Inspirational Spaces
St Mungo's is set up to house, support and care for vulnerable and excluded people who either have been, or are at risk of, sleeping rough and being homelessness.
The Inspirational Places project aimed to fund informal learning activities in 5 hostels across London. It also aimed to encourage clients on to further learning and into work, and build the capacity of St Mungo's staff and centres to work effectively with local learning providers.
Inspirational Places delivered a range of short learning programmes and taster sessions in 7 centres for homeless people. Short sessions included art and design (collage, relax and paint sessions, decoupage, art, jewellery making and magazine illustration); practical skills (cooking and healthy eating, team building, nail and beauty and aromatherapy for stress); physical fitness (yoga, fitness using the Wii, gym sessions, swimming, cycling and British Military Fitness outdoor sessions); and other creative skills (creative writing, reading, script writing and Literacy).
Longer programmes included digital skills, hairdressing, jewellery-making, clothes-making, basic do-it-yourself (DIY), cake decorating, cakes and patisserie, painting and decorating, and bike maintenance and mechanics, film clubs, discussion mornings, anger management, yoga and driving theory.
The project resulted in:
- 23 staff accessing Level 2 training on Skills for Life Awareness;
- 269 learners engaging with the project;
- 524 learning opportunities being made available; and
- 95 individuals progressed onto further learning, either within St Mungo's or externally.
Learning providers needed time to understand the problems involved with this client group so that they did not expect too much and get disillusioned. Initially there was some disappointment among providers with the numbers of clients attending sessions, whereas hostels were impressed with the response to their offer.
Engaging clients in planning is seen as crucial to the success of any activities. Sessions should not be run in isolation: there should always be an identified progression route for those who want to do more.
Finally, projects with big partnerships need plenty of time to develop.
Found In...
Resources
Inspirational Spaces Case Study 1
Inspirational Spaces Case Study 2
St. Mungo's Learning Platform
St Mungo's learning platform contains a number of project outcomes including a range of photographs taken during various sessions, lesson plans, schemes of work, and session resources.
Zero Dollar Laptop programme
An illustrated report on the Zero Dollar Laptop programme, where participants worked to recycle donated laptops and install Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) to build functioning media laptops.
