Creative & Cultural Learning

Creative & cultural learning Adult learning

What will you discover?

ACLESSEX.COM 0345 603 7635

Improving lives through learning

Creative & cultural learning Want to learn a new skill, simply fine-tune your talents, or enhance your career prospects in the creative industry? We offer the opportunity to discover the wonderful world of traditional crafts, explore new ways to be environmentally friendly with our thrift crafts, and develop your skills with others in a range of intriguing subject areas.

Learn a foreign language, get creative or cultural, or be inspired to take up a new hobby!

You will receive expert support and guidance from our tutors throughout your course as you unlock your hidden talents. You will also get the chance to meet people who share your ambitions.

Visit our website to see feedback from our current learners and view collections of their fantastic work in our galleries.

We can’t offer all of this curriculum online, so please sign up to our newsletter for up to date information on classroom courses as we add them.

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There is so much to discover!

• Art • British Sign Language (BSL), • • • • • • • • • • •

Deaf Awareness, Lip Reading and Makaton Cookery Creative Media Creative Writing Foreign Languages History & Philosophy Learn at your Leisure (free online courses) Music Photography Thrift Crafts Traditional Crafts Creative Qualifications

Basildon Craft Studios Unleash your Artisan Skills at our specialist Basildon Craft Studios.

They are courses worth travelling for! Courses start from beginners to qualifications meaning you can turn your passion into a career.

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Improve your wellbeing with

Arts & Crafts Research shows that participating in creative arts and craft activities can improve your mental health and wellbeing, reduce stress and help you regain focus in an often challenging world.

We have lots of interesting Art & Crafts courses starting all year round. Found out more and enrol on a course by visiting our website:

aclessex.com

Increases happiness and reduces anxiety When your mind is focused on a task or activity, it is less likely to be focusing on the things that cause you stress and anxiety in day-to-day life.

According to BUPA, “Repetitive activities like drawing, knitting and painting can help to flood your brain with dopamine, the feel-good chemical that helps to motivate us.”

Engage with others Some of the most common feedback we get from learners is that our courses have enabled them to meet like-minded people and make friends for life. Being surrounded by people who share a common passion and encourage your creativity, enables you to connect with people and form relationships.

The social element of our creative classes is also very important for some of our learners. Whether it’s an online class or in one of our centres, being able to communicate and engage with people reduces isolation and loneliness.

Increases creative confidence and self-esteem One of the reasons that many of us don’t take part in creative activities is because we feel we lack artistic flare. But that’s not true! We all have creativity within us, and our tutors will encourage you to embrace your own artistic styles and create artwork that showcases the artist within.

Having never taken a course like this before, I was unsure if I could keep up, but I shouldn’t have worried.

Everything is explained thoroughly, and nothing is rushed. It’s been great to be able to develop my skills and perfect techniques that I wouldn’t have attempted before. Being part of a class where everyone has similar interests has done so much to inspire me and keep me motivated to push myself with projects. I would recommend the course to anyone with an interest in sewing. It has completely exceeded my expectations and I have enjoyed every minute of it!

I really enjoyed this course and would thoroughly recommend it to anyone who would like to develop their creativeness.

TESTIMONIALS Before starting my pottery course, I believed that I wasn’t an artistic person. For the first few weeks, I would criticise my own work and pick faults in it. But week after week, the encouragement and compliments from other learners changed my opinion I had on my own artistic talents. I learned to embrace my work and appreciate my own individual style.

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ART We offer a comprehensive range of art, drawing and painting courses. You’ll discover new and exciting skills whilst exploring your creative side and sharing inspirational moments with others.

Our Fine Arts courses develop a broad range of transferable skills and knowledge that support creative thinking, collaboration, communication, resilience, creative problem solving along with a heightened awareness of looking at and seeing the environment.

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Acrylic Painting Drawing & Painting Botanical Drawing Drawing for the Terrified Figure Painting History and Appreciation Oil Painting Painting Pets Pastel and Mixed Media Portrait Drawing Print Making

• Watercolour Painting

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www.aclessex.com

British Sign Language (BSL), , Deaf Awareness Lip Reading and Makaton We offer courses that help you to develop essential communication skills and new languages.

These can be used to connect with people in the community, and support those with communication difficulties, by providing a way for them to express themselves independently.

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BSL Makaton Deaf awareness Lip Reading (new to our offer this year)

COOKERY Learn about foods for healing, health and immunity, and how to make good food choices including seasonal, local foods, to enjoy a healthy balanced diet to feel and live well. We also offer cooking courses where you can explore different cultures and their traditional cuisine.

• Indian • Super foods

CREATIVE MEDIA Enter the exciting world of creative media where you can develop skills in using a broad range of online and offline tools. Whether you want to make the most of social media, blogging or learn about the gaming industry, we cover the basics for you to take that initial step.

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Art blogging Board game design Video editing Drones reality Photography and photo editing

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creative writing Release your inner wordsmith and convert your ideas into readable and interesting fiction with our creative writing courses. We have a fantastic range of courses including:

• Beginners • Advanced • Improvers

FOREIGN LANGUAGES We offer a range of language courses, whether you’re learning for fun, holidays or work, begin learning today.

Improve your vocabulary in a range of languages with help from our professional tutors.

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French German Greek Italian Spanish

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HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY Our History and Philosophy courses offer you the chance to discover a range of interesting subjects including, meeting your ancestors, local history and those big questions around what makes us human there are lots of fascinating courses to choose from offered at various times in the year.

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www.aclessex.com

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Meeting your ancestors Philosophy of mind Political philosophy Reading old handwriting Recording oral history

MUSIC

PHOTOGRAPHY

Explore your musical talents with our range of music courses including guitar, keyboard and saxophone from complete beginners to improving performance.

Discover life through the lens developing new and exciting skills whilst exploring your creative side and sharing inspirational moments with others.

Our music appreciation courses provide a grounding in the theory and appreciation of music, with a focus on attentive listening and breaking down music. Or why not try some composition with poetry and song.

We have a fantastic range of courses including: Photography and Photo Editing courses from complete beginners to advanced studies that will take you away from the manual setting into a whole new world.

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Guitar Keyboard Poetry and song Saxophone Music Appreciation

Creative photography Fine art photography Video editing Photography: Composition

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AFTS TRADITIONAL CR Discover the wonderful world of sustainable thrift crafts that have undergone a significant makeover throughout recent times.

There is a huge joy in producing hand crafted objects, each with a unique quality that harks back to a previous era steeped in nostalgia.

The wider benefits of crafting include developing and maintaining high manual dexterity, gaining understanding of design and creating something from raw, basic materials either for personal use, as gifts or to sell and gain new income.

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Floristry Model Aviation Pottery Print Making Silversmithing Stained Glass Woodturning Woodworking

THRIFT CRAFTS Start making a difference to our environment by engaging in a thrift craft where we focus on recycling, re-purposing and repairing to give old items a new lease of life.

Raw materials are becoming more precious and therefore making use of what you already own to produce a beautiful craft object is more relevant than ever before. The benefits are far reaching including reducing objects going to landfill, keeping resource costs in producing crafts low, personal wellbeing in making a difference to the sustainability of our planet, raising awareness of ecology and the small steps everyone can take to conserve.

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www.aclessex.com

Applique Art Silk Painting Embroidery Fashion Clothes Making Floristry Textiles Upholstery

AT N R A E L ISURE E L R U YO adult learning FREE online sessions to help you learn new

skills and inspire you. Learn something new at a time that suits you!

ACLESSEX.COM/LEARN-AT-YOUR-LEISURE

ATIONS IC IF L A U Q E IV T A CRE We offer accredited creative courses for people looking to turn their passion into a career. From floristry to woodworking, you will learn a range of skills and gain a recognised qualification to progress in your career or to set up your own business.

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Art & Design Comic Art Floristry Silversmithing Fashion & Textiles Photography Woodwork 11

How to enrol Once you have chosen your course/s, you can either enrol on our website or by phone.

1. Online Visit www.aclessex.com and create an account. You can then either search for the course title using the search box or browse our website.

Once the course has been selected, you will be asked to fill out an enrolment form (non-qualification) or asked to enrol onto an assessment session (qualification).

2. PHONE Call 0345 603 7635 and you will be put through to a member of our customer service team. Before calling, please make a note of the course title or course code.

Our phone lines are open Monday to Friday, from 8:30am to 5pm, unless otherwise stated. aclessex.com/contact-us lifelong.learning@essex.gov.uk ACLEssex

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@ACLEssex

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Equality and Diversity ACL is committed to fairness and equality of access, opportunity and outcome for all learners and potential learners. We oppose discrimination in any form and have a commitment to making our courses inclusive and available for all. We positively welcome enrolments from everyone, regardless of age, culture, race, religion/belief and sexual orientation, and actively promote Equality and Diversity across all areas of the service.

Safeguarding We are committed to the safeguarding of all our learners, staff, volunteers and visitors.

We are particularly mindful of specific vulnerable groups although we promote the safety and wellbeing of all members of the ACL community. We want you to feel safe and not threatened by the environment or other people and we have policies and procedures in place to deal effectively with any safeguarding concerns raised.

We ensure all staff are trained and our learners are advised on reporting concerns.

PLEASE NOTE It is always our intention to run our courses as advertised, however if demand is low, they may be postponed or cancelled. Alternative options will be offered in these circumstances. Prices are in line with our fees and charges policy.

For full information, please visit www.aclessex.com/fees-policy