WEA courses

Start your journey of learning English with our Pre-Entry ESOL course, designed for beginners who are new to the English language. This course focuses on building foundational skills in a supportive and friendly environment.

The Cooking Practical: Intermediate enhances culinary skills through advanced techniques, global cuisines, and professional plating. Participants refine methods like braising, baking, and sauce-making while creating signature dishes and multi-course meals.The course fosters creativity, efficiency, and teamwork, preparing students to craft sophisticated, flavorful dishes with confidence.

For many prospective art students, the thought of learning to draw a portrait is quite daunting, in fact some would say it is their nemesis! However, challenging yourself to confront this can be incredibly rewarding. The first time you achieve something akin to a real, convincing likeness is quite thrilling, and rest assured, it is a taught skill. This course is structured so you will learn skills of proportion, perspective, line, tone, and colour and be able to clearly analyse requirements for the task. This course is for complete beginners and those looking to improve their skills and develop their own style.

Learning about Abstract Art is fascinating and rewarding. This course covers its evolution from 19th-century pioneers like JMW Turner to movements such as Impressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Modernism, and up to the 21st century. It also highlights lesser-known female artists who have been overlooked by the art world. Each lesson starts with an interactive visual presentation featuring these examples. You’ll learn and practice using various drawing and painting materials, including inks, chalk, oil pastels, watercolour, acrylic, collage, and mixed media. This course is suitable for complete beginners and those wanting to improve their skills and develop their own style.

Learning about Abstract Landscape Art is a fascinating and rewarding topic; it tracks an evolving story looking at different ages, from 19th Century innovators such as JMW Turner, through to Impressionism, Cubism, Futurism and Modernism in general, right up to the 21st Century. This course will also introduce you to some lesser known female artists who have been formerly neglected by the art establishment. Inspired by these examples, shown at the beginning of each lesson in an interactive visual presentation, we will develop skills in a range of drawing and painting media, including drawing inks, chalk and oil pastels, watercolour, acrylic, collage and mixed media. This course is for complete beginners and those looking to improve their skills and develop their own style.

In this – mostly European – survey, we will study some iconic buildings that came to define their respective periods in terms of ideas, styles, and techniques. A broad chronological progression will take us from the Gizeh Pyramid and Parthenon to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. Through this course, you will develop your ability to see and understand a building’s architectural features. For each example, you will study the way it is built, its style, and the relation between the building's form and it's purpose,or function

The last 50 years of the Ottoman Empire continues to drive current events and politics in Europe and the Middle East. In this course we consider the events, characters and forces that lead to its breakup including the modernisation attempts of the ‘Young Turk’ movement, the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, The Great War (including the Arab Revolt, the Armenian Genocide and the Turkish War of Independence. We finish by considering the rise of the new secular state of Turkey and the legacy of the Ottomans and why a century after its end the Ottoman Empire is still relevant throughout southeastern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.

This course will help you develop further watercolour techniques interrelated with drawing skills, and in connection with inspiring examples in art history. It will help you learn classical techniques in a subtle way, by relating them to examples by various masters of drawing and watercolour (such as Dürer, Turner or Cezanne) and contemporary artists (such as David Hockney or Anselm Kiefer). If you would like to have a fresh view of watercolour painting and drawing, and learn how to achieve expressivity by carefully combining techniques such as glazing, graded wash or cross-hatching, this course will offer you an overview and will inspire personal artworks of great subtlety and sensitivity It will also encourage you to create your own original artworks based on the techniques learned and it will bring a fresh perspective on known techniques and styles, if you have already practised them in your own paintings. You will need to bring your own materials, paints and paper along for this course. The tutor will let you know what to bring

Develop your speaking and listening skills with this non-accredited course. This English course is for speakers of other languages and is a face-to-face class in a local centre. This ESOL Speaking & Listening course helps people who want to inprove their basic English. It will help you gain confidence to communicate in everyday situations and be part of your community. What we will cover: - Asking for and giving basic personal details/information, asking for help, talking about likes, dislikes and feelings, and following instructions.

Ever heard of Makaton? It's a unique language programme, and over 100,000 people are using it to communicate in the UK today. It combines symbols, signs, and speech to make conversation easier for people who have communication difficulties. This Makaton course is ideal for you if you want to learn an inclusive communication tool. It can help you interact with people who have speech, hearing, or learning difficulties. This Makaton sign language course covers the essentials of hand signals, fingerspelling, and signing. Learn to introduce yourself. Develop knowledge to be able to sign about basic topics such as numbers and colours.