Community Leadership workshops in Newham

Hester Gartrell, Senior Outreach Officer from the Access and Engagement department discusses why her team have established a course of workshops aimed at Newham residents.

What is Community Leadership? How can we build strong and successful community projects? What does Newham’s health, wellbeing and resilience look like compared to other areas in London and the UK? These were some of the questions that we were asking at our series of free Community Leadership workshops for Newham residents this September.

The work of Birkbeck’s Access and Engagement Department addresses the discrepancies in the take-up and outcome of higher education opportunities between different social groups and our work takes us out and about to local communities, education providers and workplaces across London.

After a year of working in Newham to deliver advice and support to local residents around higher education, attending community events and building partnerships with local groups it became clear to me that there was an appetite and a need for local learning opportunities which would support people to make change in their community.

This seemed like a perfect fit, as our Certificate Higher Education and BSc in Community Development and Social Policy was already being delivered at our Stratford campus.

Working with David Tross, who teaches on both programmes, we developed a series of free evening workshops for Newham residents delivered by David at East Ham library. These workshops were fantastically well attended with at least 24 local residents attending each week many of whom hadn’t accessed formal learning in a number of years.

The workshops covered a range of areas, from health and wellbeing to how to develop and deliver a community project. While academic research was shared through the workshops, David also ensured that there was space for residents to share their own knowledge and experiences, and network with each other. One of our sessions event led to someone finding the much searched for green sofa that they needed for their Mental Health Awareness day event!

We’re looking forward to seeing what’s next with our Community Leadership cohort. The group have expressed interest in continuing to come together around learning topics and we’re also looking to deliver another series of workshops for those who couldn’t make it the first time round!

Are you interested in getting involved with some of Access and Engagement’s work? Last week we ran our first academic open house, inviting PhD candidates, early career researchers and academics to meet with us and talk about ways we can work together.

Watch this video to find out more about the Community Leadership workshop and hear from some of the participants.

If you couldn’t make, or are a Professional Services Colleague who would like to know more about our work, join us on the evening of Tuesday 15th October to celebrate Black History Month at our Stratford campus or email us on getstarted@bbk.ac.uk.

 

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