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from the WEA Kathleen Richardson you
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are an education coordinator this is your life how are you this morning I'm great this morning the Sun's shining I'm
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in Fife it's not like what's Dr like what's not to like okay so and you're sitting chatting with me what's even
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better isn't it oh dear right so tell me tell me what is the WEA really based
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what do you do and why does Kathleen like being there so much okay well that's quite
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uh-huh
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shouldn't name that's come under pressure many times um to change but we've stuck with it and
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because it's an important part of our our history I guess so we're 120 this
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year wow and that's partly why we've stuck with the name we started off
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um obviously 120 years ago as a new charity to bring educational
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experiences to Working Class People who didn't often get them and our first
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um operation in Scotland was in the big engineering works at springburn where
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lecturers from Glasgow University came out to to offer learning opportunities
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to the men that worked on those big engineering workshops so our mission is
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to bring adult learning opportunities high quality adult learning opportunities to people who wouldn't
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usually get them or who are disadvantaged in some way so is this a
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National Organization is it is faith-based do you tell me our national in fact we're International
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International e is an international Movement we have weas in Sweden and
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other European countries and African countries we are in in UK terms yep
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we're we're National we have colleagues South of the Border and we are the
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largest sector adult education provider okay
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where is the nearest office to us here but we have another few offices
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north south east and west Edinburgh Glasgow Aberdeen Inverness just what
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what you might expect how do people access you um we
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are we have a website people can email me at five at five
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at WEA dot AC dot UK
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um but we are a kind of integral part of the adult learning landscape
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um so a lot of our work is outward facing so I'm engaging with people all the time
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trying to make things happen and often or very often our workers in partnership
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with other volunteer organizations or other organizations in general who work very closely with the local Authority
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it's local Authority that gives a grant to to work in Fife and indeed in other
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parts of Scotland so yeah very good and in terms of numbers of of service users
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how many do you have in five years I don't I don't have a number for Fife
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but in Scotland in general wow okay and and I take it then these
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are people who are perhaps not in employment at this moment in time or is it a mix of the people who's already in
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employment they're just looking to expand their skills or Little Mix when I first started working for the wae a 20
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odd years ago half of our Learners were in the
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workplace going through a workplace and especially through Partnerships with trade unions is a good way to reach
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people and if you offer learning in a person's workplace that takes away a barrier to
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participation they don't need to go anywhere no it's true enough absolutely so we would normally aim our
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provisioning in workplaces at people who are unlooked or skilled posts to
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give them opportunities to return to learning or to to come back to learning
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after having left school however long ago that was and and
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Faith Kettle produce one of the places so there are large employers you know
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and a lot of their Workforce don't have English as their first language so as an
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organization we've we've gone in and engaged with that employer to to see
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what those folks learning needs where and to take learning into the workplace and how successful is that being do you
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have benchmarks do you know how do you gauge how well you've done there we
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get to where we've done by having a very robust system of
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taking feedback from Learners we we are an sqe Center and we can offer sqa
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qualifications that's not always what people are looking for they're looking
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for maybe other things they're looking for a a way to meet other people
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um to do stuff that interests them and all the benefits that flow from
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participating in learning then around about mental health well-being people do
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do qualifications but probably less often yeah and it's an assessment process whereby you can say yet they
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have passed this we've we've we've succeeded we've managed after if they're doing
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then our approach to adult learning is to engage with people to ask them what they
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want to learn now that will make a difference to them and we come up with a curriculum to meet that need so you can
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custom build it we custom build most of what we do and and that way then adult
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Learners are very active participants in their own learning process okay they're
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setting their own goals their benchmarking their own work their reviewing and assessing where they're at
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if they've made the progress that they want to make and then adding to those learning goals so that they
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at the end of the day are feeling like they have got what they wanted out of
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the landline because they've set their own goals I think that's a good thing yeah absolutely and and what kind of person
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is fascinating for me because I love I mean lifelong learning is something that everybody should do and particularly
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when you get to a retirement age as well it's not just for the workforce so are you age limited no
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adult service or age Limited in that we relationship with people with people's team over 16. okay so
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somebody who's still working at say 75 kids or do they have to be working or could they just come along
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but we're offering have any eligibility criteria at all apart from being over 16. an awful lot of people are having to
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work longer and longer and longer before they can retire or take the pension so and I'm seeing just from talking to
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people in general that a number of people are getting into the kind of mid 50s and from there they decide they want
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a clear change so it's not something completely different to what they were doing before to carry them through into
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the retirement are you finding that as well with the wa I guess so yeah we're aware obviously
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that people are are working longer and and the other interesting thing about
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the W that I haven't mentioned yet is that we're a membership organization ah okay and
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I think it's fair to say that a lot of our members are
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venerable so a lot of our membership are are from
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that core people who have already retired and they organize their own
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learning programs and we can support them to do that so yeah
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and here's another maybe sounds like a bit of a Daft question but some of the people that you've helped by by training
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by teaching whatever you call or whatever they're looking for do they then go on and become volunteers to help
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you or your organization over and above that sometimes happens we we do
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of um of things that's more developed have got volunteers that come into to
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classrooms to help we've done a bit of it in Scotland but not so much okay we
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had a partnership with Lloyd's banking group for a while and they were sending
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volunteers members of staff and and some of them
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were coming into some of our classes to be an extra pair of hands to help and some of our English for speakers of
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other language classes for example okay so your English teachers for example teaching
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um people who where English isn't the first or their mother language are they qualified teachers yes yep
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in order to teach for speakers of other languages
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we have to have Focus Delta qualified or
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equivalent Okay so our teaching staff are mostly sessional
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workers but yes they they do have to have suitable qualifications and experience to work with us
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all sounds very interesting I'm going to ask you in a little minute about what kind of courses you're going to to
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um offer but why don't I have some more music yes and I am with Kathleen Richardson here from
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the WEA and we've been chatting about all things community based around about adult learning or adult education
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Kathleen tell me where do you get your funding from because I know you said you were like a voluntary organization you're a not-for-profit organization
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where do you get your funding we get a Core Grant from the local
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Authority from Faith Council to do our community-based learning work
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um and at the moment we've also got additional funding rooted through faith
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Council from UK government okay in general big big stuff unusual yes it's
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it's a big pot of money as part of the the leveling up agenda okay people will
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have may have heard about yeah um so every local Authority in Scotland
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has got some of this money and they've called it multiply because it's around about numeracy so they've gone for a a
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number pond in the name so yeah over the next two years so the
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funding lasts until 2025 we're hoping to engage people and learning roundabout
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numbers so not the easiest sale in the world definitely not who who liked math
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did you like maths at school well actually I did okay but
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um I wouldn't have said it was my favorite no so when you're talking about numeracy skills what just give us a give us an
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idea well numbers are everywhere aren't they absolutely you can't cook Cube under seven there's a nice number
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indeed but there's there's numbers associated
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with absolutely everything how could you buy a mobile phone how could you work
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out your weekly budget how would you know how much money to spend on food how would you know how to interpret your
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electricity bill oh yeah would you um cook a recipe
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how would you understand health information food labels numbers are absolutely everywhere
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so how to just tell me more about this tell me how you you structure a course
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around numeracy so what what we've tried to do and the basis of our funding is to
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try to encourage people to be more positive about numbers because they are
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everywhere and we do need to use them in life in order to get bad but isn't that like when you know when when the kids
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were young and you you gotten debake with you for example and you say to them okay here you can you can measure out
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the flower we need five ounces of flour are these not sort of basic skills that people get anyway boys and girls these
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days they are yes but am I talking exercise and it should be kilos just goes to show
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my age doesn't it well and you still talk about
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depends on your Edge and so I still talk about I still talk about Imperial measurements young people
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talk about centimeters and meters kilometers but anyway yeah we've still
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got we've still got a relationship with Imperial measures really in the UK having me but
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there's an interesting and the reason that this funding has come about is because we do have a particular problem
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with our attitude and our number of skills in the UK okay in fact
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just before I came in I checked on some statistics about how young people in
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particular School pupils feel about numbers and 44 of them feel anxious
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about numbers wow that was a large scale study that was done published in 2022
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um with 6500 school children surveys and 44 of
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them don't feel good about numbers so they're leaving school and they're
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not numerate the the
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say so would that be a problem that's actually should be addressed in schools rather than when they get to adult age
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and left school well if you want to change things you
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need to you need to approach it from every angle don't you because the people
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if we only look at pupils or we only look at adults then there's going to be people left out of
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that scenario so everybody that's left school with those attitudes would be our
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job to try and engage with and but as they are trying to attack a lot in schools I mean that's not my area of
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education but the Arabs that's why they did the survey was to to get to grips
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with those attitudes and to try to encourage
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a growth mindset or a positive mindset to use in numbers
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I mean I guess if we go back okay let's go back 50 60 years I don't know let's
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go back a long time maybe not even that long ago maybe 40 years
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people were using checkbooks and you had a method of accounting there and there and at your fingertips people were using
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cash more than anything else credit cards weren't really in common use debit
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cards were saying nowadays kids are using their phone to bloom and roll tap for a bag of crisps attack shop you know
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so how and I guess there's arguments that you have much more access to the numbers on
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your mobile phones and your iPads your laptops whatever else you're using but how is that translating then into the
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people that you're seeing coming in front of you well the technology has
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it hasn't okay and if you don't have a positive attitude like the study I've only told you one aspect yeah the study
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the the the study looked into all sorts of things and they looked at gender in
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terms of how girls feel about it compared to how boys feel about it and is it a big bias there
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there's not a huge one but what the girls seem to according to the study give up
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quicker if they come across something that they find difficult they give up faster really that's the same it's the
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same thing for it are we a bit faster than boys but I mean boys do the same thing if they come across something that's difficult they give up quickly
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if they have a difficult mathematical problem to solve and how do you get around that at the wee how do you get
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that across to a student one of the things as I said previously
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you're going to change an attitude like that you're not going to do it overnight no so but one of the things that we
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would be doing if you think about what I was saying before is that we are putting adults in charge
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of their own learning so they tell us what they want to learn so that's empowering
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we're offering things that are about everyday life so we're embedding numbers
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and other things to give them a context context is important to help people to
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feel that this is Meaningful for them this is something that will make a difference to them their life their
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confidence and the other thing is is attitudinal so it's about
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making more people aware that there is a lot of discomfort around
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numbers and people will very quickly tell you they're not a numbers person or they're not are they're not a mass
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person they were never good at it that's not how their brain works but there's no real evidence to back her up that you've
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got a mass person and a non-mass person obviously you and I of course we're
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going to Chow fear and we realized we've both got kids about the same age uh and
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they're now in their 20s the maths that the kids were getting every children were getting going through High School
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completely different to the maths that you and I got at school yes why is that changed the way that well one of the
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reasons that's changed is on the education system and things come
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in fads and they come and go don't they but one of the biggest changes to how maths and number skills is taught in the
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skills to do with their curriculum for excellence so you know chimney sums that
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that you and I did they don't do things like that and and
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one of the things they're trying to do is to take a problem-solven approach to to a number problems
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um and so that those skills are embedded and understood and it's not it's not
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rote learning you would have you would fall into timetables in the same way
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that I did Route learning and that's not that's not prevalent anymore so that um
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so one of the things that we've got an issue with as that parents who are trying to help their
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children with her homework don't understand how it's done anymore and then World War III breaks out doesn't it
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yeah absolutely no genuine that's exactly what happens true story so
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and to the point where you know I know that I've had to Fork out for math tutors outside of school to be able to
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help get um some of the information registered with my particular child lover as I do
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who is now in stem and you know very proud of that women and stem we need to get more off them let's face it however
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um you know again it takes back now actually I do wonder where are the feelings through to the start we're to the end because when you're a child when
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you're four or five years old you're playing shoppies and you're playing and we all had the plastic money or you play
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a game of Monopoly and you learn how to deal with hundreds of thousands of pounds in Park Lane or whatever you know
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but how how simplified are these courses are you making or how difficult are you
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making them for people well hopefully
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making them at the right level so going back to what I was saying before about
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um the number of skills been embedded on enough things usually and one of the
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things we're offering is supporting your children's numeracy okay so that we're trying to demystify
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some of the different ways in which number skills are taught now so that parents are on the same page as their
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child and feel empowered to help them when they come home with homework yeah that their parents are unfamiliar with
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so that's one of the courses that we're offering that's supporting your children's new medicine and embedded in
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that but also standing alone is what we were calling maths anxiety
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because it's a it's a thing and what one of the important things
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about learning is your attitude to learning isn't it and one of the kind of
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key planks of of any education is creating a safe and welcoming
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environment for people to learn them because if you are anxious
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your your human body is made up in such a way that your higher functions don't
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work if you're flooded with adrenaline so if you're anxious and scared you
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basically can't learn yeah absolutely you know I heart back where I think back just as you're talking there too my own
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University experiences and you you you don't you know you start there's a fresher and you are daunted by all of
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the coursework that you think you're going to be labeled with for the next you know four years
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but then you have fun and learning with fun is always going to be an easier way to learn than not how
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are you guys making it fun for people I'm intrigued by how you you go about doing all of this do people come into
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classes at like night classes or is it online learning or and how do you interact with the fun how do you make
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that happen it's a mixture of things
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we'll do and all try to do in all educational settings is um particularly important in
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community-based adult learning because we're trying to attract people who maybe didn't have a good relationship
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experience as well so the the relationship with their Twitter is important so their Twitter is a partner
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in their learning uh where we are adults come along with
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their own experiences we're not filling up empty vessels our Learners now tutors
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are Partners so it's on a one-to-one basis it's not it tends group how many in a group roughly so
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okay so 12 maybe not overly daunting for somebody to join in no and but you're
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not going to get six to ten adults all at the same level of need or or you know
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efficacy within that group how does the tutor manage to bounce that out
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that's that's just one of the skills of being a tutor um we try to make sure before people
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come in and probably I would be speaking to them to make sure and letting them
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know what they would probably be doing and not letting them make a choice about whether it's the right thing for them yeah but if we do happen to have people
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who are at slightly different levels then literature can the same with most
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things that you took and differentiate about if somebody needs a bit more of something or a bit less of something mature can definitely okay do you know
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I'm gonna I know that your career has been based around education you've worked with the European University as
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well as as this but what actual role do you take at the WEA
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I take an organizing role I don't haven't done any teaching for a long time
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and so it's my job to look after tutors
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recruit the right tutors publicize courses engage with organizations and
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Learners to try to form new Partnerships and to make learning happen and are you
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going into workplaces say for example with the numeracy the multiplier or whatever the multiplied that's the word multiply
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so are you taking that to employers and saying do you have you know employees
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that need these skills yes uh one of the meetings I had
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earlier in the week was with um with a member of Staff in the NHS
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who's going to be taking the idea of offering numeracy-based courses to people who
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work in the NHS and in grades too and blue and that just happened this
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week yeah okay who pays for all it's if I wanted to
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join money view courses for example do I have to pay the WEA no do I have to be a
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member of the WEA don't you don't have to be and you don't have to pay our courses are offered free at the point of
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views but just like the NHS that's what we use our grant from the local authority to do is to pay for the staff
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and the and the educational staff to do the actual course delivery and what kind of hours
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actually I've got a million questions for you you're going to be feeding me but when do these courses take place is
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it daytime is evening you can add some extra uh one of the ways in which you
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make learning accessible is to vary the times of
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participate um so some of our learning takes place online we use a virtual learning
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environment called canvas that itchy and Fe providers use as well it's it's a
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well used and and respected virtual learning environments so some of our learning
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takes place through that it's mostly face to face I have to say and local communities but we do have that learn
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and environment to fall back on and think when things like pandemics yes
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indeed absolutely and and of course we've now got this situation where enough a lot of students are graduating don't even know if
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they've if they have passed their exams or not that's quite a shocking thing and
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I take it that's not spilled over into your world no no no as an sqa Center we
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we are responsible for our own internal verification systems so there hasn't
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really been a spillover and what kind of community set up so if
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the course do you advertise them on in the local paper do you say you know come along to cowdenbeath's Community Hall at
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12 o'clock or no whatever does that happen or what do you do we use
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um this book and and Twitter we use our own network so quite well connected so we go
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to meetings with Community Learning Partners so folk and
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the local Authority who are Community Education people where we're around
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strategic tables so we use those networks to advertise our courses we use Facebook
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um I don't think we've used any newspaper advertisements Does anybody read newspapers again I don't know that's a
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thing isn't it um I'm quite sure they do I don't want to be putting people like pick journalists their jobs
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so and and do you have your website what how do we access the website what is it
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www.wea .org dot UK okay or if somebody used to
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Google adult learning would they come up with you I would like Tinley woods but I couldn't
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actually 100 swear to that and the the other thing that worth noting is that the
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the website is new and Scotland's not included in it yet and they do
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so it's limited usefulness at the moment okay yeah why actually I'm only asking
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why why is it not on there yet just because that's the way that they've staged it we've we're not in scope yet
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for a big um digital change that's that's how long is that going to take we'll come in
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I think it's due to start in the autumn in the Autumn of 2023 but your funding
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only goes to 2025 and that really makes your type it's a tight so how long are the courses running for is that six week
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course an eight-week course yes yep can be one-offs it can be six to eight weeks
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it just depends and what other funding have you got coming in is there anything coming in the back door behind that not at the
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moment we've got the Grant from the local Authority and we've got this UK
29:29
government money coming through the multiply at times when we're doing a
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special projects or whatever we do sometimes get money from the Heritage Lottery funds or some of the other
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trusts but we're not holding anything like that at the moment okay so let's we
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have been chatting about the WEA which is the workers Education Association and
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all the courses that are being offered in around five Kathleen we had a quick chat there about some of the other stuff
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you're doing and I tried to I mean I love learning honestly I'd be a Perpetual student if the you know if I
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could afford it but um you've got a creative writing and journaling course going on in Valleyfield how long does
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that course last is it does it just go on and on and on and on and on and on and on what happens like me on
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[Laughter] yeah talking to one of my hobbies but we
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need to get you on the radio yeah I don't know if people want to hear it but anyway and do sometimes see their
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eyes glazing or try to take a hint but anyway um yeah and Valleyfield that started off we
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did we did our kind of open day we did some tasters of what was on offer and
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people wanted to do journaling and creative writing so that started in June
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and it's it's run for a six week period so it's now going to refresh and run for
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another six week period and every time it refreshes we'll open it up to new people to come in and join us
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um and we won't go forever but we'll certainly go long enough that people feel that they've
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they've embedded the skills that they need to probably carry on writing and
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journaling journaling is that just a post word for writing your diary it is
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can take all sorts of forms not everybody yeah I mean today podcasts and
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blogs and blogs but you also get things more of an act an Arty nature that you can do
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some people do it like a sort of scrapbooking thing so people do a mixture some people do
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um they draw their feelings or they paint them or whatever there's there's a
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sort of straight writing approach that you can take to Drumline but there's all sorts of other things that you can do so
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if there's any bidding that um Samuel peeps out there in Valley View they've got to get in touch but that was that
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question I had in the back of my mind here was so say for example so I don't live in Valleyfield but if I wanted to
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join that club could I or do I have to live in that area you
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level if there was interest somewhere else then I would run it somewhere else yeah inclusion of people wanting it okay
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so there's a little hint for our listener if if you and a few of your pals want to set up a group or a course
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then uh you're gonna need six people give Kathleen a ring give it a shout and
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I know that one of your particular favorites is you have a local history Discussion Group where are they based
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they're in concordance ah okay and that's uh that's a very interesting me
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group that I go to I go myself partly because I'm interested in public to help them get off the ground and find
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what direction they want to go in so there's in that Community it's a
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relatively small community but a really historic important one
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um at one time there were I think they're telling me something like 30 coal mines in their surrounding area wow
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yeah and it's also where the first commercial distilling happened in
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Scotland with egg distillers it's very interesting for all sorts of
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reasons where it is on Fourth the concordum bridge there's all sorts and they have any
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Community they are a massive Archive of historical documents and photographs
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some of it's to do in the church some of it's just photographs of people and places and show-ups and and whatever
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this archive would fill this room if the listeners can't see what sizes it's
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massive this room it's absolutely huge it's enormous but anyway
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the archive would fill the space easily really yes and so
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that's the basis on what the discussion group started really and that there's this Rich seam of local history there
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so what I've added to Twitter into that group who is also as well as being an adult
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learning tutor has done a course in filmmaking what's a film about people's
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reminiscencies or important facts about
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um okay and so you're in a film so I happen to know there's a couple of film studios
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one I said you've got one you've got directors that have Studios over in invercating but then you've got some
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other big studios now um just outside cumbernauld isn't it are you using one of them or have you gone
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somewhere else no no no it will be small scale low-key okay the tutor himself has got the equipment
34:57
that he needs to edit the film he's got the equipment to so you're going to be in the Telly as well as the radio oh no
35:02
I don't think why not because I'm from the other side of the fourth after I don't know I can
35:09
participate I'll just have to be an interested bystander Kathleen has been
35:15
really wonderful talking to you today it really has and I hope that people have had a good insight into what you do the
35:21
WEA um just to remind people again
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