This is a really interesting question Kirsty and is, in a way, a situation faced by many adult and community learning providers i.e. how do you cater for the new participants whilst providing a service for the regular attendees. It is an educational version of the NHS “bed blocking” problems.

 

Here in Wales (soon to be Six Nations Champions for a record 3^rd time. Just saying…) we are working with the adult and community learning sector (ACL) and our Inspection organisation (Estyn) to encourage the creation of “clubs” to cater for those adults who turn up, term after term and year after year, to do the same course because they enjoy it (how dare they!) and for whom it forms an essential part of their social life (how dare they have a social life too!).

 

By moving these kinds of people into self-motivated clubs it frees up the existing course provision for new attendees who, in future, may want to join another club…

 

Of course these clubs will need some support but in a different way from the discreet course provision.

 

Could be a good way to free up your sessions and also create groups of people who are more self-motivated in their learning/socialising and, therefore, may be of further supportive use to the museum in general.

 

What do you think? Would that work in your context?

 

E

 

 

 

 

Good afternoon,

 

I am wondering if some of you can offer me some help with a nice problem to have in a way. We are lucky enough to run a very popular monthly adult craft programme, which has been running for 2 ½ years. We have our regulars who are always keen to know what is coming up for the year and to book quite far in advance. We restricted this some time ago as places were getting booked up by regulars before being advertised to the wider public and we were getting complaints– I said that people could only book on once the session had been advertised. Our front of house team, who take the bookings, have had some complaints since from regulars wanting to book way in advance and who are disappointed if they don’t get a place one month. I appreciate the support of the regulars and don’t want to lose them but I also want to allow new people in. There is a limit of 15 people per session. I was considering releasing half of the tickets early for regulars and keeping half back for once the What’s On has gone out (this goes out every 2 months).

 

I am trialling Saturday sessions soon so this may ease the problem slightly. Even though we charge for the sessions, we subsidise them so I can’t put on lots more sessions to accommodate everyone.

 

Any suggestions on how best to manage this ‘problem’ would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thank you, kind regards,   

 

Kirsty

 

Kirsty Hall

Education Officer

Victoria Gallery & Museum

University of Liverpool

Ashton Street

Liverpool, L69 3DR

Tel: 0151 794 2348

 

www.vgm.liv.ac.uk

 

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