WEA courses

Develop your skills to draw with confidence in line, tone and form and create art inspired by objects around you.

Develop painting techniques inspired by historical and contemporary abstract artists.

Develop painting skills and colour mixing, inspired by the autumn landscapes around you.

Starting a blog is easier than you think. If you have ideas, tips, or recommendations to share, this short blogging course can teach you the essentials to get your blog online. This beginner’s blogging course covers essential lessons in both writing and setting up your blog. You’ll learn creative writing techniques to make your blogs engaging, and digital skills to make sure you can set up and maintain your site. This course is aimed at beginners, so don’t worry if this is new to you. This beginners blogging course covers the basics of launching a blog. Become familiar with the Content Management System (CMS) where you will upload your blog. You will also receive CMS training to teach you how to set up and maintain your website. Learn to publish and promote your blog.

You will learn core skills that boost your confidence, such as emailing files, creating letters, and designing posters. Building on the skills gained in Part 1, this course focuses primarily on Microsoft Word. You will master document formatting, efficient file management, and creative design techniques. By the end of the course, you will be proficient in using Word to produce professional documents, effectively communicate via email, and create visually appealing posters, ensuring you are well-prepared for various digital tasks. This course is funded by the West Midlands Combined Authority. Participants must live in Coventry Area Postcodes CV1 to CV6 inclusive.

Do you find it difficult to wind down? When we’re stressed it’s hard to feel calm and relaxed. But you don’t have to live with constant stress. There are simple techniques you can learn to manage it. This stress awareness course is helpful for anyone who wants to learn to alleviate stress. In this course we will learn how to identify stress risk factors, recognise the symptoms of stress, and apply techniques to reduce it. Depending on your needs, there are various study options after this course.

Show don’t tell – so often easier said than done – Just how does an idea turn into a script? How much info do I include in a script? Is it really more than just dialogue? In some ways writing a script requires a very different approach from the writer. We gain knowledge and understanding of the differing requirements of writing for the screen, both what works for TV and what approach is more cinematic, as well as writing for the radio. Radio, so often described as the ‘intimate’ medium, plays in a listener’s head offering scope for greater imagination and powerful emotional effect. We will also explore the creative process, just what is the correct format for each of these mediums, where to start, how to develop an idea into a script, allowing it to grow scene by scene (what even is ‘a scene’). The course will also cover writing/developing a TV series, comedy, writing for ‘soaps’ and feature some more general skills on developing story structure and character development of interest to any budding writer. With a mix of group and individual tasks, discussion, analysis of clips as examples, it is hoped that all will dabble and develop some writing whilst on the course. What makes a good script and what is a bad script? This is an informative and fun course, with some key first hand information, not to be missed.

Would you like to improve your core strength? This yoga course will help you to identify and locate the muscles that form the core, and help you to understand that a stronger core stabilises the spine and improves our balance. You will practice a range of accessible postures that help to build core strength in a safe way and also improve core muscle flexibility. Each session will focus on warming up safely for posture practice and a balanced range of postures that help to build core strength and flexibility. You will learn how breathing influences the muscles of the core. Each session will end with a relaxation.

Go behind the scenes of the Government Art Collection, a less well-known national art collection, with Chantal Condron, a former curator at the Collection. Discover the fascinating origins of its history, and the people and events that have shaped its past. Explore how and why artworks are acquired or commissioned and discover some of the locations where they have been displayed. We explore works across a range of media from paintings to film, by artists from the 16th to the 21st centuries, including Marcus Gheerhaerts the Younger, Thomas Phillips, Bridget Riley, Michael Armitage and recent Turner Prize winner, Jesse Darling.

The rural Wessex landscape since 1500 outlines the changes to the landscape of our region over the past 500 years, from the Dissolution of the Monasteries through the ‘Agricultural Revolution’, to the rise of modern agriculture and forestry. While the need to maintain food supply is paramount, the course will outline the impacts on both human society and on the loss of semi-natural habitats such as heathland, ancient woodland, and chalk grassland. There will be a case study of the New Forest that will explore the origins, management and habitats that are to be explored through the New Forest landscape.