All Ways Learning (AWL) was selected by the Arts Council of England to form one of nine regional artform-based pilot services for its national Continuing Professional Development (CPD) network, explains Rob Marshall.
What this offers is a series of doors, which give national access to advice and guidance for professional development in the arts. Because All Ways Learning is linked to the national CreativePeople network, it is not so much a one-stop shop as a regional gateway to a wealth of countrywide practical learning activities.
The philosophy sustaining the AWL partnership is that CPD for those with a management role in the arts extends a long way beyond any narrow emphasis on training. In the AWL partnership we talk about managing ourselves, managing a business and managing others, so that we can build a mutually supportive learning community that invests in the expertise we share as arts professionals. Using our collective skills and knowledge we offer a specialist CPD service to arts practitioners, managers and administrators living and working in South East Arts and Southern Arts regions.
AWL has six integrated strands: advocacy and profile for learning and a calendar of learning activities; delivery of learning activities and bursaries; skills workshops and action research; information and advice resources and website-based self-managed guidance; learning advisers and guides; and the development of a learning community.
Already we?ve delivered ?Walk in Other Worlds?, a programme of integrated and shared learning for managers in the arts and business sectors, run by Arts & Business South. The first AWL Learning Fair at the University of Sussex in November provided free one-to-one advice, literature and publications through a variety of information stands, as well as seminars and skills up-date workshops. This month we are launching the First National Programme, an accredited training programme for arts managers; and we?re also running Public Engagement, a programme of CPD activities involved with sharing and promoting best practice, focused on artists and arts managers working in the public sphere. Action research strands cover such areas as effective networks, management models and learning styles and communities, which will produce resource materials. Also underway are fourteen learning resource centres, established arts managers training as learning advisers and guides, a series of short courses through the Independent Theatre Council and a number of individual bursaries.
Rob Marshall is Business and Training Officer for South East Arts. For more information about All Ways Learning t:01425 489800 e: roger@allwayslearning.org.uk, w: http://www.allwayslearning.org.uk
The next AWL Learning Fair is on May 1, at The Centre in Slough.