In The Loop – August 2020

We are expecting all Autumn term courses to be available to book by the end of August. There is a great programme with over 170 courses to choose from. We will be issuing another ‘in the loop’ very soon with final details of when courses go live!

I do appreciate this is unusually close to the start of term for us but I can assure you we are pulling out all the stops to get the information on ASAP.

Some courses will run at Stoke Lodge with reduced numbers and some will continue to run online.
Autumn term courses start from Monday 14^th September.

When booking opens the easiest way to book a place will be through our online booking system.
Top tips for booking online:

• Set up an account and keep your password somewhere safe.
• If you have enrolled before and given us your email but never enrolled online, you will have an existing account and will need to request a password reset to sign in on our booking page.
• Accounts are individual – so if you and your partner usually book together make sure you both have an account (you will each need a separate email address). You can’t book 2 places with one account.
• When you get to the online booking page log in and this will allow you to enrol and put courses in your basket.
• When you pay for your courses you should receive 2 email confirmations. One confirming your payment has been taken and a second (and most important!) confirming your place on the course and course details.

If you want to find out more about online learning we have a couple of 2 day ‘Zoom for beginners’ courses running on the 8^th and 10^th of September. You can find them here.

Online Gallery

Over the past few weeks Art tutors have been busy collecting and collating some fantastic examples of learners painting and drawing for display in our first ever online gallery.

A huge THANK YOU to all the learners who have provided photographs of their amazing work.

A big thanks also to Laurel, Jenny, Roma, Bill, Sheila, Frances, Christine, Mary and Veronique for all their efforts to make this happen.

To view our first ever online exhibition, click here.

I am sure you will agree the quality of the work on display is phenomenal!

Health and Safety

Although some of our courses will remain online to allow for reduced numbers on site, we are delighted to be able to welcome back some of our classes in person this Autumn.
We have been working hard to make sure we have all the necessary arrangement in place to keep everyone safe.

What have we been doing:

• All our risk assessments and arrangements have been consulted with and signed off by Bristol City Council’s Health and Safety team as ‘Covid Secure’.
• We have additional cleaning and sanitising arrangements in place at Stoke Lodge.
• Our classrooms have reduced numbers and have been arranged to ensure the best possible social distancing with all learners at individual tables, at least 1.5 metres apart and no ‘face to face’ layouts.
• Each classroom has a sanitising station with hand gel and sanitising supplies.
• Our tutors will be provided with a visor, which they will use where social distancing is not possible.  Learners are encouraged to wear masks when moving around the centre and have a mask available for use in class if required.

We will continue to amend and review arrangements should advice change to ensure our environment is as safe as possible in these challenging times.

And finally….

Bristol Life Magazine awards – we are a finalist!

Just before lockdown kicked in we received notification that Bristol Adult Learning had been shortlisted as a finalist for the Bristol Life Magazine 2020 Education Award. The initial event had to be cancelled, but this week I received an update to say a virtual event is planned for 17 September at 7.30pm.

There are 8 wonderful nominees with us in the Education category. You can see all the finalists here www.bristollifeawards.co.uk/2020-finalists/

We all know it’s not about fancy awards and the most important thing to us is you, our learners and your experiences on our courses. That said, it is still very nice to be recognised as a valued education provider in Bristol.

Whatever happens the whole team of tutors and staff here are amazing and I am personally very proud to be part of such a fantastic group of people.

For now we’ll keep our fingers crossed and feel very honoured to have reached the final shortlist!

As always take care and stay safe, we look forward to seeing many of you again very soon.

Kind regards
Jenny