the pleasures and
opportunities afforded by education to all regardless of their financial position. It acted as a
magnet to local people who paid their small annual membership fee not only to pursue
intellectual interests and learn practical skills but to be part of a social and community
network.
This ethos of ensuring access to all has continued to underpin the Mary Ward Centre’s
approach to education as also has the aspiration to enable our learners to feel part of a
community. We have an outreach programme which aims to engage people who would not
otherwise attend courses at one of our centres because of cultural, language, financial,
social or geographic barriers. By engaging with these individuals in local community
settings, we have been able to provide them with valuable skills and knowledge and new
interests and opportunities as well as the wider benefits which can be derived from learning
with others such as social interaction, friendships and increased self-esteem.
As a result, many of these learners have developed the confidence to go on to study at
Mary Ward Centre’s main colleges or at other local education institutions and some have
even gone on to become actively involved in the delivery of our programmes by supporting
other learners. For example, one of our tutors was herself once an outreach student who
was lacking in confidence being new to the country. She joined an outreach textile class for
parents at her children’s school and through this developed her confidence and
communication and went on to volunteer her time to support other less confident students
and now teaches henna hand painting.
The local area which we work in – Camden and King’s Cross - is very diverse in terms of its
social, economic, ethnic and religious aspects. To put it bluntly we would not be able to
engage with such a diversity of individuals representative of our locality if we did not work
in collaboration with our partners. Our partners have the expertise, experience and
understanding that are involved in working effectively and sensitively with marginalised
groups and they have the respect and trust of their beneficiaries. It also makes sense to
work in collaboration given the access to resources, capabilities and ways of working which
this provides.
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How we collaborate with other groups
In the last year, we provided a programme of 86 courses in the community and virtually all
of these were delivered through different collaborations and partnerships. Our purpose is
not just to provide learning in localities convenient to our learners and in venues which they
are familiar with but also to help facilitate greater community cohesion.
Although we operate a range of courses, we have tended to offer many in visual art as it is
an area that appeals to community learners particularly those with low level English. We
have also run a number of personal development courses and supplementary health
courses which have enabled people to feel more empowered.
We operate a range of collaborations to deliver this programme and these differ in terms of:
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Their purpose;
The nature of the collaboration;
The scale of the projects and the number of partners;
The benefits which partners accrue from the relationship.
Many of the groups we work with are able to provide us with a venue in the community and
access to learners who already make use of their space. These learners often have barriers
to formal learning but are more comfortable about attending courses in environments they
are familiar with. For the partner group, it enables them to offer their beneficiaries bespoke
courses which can impact positively on their levels of community engagement, self-esteem
and sometimes their employability skills. The level of involvement of our partners can vary:
some are keen to work with us in developing the course and its content and will ensure that
some staff attend the sessions; others, due to resource constraints, provide the venue but
are unable to get involved much beyond this.
In some instances, we work with a large organisation and we organise and run classes in
their venue for people from the local community and can bring in new groups whom the
organisation has had difficulty in attracting. One example is a collaboration we had with the
British Museum through which we ran a course for the local community with particular
targeting of local Bangladeshi people. For many of the participants, they had never
contemplated such an inspiring learning environment, and were able to see a piece of art
work come together as a large scale public installation exhibited in the Museum’s Great Hall
- something very special for them.
In some collaborations we act as a hub for an initiative involving a larger number of
partners. For example, we are sometimes approached by a consortium of groups and asked
if we could take forward their idea and effectively act as project managers for it. We are
also contacted by groups who wish to take their schemes to another level such as to extend
their geographic focus or to develop the scheme further as the groups do not have the
organisational infrastructure to do this. One example is when the organisers of the Camden
Bangladesh Mela Committee approached the Mary Ward Centre to see if we would work
with them and their partner organisations to develop their scheme further. The Committee
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did not have the organisational infrastructure to take the initiative to another level and did
not have the experience to put together bids to external funding organisations.
Our governing body as well as ultimately being accountable for the project which we are
delivering also sets the strategy for the Mary Ward Centre and in turn this can impact on the
nature of our collaborations. Many of our governors are active in the voluntary sector and
so have been able to provide introductions and contacts to potential partners. One example
is that one of our trustees had links with Solace Women’s Aid, a charity working to end
domestic violence against women and children, and as a result of this we provided some of
their beneficiaries with a 10 hour programme to develop their confidence and open them
up to the benefits that can be derived from learning
Often we have identified partners with whom we have the potential to work with in a major
way because of mutual objectives and complementary offerings. However, we have
resisted rushing into a significant collaboration and instead initially worked with these
groups in a more limited way to test the relationship and to tease out any possible
difficulties so that if we both decide to progress to a more major collaboration we can do so
with confidence.
A Zumba rehearsal in preparation for a performance in celebration of the Olympic Torch
coming to Camden.
We meet with our partners regularly to evaluate both the delivery of our courses and how
our partnership is going. As well as group partner meetings, we have carried out 14
individual partner reviews to gather views. These meetings, combined with input from the
tutors running our courses, help us build a picture of learning in the community and to
appraise its impact.
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Who we collaborate with
We work with a broad range of partners in our community outreach programme. We have
partnerships with schools, community centres, drop-in and day centres, hostels, health
projects, resource centres, museums and libraries and community groups.
Over the last year we ran 86 courses in partnership with 36 local groups and organisations
and generally each year we work with new groups of beneficiaries as well as serving existing
ones. This year our programme included work with trafficked women and people with early
dementia and complex health needs.
In addition to working with new and existing partners, Mary Ward Centre’s outreach worker
spends time following up links and possible partnerships with other groups and
organisations with whom we could potentially work to widen participation in adult
education.
Our learners on these programmes are also diverse and include people who are homeless,
ex-offenders, refugees, asylum seekers, people with mental illness, young people aged 1618, and individuals recovering from alcohol/drug dependency. Our widening participation
programme attracts a broad range of different ethnicities: Camden’s benchmark for BME
students is 20% and our programme attracts 63%. We particularly have long-standing
activities with elderly Bangladeshi people and elderly Latin American people in Camden and
Islington.
In the last year, we have increased our work with homeless people and introduced new
work with people from vulnerable and disadvantaged communities with substance misuse
issues and we worked with new partners to provide this. We have also increased our
partnerships with schools to work with parents whom are exposed to isolation, mental
health problems or domestic difficulties. In addition, we work with other vulnerable
communities including people engaging in street population activities, trafficked women,
and young teenage mums.
We often run short taster courses in partnership with the organisers of community events
such as the British Museum Hajj late, International Women’s Day and Queen Square Fair.
This has allowed people to sample community learning in a way that we are not usually able
to offer and these courses have allayed many of the fears beneficiaries have about learning
and helped people to consider joining longer courses in the community. We are also
actively involved in the Bloomsbury Festival (http://bloomsburyfestival.org.uk/) which
throughout the year supports community projects that inspire positive change in people’s
lives through the creation of inspiring art and it culminates each October in a major event.
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Shared Services and collaboration
The Mary Ward Centre is part of the Mary Ward Settlement and we share our services with
a legal centre which provides free and independent advice to individuals on low incomes
around issues related to debt, employment, housing and welfare. As well as operating from
joint premises, we share a number of services including IT, HR, finance and payroll. We
function under a single governance structure and now have a warden who oversees both
our institutions.
The benefits of this collaboration are:
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Our partner group has access to services such as IT support when required but
without having to incur high costs for this;
The Centre is able to share some of the costs for its services;
Our close proximity enables us to promote each other’s services and the use of the
single brand of Mary Ward means that individuals who have benefited from either of
our activities have the confidence to make use of others that we offer.
The collaboration is dynamic and adapts according to how our two organisations evolve and
the difficulties and opportunities we encounter. Currently our relationship is quite close
and involves us sharing premises in a new building; in the past, when our two organisations
had been in a period of growth, the relationship was less intimate as we were focussed on
our respective developments.
We have also had a formal sub-contracting relationship with another settlement in
Blackfriars which because of minimum contract levels for Skills Funding Agency contracts is
unable to qualify to be a delivery agent and so the Mary Ward Centre does this on its behalf.
Blackfriars Settlement benefits from: the use of our data management systems which
provide information on student enrolment, retention and success as well as tracking data;
access to our specialist team which supports learners with disabilities and learning needs;
and our expertise around curriculum development. Without this collaboration, the
Blackfriars Settlement would not be able to continue to run its local provision and the
knowledge, relationships and trust built up over the years would have been lost.
For Mary Ward, it provides us with a partnership with another Settlement through which we
can learn about other ways of delivering services such as the creation of social enterprises
to employ some beneficiaries. It also provides us with some students who progress from
courses at the Blackfriars Settlement to ones at Mary Ward.
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What we have learnt about collaboration
Our experiences over the years have provided us with a number of insights about effective
collaboration. These include:
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Getting the support of partners from an early stage and having a shared goal for the
collaboration;
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Partners being explicit about what they want out of the collaboration, what they are
seeking to find out and what resources they can offer;
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Establishing the timescale for the partnership and regularly reviewing the
collaboration – groups are working in a rapidly-changing environment, particularly in
terms of funding, and this can impact on the nature of a collaboration;
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The importance of good communication and regular consultation.
Good
communication with partners has helped us plan courses appropriately, publicise
them effectively, and boost the sense of involvement felt by partners.
There are also some things which we have learnt which are pertinent to the community
education activities we deliver and beneficiaries we work with. These include:
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With some vulnerable groups, it is important to adopt a flexible approach and be
prepared to adapt to circumstance from the onset. For example, we have run short
courses in hostels where beneficiaries have chaotic and changing lives. This might
mean changing a course outline at the start of a class because the needs of the
students have changed;
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The value in setting learning objectives at an appropriate level for the students,
negotiating a suitable time in the day to offer a course and working with partners to
incorporate special support such as interpreters when needed;
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The importance of demonstrating both experience and sensitivity in working with
vulnerable communities;
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The value of a practical content to our courses. Many of the groups we work with
need to see some output early on in the project in order to maintain student interest
and build their motivation;
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The opportunity to use former beneficiaries to recruit and engage others. We have
set up Community Learning Ambassadors and Community Learning Champions with
former students empowering and motivating new ones to overcome barriers to
learning;
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The value of developing exciting and challenging learning experiences. Participation
in such activities often has given the participants the skills and experience to move
on to other challenging outcomes;
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How crucial celebration can be to a project. It helps to bring communities together,
make learners feel their work is important, and enable partners to appreciate the
outcome of their efforts.
The table below summarises the characteristics which make adult learning successful based
on our experience.
Characteristics making adult learning successful:
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Areas where the Mary Ward Centre could improve
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Flexible and informal
Easily accessible and less bureaucratic
MWC is easy to work with and responsive
MWC is committed and reliable
Classes are based in the community
The MWC is enthusiastic and proactive in
getting projects going
The Community Outreach worker makes
herself available as needed
The quality of tutors is good – they are
adaptable and students get on with them
The ability to work in an informal way with a
range of different abilities
Courses are fun and don’t feel like a “class”
but still provide the stepping stones to more
formal learning.
Partnership work with multi-partner
organisations is successful
Capacity building – some students have
obtained employment or developed
employability skills
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The inability to offer a crèche is a significant
issue for some beneficiaries
We are restricted geographically as to what
we can physically manage. For example,
although we have been asked to work in the
boroughs of Lambeth and Streatham, this is
difficult for us
We have found some groups of beneficiaries
are harder to engage or reach
Overall, we have found that what is crucial is to deliver the best possible learning
experiences. This means looking at diverse kinds of learning and different learning styles
such as providing materials that are very visual and have only basic instructions on them.
We have found that our learners appreciate enrichment activities which enable them to go
out to museums and galleries and visit parts of London which they wouldn’t normally go to
and enable them to interact with other students on a more social basis. We have also
realised how crucial it is to ensure that what is offered has been informed by consultation
with beneficiaries and negotiation around what is possible.
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What facilitates and hinders collaboration
We have found that the more that responsibilities involved in a project are shared amongst
partners then the more effective the collaboration seems to be. In addition, as previously
mentioned, the need to plan a project and then maintain communication continuously
throughout is fundamental to it being effective. Effective communication also enables us to
take into account the learner’s views as well as those of partners when planning courses and
it facilitates problem-solving allowing us to work with partners in an open way with any
issues that arise and to think creatively about possible solutions.
Unsurprisingly continuous changes and challenges with funding have a major impact on our
collaborations. Some of our partners would like to be more actively involved in the projects
we deliver with them but resource constraints prevent this. A lot of the groups we work
with are often managing crises due to the pressures they are under to deliver their services
with less funds. We have to be mindful of these factors and be prepared for changes in
their involvement.
Our client group also presents particular challenges. For example, the time-keeping of
students from partner organisations can be erratic due to other priorities in their lives and
many have issues around confidence and self-esteem which can impede their progress. In
order to have an environment which is conducive to shared learning, we believe that there
needs to be a minimum number of students (around eight) and occasionally we are unable
to achieve this.
In the last financial year, Mary Ward Centre received funding from NIACE (National Institute
of Adult Continuing Education) to deliver a range of outreach programmes across our local
community. As part of this project, we ve produced a ‘Project in a Box’ which outlines how
to recreate a similar programme of community outreach courses. This is a free resource and
is available at:
http://www.marywardcentre.ac.uk/about/our-work-in-the-community/project-in-a-box/
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What are the benefits of our collaboration for our partners
In our experience, there are different benefits for different partners:
 Some partners have indicated an increase in the numbers of members and users
For example, we ran a project with Women at the Well in Kings Cross which is a charity that
works with trafficked women. It had previously run groups with seven or eight participants
but during the project, numbers increased to 18 participants on each course. Discussion
with the partner suggested that the structure of the courses had helped to achieve this.
Courses were kept short and the sessions were planned to enable students to achieve
something for themselves after every lesson and this motivated women to attend and keep
attending.
 Other partners recorded a greater diversity in the attendance at their events
The British Museum, for example, has found that being involved in a community project has
brought local people into the museum who had not previously visited. The exhibition of
artefacts made as part of the project has given participants a reason to visit the venue.
 There has been an increase in people volunteering with partner organisations
A number of our partners has reported an increase in students volunteering at public events
they have organised.
 Partners valued the opportunity to work together
Partners have enjoyed coming together and learning about each other’s experiences. It has
given them an opportunity to share good practice whilst learning tips about how to
overcome the challenges of engaging some groups of learners.
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Partners valued the addition of informal adult learning to the opportunities they
provide for their users
There is clear recognition of the value that learning adds to the opportunities our partners
could offer and of the benefits participants gained. It has also been clear that in what are
financially lean times for many of our partners the fact that these course have been funded
and that there is no direct monetary cost to them has been very important, especially to the
smaller organisations.
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Conclusions
This is a time of significant change both to the adult education landscape and to the
voluntary sector. There is tremendous value in working in partnership. On a pragmatic
level, it enables the partners to utilise each other’s experience, expertise, resources and
networks to advance a project and its outcomes to an extent which would not be realised if
the groups were working independently.
Beyond this, it also enables us as a learning provider to appreciate more intimately the
needs of a diversity of learners and how best to adapt our approaches to meet these. In
doing so, this has had a positive impact on our overall approach to delivering education
making us more flexible, responsive and creative. We are also able to benefit from having a
diversity of learners representative of the community we serve.
Partner groups working with us have reported how learning has increased their
beneficiaries’ involvement in their organisations and how it has brought their beneficiaries
confidence and skills and, as a result, opened up for them new opportunities. In some cases
it has enabled them to progress to more formalised learning and for many it has enriched
their lives.
Working with the most vulnerable groups needs to be sustained over time if it is to be
effective. For some individuals one short learning experience can be enough to give them
the impetus they need to move forward, but for others it takes a sustained series of
repeated positive experiences to give them the confidence, skills and knowledge to take the
next step.
Our programme in the community would not be possible without the depth of relationship
we have built up with partners and integral to this has been excellent and continuous
communication with us being aware of and responsive to our partners’ needs.
We have been extremely fortunate to work with very inspiring, committed and professional
groups and we would like to take this opportunity to thank them for collaborating with us
over the years. We look forward to continuing these partnerships as well as engaging with
new groups to bring the benefits of learning to as broad a range of people as possible.
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Case Study: Mind the Gap
Aim of the project
Our aim was to increase participation in education by adults from BME groups and others
who are under-represented within education, particularly those whose needs are not well
met by more traditional educational provision and those who are not provided for by the
key learning and skills funding streams such as refugees and asylum seekers in their first six
months of arriving and newly-arrived spouses in their first year of residence in the UK.
The project has three key areas of focus: engaging new learners; developing English
language and literacy skills; and providing opportunities to develop employability skills
through volunteering.
Partners
There is a diverse range of partners including: primary schools; small, local informal groups
such as the Holborn Asian Women’s Association and the Bengali Mens Group in Kings Cross;
community centres such as Somerstown Community Centre and the London Irish Centre
and community gardens such as the Calthorpe Project; festival groups such as the
Bloomsbury Festival; and groups working with the homeless such as the Single Homeless
Project.
How it is delivered
The project began in January 2012 and runs until December 2014. The scheme is funded by
the London Borough of Camden through their Equalities and Cohesion fund.
30 short learning taster courses are being provided across the curriculum including Zumba,
language for health, introduction to computing, textile courses, henna hand painting,
jewellery, cooking, personal development, and singing.
The project is also delivering two 34-week entry level ESOL courses designed to meet the
needs of students who have no literacy or low levels of literacy in their first language. The
courses are being delivered by trained Skills for Life tutors with the support of volunteers
who are speakers of the first language of target learners and who have themselves
experienced learning English as a second language. These courses are being delivered in
community venues on the Tybalds Estate.
17 volunteers from amongst Mary Ward’s students are supporting the scheme.
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Impact of the project to date
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Evaluations from students show that more than 80% said they really enjoyed their
learning. 71% expressed an increase in their self confidence, 54% said doing a course
helped them to improve their communication skills, and 51% said learning had
helped improve their health and well being.
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Some students have progressed on to courses in ESOL, parenting and childcare, and
enterprise skills.
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There have been a number of other outcomes. For example, our partner working
with parents at St George Martyr Primary School reported that the courses were
instrumental in bringing the Bangladeshi and non-Bangladeshi communities
together, which had previously been very difficult in the school. In addition,
students who enrolled on a taster Zumba class at Somerstown Community Centre
were invited to perform at an event celebrating the arrival of the Olympic torch to
Camden.
What we learnt to date
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There was a rise in enthusiasm and attendance as the course progressed and this
was, in part, a result of providing taster courses which meant that participants were
learning in small groups and in small chunks.
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We have recognised the need to give highly individualised attention to students. To
this end, we organised interpreters when we needed to learn more about students’
backgrounds, and we maintained a close relationship with learners’ support workers.
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We were proactive in holding meetings with our partners to ensure that any issues
were ironed out before they developed into problems.
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We learnt the importance of being flexible in our planning of these courses so that
they accommodated the different needs of the students and we could respond to
their interests and needs as the project progressed.
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We have appreciated the need to be very clear what we are measuring in terms of
impact from the onset so that we have the right reporting tools and mechanisms in
place.
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Case Study: All Together Now Project
Aim of project
Our aim with this initiative was to provide learning opportunities including arts, health, IT
and volunteer training to students experiencing barriers to learning or those from underrepresented groups. Beneficiaries included communities on low incomes, people with
minimal English language skills, people with mental health issues and older members of the
community.
We also wanted to understand the relationship between informal adult learning and soft
outcomes such as positive changes in self-confidence, improved communication skills and
increased health and well being.
Partners
At the heart of the project was the development of partnerships to engage communities
with whom we had not previously worked and the Centre worked with 28 partners (our
original target was to work with 13) to achieve this. There were two types of partner
organisations: those that represent or provide services for people from our target groups
and could help us to successfully engage with these; and those that could offer skills,
experience or resources to support the delivery of the project.
Partners included Argyle Primary School, Bengali Men’s Group, The British Museum, Coram
Parents Centre, Fitzrovia Neighbourhood Association, Richmix, St Lukes Parochial Trust and
Volunteer Centre Camden.
How it was delivered
The project ran for six months from September 2011 to March 2012.
The project used two distinct types of learning opportunity: very short or taster courses
used to raise awareness of adult learning, and longer courses over nine hours with multiple
meetings. 27 short courses and 36 longer ones were delivered. The short courses provided
opportunities for potential learners to find out about the longer learning activities that were
being offered and to inform us about courses they wanted to do. These short ‘taster’
courses were extremely popular with beneficiaries. The longer ones were offered to specific
groups and the structure and content of these were bespoke and designed in collaboration
with partners and learners to ensure that they met the needs of all learners.
The pitching, pace and content of courses were varied to meet the needs of each group. For
example, a course at St Luke’s Centre working with people with early dementia was planned
so that each session was short, using visual aids significant to each of the individuals and this
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helped to provide a constant reminder of what they were doing when their short-term
memory was poor.
Impact of the project
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Our target was to engage 70 people from Black and Minority Ethnic communities
and we actually engaged 265. In addition, 72 students came from other minority
groups such as travellers and those of Latin American and Irish backgrounds.
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We had a target to engage 70 older learners and we actually had 130 learners over
50 and a significant number of these were over 75 and came from groups who
specialise in working with older people with critical care needs and/or early stages of
dementia.
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Our target was to engage 140 learners from other groups. In total we engaged 491
learners. 81% of our students were women and 15% of students had physical
disabilities. 51% of the learners were not currently in employment, education or
training and 31% had not undertaken any training since leaving school.
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89% of the students we tracked achieved the identified learning goals for their
course; 86% said their self-confidence had increased; 47% said they had improved
their communication skills; and 42% said their courses had improved their health and
wellbeing.
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72% of the students tracked said they had an increased interest in progressing to
further their learning and of these 58% took up further learning opportunities such
as ESOL, childcare, art and IT courses at Mary Ward and parenting and work training
programmes with other colleges and training providers.
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Some courses brought different groups together. For example, on one there was a
mix of groups from the local Muslim community as well as others including women
who suffered domestic violence, people facing mental health issues and older
learners. Working on the project together provided an opportunity for all those
involved to learn more about Islam and its tradition and facilitated the collaboration
and integration of groups that had not previously mixed.
There were also benefits and outcomes for partners and these included:
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An increase in people volunteering with partner organisations.
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Some partners indicated an increase in the numbers of members and users. For
example, Women at the Well in King’s Cross, a charity that works with trafficked
women had previously run groups with seven or eight participants; during the
project, numbers increased to 18 for each course.
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What we learnt
Being flexible and creative in our approach to the structure, timing and content of delivery
was vital to keep those whom we had engaged and providing them with a positive and
productive learning experience. We also acknowledged how crucial it is to consult directly
with learners and not just with their partner groups to ensure that what we offered was
going to be suitable and of interest.
The project reinforced our appreciation of the fact that the only way in which an education
centre such as the Mary Ward Centre can work with the most vulnerable and underrepresented groups is through partnerships.
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Case Study: Rickshaw Fusion Arts Project
Aim of project
The project took place as part of the Camden Bangladesh Mela which uses the arts to
challenge any negative perceptions of Bangladesh and provides young British-Bangladeshis
the opportunity to experience, appreciate and understand Bangladeshi arts. The intention
was to introduce learners to a variety of mixed media art techniques brought together to
recreate a rickshaw. A rickshaw was chosen as the focal point for the scheme as it gave
interesting insights into working lives in Bangladesh – rickshaw drivers have gruelling and
dangerous jobs.
Partner
Seven community centres and schools worked with the Mary Ward Centre: St Alban’s
Primary School, St George the Martyr Primary School, Netley Primary School, Fitzrovia
Neighbourhood Centre, Kings Cross Bangladeshi Men’s Project, Bengali Worker’s
Association, and Christopher Hatton Primary School Centre. The project was supported by
the British Museum, the London Borough of Camden, Thanet and St Pancras Trust and Royal
Female School of Art.
How it was delivered
Rickshaws are the most popular means of transport in Bangladesh and two were brought
over for the project. One was to provide an example of how decorative they can be; the
other was for the participants to take apart and reconstruct into a contemporary art form
using imagery from Bangladesh and Britain.
Impact
The project enabled people to learn skills which they wouldn’t have considered trying.
The Rickshaw was exhibited at the Camden Mela in Regents Park where there were 1012,000 visitors. It was then exhibited alongside the Nouka and Bangla Ghor in the Great
Court at the British Museum for 10 days in celebration of the annual Bangladesh Family Day
and, following this, at the Brunei Gallery at SOAS to celebrate the Bloomsbury Festival.
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What we learnt
An initiative of this nature provides the general public with insights into a fascinating
culture. Our experience has been that it has also given people from the Bangladeshi
community in London insights into their own culture as quite a number of the participants
had never been to Bangladesh.
Having work exhibited in a prestigious venue such as the British Museum where it can be
seen by people from who have come from all over the world gave the participants an
enormous sense of pride and a focal point for their enormous efforts.
We also learnt that it wasn’t straight forward to bring a rickshaw over from Bangladesh!
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This report is part of a wider project coordinated by Holex which aims to understand the role of
collaboration within Specially Designated Institutions. For more information on this project, contact:
Miranda.Oha@gmail.com
If you are interested in partnering with the Mary Ward Centre or would like more information about
our community outreach programme, please contact: Maddy Fisk, Community Outreach Coordinator
Maddy.Fisk@marywardcentre.ac.uk
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Appendix Two:
These are some of the partners we worked with on our community outreach programme
over the last year:
Argyle Primary School
Bedford House Community Centre
Bloomsbury Festival
British Museum
British Postal Museum and Archive
Calthorpe Project
Camden Bangladesh Mela Committee
Castlehaven Community Centre
Central YMCA
Chadswell Healthy Living Centre
Charlie Ratchford Community Centre
Christopher Hatton Primary School
Community Service Volunteers
Coram Parents Centre at Coram Family
Edith Neville Primary School
Fitzrovia Neighbourhood Centre
Holborn Asian Women’s Association
Hopscotch Asian Women’s Association
Hornsey Rise Estate Community Centre
Islington Bangladeshi Association
Kings Cross Bengali Men’s Project
Kings Cross Neighbourhood Centre
Latin American Elders Project
Millman Street Resource Centre
Mind in Camden (Barnes House)
Mind in Camden (Crossfields Centre)
Mind in Westminster
Notting Hill Housing – the Mildmays
Portugal Prints
Richmix
Single Homeless Project – Arlington Road
Single Homeless Project – the Ivories
Single Homeless Project – Dennis Handfield House
Somers Town Community Centre
St Alban’s Primary School
St George the Martyr School
St Hilda’s East
St Luke’s Community Centre
Women at the Well
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“When we dream alone, it is only a dream.
When we dream together, it is no longer a dream
but the beginning of reality.”
Brazilian Proverb
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