Background and Vision

Welcome to the CPAL toolkit, designed to help support the development of informal adult learning throughout Cathedrals, Greater Churches and other Places of Worship.

Using the toolkit

This toolkit is brought to you by CPAL – Cathedrals as Partners in Adult Learning. We want this toolkit to be as user friendly as possible and to contain clear and accessible guidance, advice and support on developing, funding and sustaining informal adult learning in your buildings and with the communities you serve. However, please bear in mind that this is only a first stage toolkit and represents our initial attempts to support your work. With further funding we hope to develop and expand this resource and the role of the Education Development Worker, ensuring it stays current and responsive to suggestions and further opportunities. The toolkit is based upon the following vision.

Vision

By responding to identified needs, both within Cathedrals and their ‘user groups’, the toolkit will support the development of informal adult learning opportunities throughout Cathedrals, Greater Churches, Abbeys and Shrines in the UK. By acting as a ‘hub’ resource, the toolkit will offer advice and guidance to those working in and for these places and is a conduit through which to engage policy makers on a local, regional and national level.

Central to this vision is the principle of partnership working with a wide range of organisations across the public, voluntary and private sectors.

Background

The toolkit is based upon a series of wide ranging consultations carried out by Saul Penfold, the CPAL Education Development Worker, across Cathedral departments between September 2008 and June 2009. Therefore, the ‘tools’ within it are ones identified by cathedral staff, clergy and volunteers as being the most useful and beneficial to them in developing their adult learning offer at this stage.

For a summary report of this consultation process, which contains an overview of the range of informal adult learning already occurring in Cathedrals, please click here (.doc, 1,119 KB).

The toolkit consists of a homepage and 8 linked sections which each contain advice, guidance and best practice examples on delivering informal adult learning. The toolkit also contains photos, links to existing and potential partners, key contacts and an opportunity for you to feedback and shares your thoughts.

Please feel free to get in touch, comment and suggest ways in which the toolkit could be developed and improved in its second phase. There is a feedback form through which you can do this.

Phases

By using this feedback, we aim to have a ‘second stage’ content managed toolkit and website running by the summer of 2010. This will act as an ongoing, flexible support mechanism for Cathedrals etc. and will be adaptable to their changing needs and partnership opportunities as they arise. It will be more interactive than the first stage and will enable the Education Development Worker to manage, update and improve it weekly, thus staying in regular contact with you. This will support the longer term development of informal adult learning throughout Cathedrals in the UK.

Alongside a second stage toolkit, we hope to expand the role of the Education Development Worker beyond May 2010, enabling greater support to you in all areas of your adult learning provision.

Please therefore use the feedback form on this website to tell us how the role of the Education Development Worker can best support you (and critically, your adult learners themselves), in the future. This will greatly strengthen our case for further funding and show clear ‘evidence of need’. It is important that we get your support and opinions as we develop into this ‘second stage’. Thank you!

Partners

The key partners involved in the development of this toolkit are Cathedrals Plus, Cathedrals as Partners in Adult Learning (CPAL) and the National Institute of Continuing Adult Education (NIACE). Further support comes from the Association of English Cathedrals (AEC). See the Key Partnerships section for an explanation of what these partners do. The Links section contains further links to their websites.

Audience

The key audience for the toolkit is Education and Learning Officers and their teams (both staff and volunteers) in Cathedrals etc. However, the toolkit can also be used by other staff, clergy and volunteers involved in delivering informal adult learning. For example clergy, music departments, libraries, visitor officers, vergers, guides and welcomers can all get involved in supporting and helping to inform and deliver informal adult learning opportunities in your buildings.

Acknowledgements

This first stage ‘toolkit’ resource has been created with the very generous support of Cathedral friends and colleagues throughout the country who have given their time and expertise very generously in order to help develop and improve all that we offer to our visitors. Thank you especially to the Cathedrals that have allowed us to use photographs of their glorious buildings and of the learning activities that take place within them. In particular, many thanks to our friends at Chester, Manchester, Ripon, St Pauls, Norwich, Bradford, Durham, St Albans, Worcester, York, Exeter, Buckfast Abbey, Christ Church Oxford and also at Braun Arts – the toolkit could not have been made without you!

Thank you also to Cathedrals Plus, CPAL, NIACE and the AEC for their ongoing support of this initiative.