WEA courses

Improve your English speaking and listening skills with our English Conversation Class. Engage in interactive discussions and activities to build confidence in everyday communication. Ideal for non-native speakers looking to enhance their conversational English.

This five week course will explore the richness and diversity of the English painter, Stanley Spencer. We will discover both well-known and less well-known works of his, which span his career as an artist. All of the paintings examined will be provided on Canvas for you to assess. The course will explore Spencer's context and how he relates to contemporary art movements in Britain and Europe. You will be encouraged to participate fully in the analysis of his canvases, and to seek out other works which you think will enrich our discussions. The course will be an opportunity to discover Spencer for the first time or to rediscover him, and to evaluate his importance to the English tradition.

Advance your printing skills with our Advanced-Autumn Printing course. Learn sophisticated printing techniques and create detailed, autumn-themed artworks. Ideal for individuals with some printing experience looking to refine their skills.

An introduction to practical drawing and watercolour covering landscape and natural forms, changing through the seasons. Working with a variety of drawing materials and watercolours, we will look at artists who work with a range of techniques and create art inspired by or in the style of an artist or a particular art movement. This course is taught online. You will need to get your own art materials for this course and participate in the sessions by creating practical artwork, upload your artwork and discuss with other learners. A list of art materials needed will be on your Canvas course. This is a 10 Session course.

This course is funded by North East Combined Authority.

Come and join an enthusiastic group of creative crafters who, along with an experienced tutor will strive to unlock their creativity in this hands-on craft course. On this course you will be guided to see your scraps differently and see the craft potential of things you would normally throw away. Whatever paper-craft you are into each session of this course aims to unleash your creativity as you repurpose materials from your stash into pockets, embellishments, handmade cards, and ephemera pieces. For this course you will need minimal supplies and a full list will be available on Canvas but to get started it would be helpful to have some of the following: Assorted paper – plain and patterned and coloured cardstock Scissors Glue sticks, wet glue, adhesive tape. Old books / magazines Buttons, ribbons beads, die cut shapes.

Unlock the full potential of your air fryer with our comprehensive 5-week course designed for beginners and those with some basic experience. Our Air Fryer Cooking course goes beyond simple recipes, teaching you to create delicious and nutritious meals with ease. Each weekly session will be packed with hands-on demonstrations, expert tips, and insights into the health benefits of using fresh ingredients and spices. You will gain a thorough understanding of air fryer functionalities and features. You will overcome common limitations and expand your air fryer cooking repertoire and develop confidence in creating nutritious meals that go beyond the basics.

Practice techniques for creating short stories, true or untrue. We'll apply the principles of short fiction to our writing, with the focus this term on thinking about how point-of-view impacts on structure. There will be writing exercises, discussions, an optional weekly homework task and feedback. Guidance on feedback techniques will be provided. The course content has flexibility, and will be adapted to suit the needs of the group. Suitable for improvers. This course uses the same content as the Friday morning course, Creative Writing: Point-of-View, and the Thursday morning fortnightly course, Creative Writing: Point-of-View, therefore you need only enrol on to one of them.

Discover for the first time, or re-visit an old favourite, this course will introduce you to a wide range of artworks from the national collection of Tate Britain in London. We explore specific works by historical, modern and contemporary artists in relation to wider cultural and social contexts. The aim of the course is to develop confidence and visual literacy skills when looking at and discussing art in London’s galleries. On this course, we examine work by prominent artists as diverse as Anthony Van Dyck, Joan Carlile, William Blake, JMW Turner, the Pre-Raphaelites, Gwen John, Mona Hatoum and Mike Kelly.

What happens when an author decides to ‘keep it brief’? How does writing in shorter forms affect their decisions? How much is a shorter text an act of creative play, and how much an act of deliberate restraint? In this course we will be focusing primarily on the short story and its development: to do this, we will be working on tales from 'The Penguin Book of the British Short Story from Daniel Defoe to John Buchan'. We shall also be reading together shorter verse forms and reflecting on their power, their concision and the skills required to write with fewer words. This is a progression/advanced course.