Community Voice Winter 2021

Community voice

Winter 2021 Your community magazine

contents Your community magazine

Winter 2021

Contents Welcome

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Higher Education news

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Staff profile: Becca Lloyd

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Courses starting in January

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College of Sanctuary

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ESOL news

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Let’s get social

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Advanced Construction Skills Centre opens

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Gourmet dinners are back

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Higher Education case study: Kieran Hawes

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Higher Education case study: Daniel Hunt

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How you can help a school leaver to make their post-16 choice

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Welcome

Welcome

Open Events

City of Bristol College

Welcome to the inaugural edition of City of Bristol College’s new

Community Voice magazine!

We hope this one-stop-shop for all news and goings-on at Bristol’s biggest college will show you everything we have to offer our students and our local community.

We also want to keep you in the loop on what learning opportunities are available to you. Whether you choose an apprenticeship, a universitylevel course or a short, part-time or evening course to develop your hobbies, there is something awaiting everyone at Bristol’s college.

That being said, we are aware that Covid-19 is still around and with cases reported to be on the rise, are encouraging all of our staff and students to do regular lateral flow tests and to wear face masks in communal areas such as the food halls and hallways.

It has been a turbulent time for our students over the past two academic years, but as we reach the festive period, we’re excited to be able to share with you all the return of events, trips and activities.

But that’s enough pandemic talk for now. Have a flick through our magazine for stories from past students, pictures from events and even a competition!

Open Events are your chance to come to College, see our fantastic facilities for yourself and find out more about our courses.

Saturday 22 January 2022 Wednesday 30 March 2022 Saturday 25 June 2022

10am - 1pm 4:30 - 7:30pm 10am - 1pm

Visit our events page to register for our Open Events and to find out what else is going on at the College.

0117 312 5000

events@cityofbristol.ac.uk

cityofbristol.ac.uk/events

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Open Events

Higher Education news It was an exciting time for our higher education students on Saturday 20 November as we held our annual graduation ceremony. Graduates from the past two academic years were invited to beautiful Bristol Cathedral to put on their caps and gowns and celebrate their fantastic achievements with friends and family.

We are also excited to announce the recent addition to our higher education provision of three HN Flex modules! These bite-size Level 4 modules allow students to study individual units and gain a Certificate of Unit Credit in photography, graphic design or business.

Completing one of these modules also gives students the opportunity to progress onto a Higher National Certificate (HNC) or Higher National Diploma (HND). The units are accredited by Pearson.

For more information about our University Centre, visit our website.

Higher Education news

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Higher Education news

Staff profile: Becca Lloyd

Becca Lloyd is an educator who

has worked at City of Bristol College for 18 years, and often visits community spaces around the city.

She has seen a lot of changes during her time as a lecturer but one constant is the spirit of the local community. Despite ever-changing political climates and pandemics, the people of Bristol want to support each other.

Becca spoke to us about her job role and why she loves being involved in the Bristol community: “My job is to educate, support and respond to the people in our community and I feel privileged to do so. Bristol is an active city that has a true community-minded focus. The various charities and organisations that exist to help grow and heal all the different aspects of community life are outstanding.

January starts

My expertise is working with people who volunteer, and I believe passionately in being active in the community. The college has always been involved in the community in Bristol and looking for new ways to reach out like creating publications such as this one.”

If you want to kickstart your career or learn a new skill in 2022, you don’t have to wait until September! Some courses start in January, and are now open for applications.

Find out what you can study in January here.

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January starts

College of Sanctuary What is City of Sanctuary UK? Launched in October 2005 in Sheffield, City of Sanctuary started with the vision that the UK should be a welcoming place of safety for all and proud to offer sanctuary to people fleeing violence and persecution. From this start in a single location, the idea has spread into a grassroots network of more than 120 local groups in the UK. Schools & Colleges of Sanctuary is an initiative from Bristol City of Sanctuary, which aims to:

Foster positive attitudes within schools, colleges and their communities around people seeking sanctuary

Support schools and colleges to take positive steps towards being places of safety and inclusion for all

Recognise and celebrate schools and colleges that are committed to welcoming and supporting people seeking sanctuary

College of Sanctuary

City of Bristol College is proud to have regained its status as a College of Sanctuary.

This means we are committed to being a safe and welcoming place for people whose lives were in danger in their own country.

We are a college that helps its students, staff and wider community to understand what it means to be seeking sanctuary, and to extend a welcome to everyone as equal, valued members of our college community.

City of Bristol College has a dedicated College of Sanctuary team who kicked off their first College of Sanctuary month with three hugely successful events.

On Friday 3 December, our ESOL team hosted a breakfast for community leaders and representatives from charitable organisations.

On Thursday 9 December, we were honoured to welcome Mayor of Bristol Marvin Rees to College Green to officially receive our College of Sanctuary award.

Finally, on Monday 13 December we hosted a special Christmas lunch celebrating College of Sanctuary at our City Restaurant.

Competition

This is your chance to win a Cut and Blowdry at one of our City Salons!

Our City Salons are based at College Green Centre and South Bristol Skills Academy and are state-of-theart salons for our Hair and Beauty students to practise their skills on paying customers.

To enter, email: marketing@cityofbristol.ac.uk and tell us why you’d love to be the winner!

Get your responses in by noon on Monday 31 January.

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College of Sanctuary

ESOL news

ESOL news

Let’s Get Social

We are Bristol’s college, and are proud to be a part of such a diverse city. Our curriculum reflects our inclusive values and we offer courses in English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), where students have the opportunity to improve their English skills and gain further qualifications to enrich their education.

Social media is a great way to get live updates on news, events and announcements coming from the College. It is also a great way to get in touch with us with any questions you may have about your course.

From full-time young adults to part-time adult learners, our ESOL department always has activities planned for students. In October, the Young Adult ESOL students were tourists for the day and took a trip to picturesque Clifton.

Our lecturers love to get involved too, and in September, 10 of our ESOL lecturers raised money for Miles for Refugees with the British Red Cross. They walked, cycled and ran and together they travelled more than 700 miles and raised over £2800. The generous donation will go to support refugees in the UK and provide them with items such as mobile phones, school uniforms, food parcels, skills sessions or family tracing.

We are excited to announce we have recently launched our TikTok (@cobcollege) where you can enjoy a variety of content from centre tours, student information about finance options and application processes, and of course we have roped in some volunteers to help us hop on a few trends!

Keep in touch with us on our social media platforms and check out what we have been up to:

Share the news! @cityofbristolcollege @COBCollege @cityofbristolcollege

@COBCollege City of Bristol College

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Lets Get Social

ACSC opens

New centre opens in south Bristol

Gourmet dinners are back at our City Restaurant

We are very excited to have officially opened our brand-new Advanced Construction Skills Centre in September to our first cohort of students!

Professional chefs will take City Restaurant diners on a culinary adventure as they work side-by-side with City of Bristol College’s catering and hospitality students this year.

The Centre was opened by Metro Mayor Dan Norris, Bristol South MP Karin Smith, UWE ViceChancellor Steve West and employer partners from Midas Construction and Vistry Partnerships.

Students studying our construction courses will learn at the inspiring, modern Centre, developing the skills they need for a successful career.

We’re also pleased to announce that all of our construction courses include modules on sustainability to reflect the emphasis being placed on ecofriendly practices in the construction sector, meaning students will leave us with the skills employers are looking for as initiatives get underway to create a greener future.

Want to find out more about ACSC? You can visit our website.

Christmas market at City of Bristol College This year some of our Business students, with a little help from the Students’ Union, held a Christmas market at our College Green Centre, with all proceeds going to a charity of the students’ choice.

The NCFE Level 2 Skills for Business is a very practical course which teaches skills through projects. While organising this event, the students learned to communicate with staff across the College, organised for SEN and Hair and Beauty to have a presence at the event, and developed their numeracy skills by considering how much they would need to charge to cover their costs.

We were also joined by our catering vendors, Academy, who offered a traditional Christmas menu at lunchtime and then their German Christmas market menu.

Visitors enjoyed stalls with gifts for sale, raffles and prize giveaways, retail promotions, Christmas garlands and plenty more fun activities to get involved with.

We were happy to see plenty of staff and students there getting into the Christmas spirit and helping to raise money for charity!

After a year-long hiatus, the Catering and Hospitality team has revealed the autumn term list of talented industry professionals who will support students to deliver five-star quality food to paying customers at the College Green restaurant, off Anchor Road.

The City Restaurant is open to the public from 6.30pm for just the gourmet dinners this term as it continues to return to normality after being closed.

Gourmet dinners are a four-course set menu planned by the guest chefs.

Dishes are produced by the catering students under the watchful eye of the guest and lecturer chefs, who offer advice and guidance to help them hone and develop their skills.

But the return of our gourmet dinners isn’t the only exciting news coming out of City Restaurant. We are also pleased to announce that our five-star hygiene rating has been renewed; a testament to the hard work and high standards of our talented students and tutors.

For more information on the gourmet evenings, visit our website, or to book a table, call 0117 312 2712.

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Case study: Kieran Hawes 14 17 Page 1 Example

Gourmet Dinners are back

Case study:

Case study:

Kieran Hawes enrolled onto the Graphic Design Higher Education course after completing his Level 3 BTEC in Graphic Design at City of Bristol College.

Daniel Hunt, aged 34, started his journey at City of Bristol College in 2018 when he opted to retake his GCSE Maths after struggling to earn strong grades in school.

Kieran Hawes He said: “I wanted to get hands-on and continue to develop my skills as thoroughly as I could and the traditional approach felt like a step backwards for me. I was familiar with the GDIM course at COBC and its vocational, ‘down and dirty’ approach which better aligned with my way of learning.”

After completing his degree, Kieran was able to get a Junior Designer role and has worked with a range of creative teams across Bristol, with a personal highlight being working on global brands such as IBM. Kieran now works for Bristol’s best branding agency, Mr B & Friends.

He said: “I met Executive Creative Director, Steve Richardson and then Midweight Designer, Nathan Crosby in my second year at COBC, working on our Corporate Identity module with them. They really made an impression on me, the agency’s ethos, client roster and way of working was killer. Becoming a B’er was immediately a goal of mine.

Three years later and here I am, a year in at my dream agency, working across Brand and Digital, for some truly awesome clients around the world. It’s crazy. I owe that to this course, alongside many an all-nighter and some serious LinkedIn lurking.”

You can read Kieran’s story here.

Daniel Hunt He said: “My brother encouraged me to pursue a career in healthcare as he retrained as a nurse. I knew not having my GCSEs would be a barrier and I had always wanted to get them after not managing it in school.”

After securing a Grade 5 in his maths, Daniel then opted to move onto his GCSE English in 2019 – after completing his English Functional Skills Level 1 and 2 the previous year – where he earned the top grade of a 9 (A*).

He said: “The access course was challenging but amazing! The teachers were great and I particularly enjoyed learning all about human anatomy and physiology. I have now managed to secure a place at UWE Bristol to study Paramedic Science. I knew it would be tough to get on the course but I wanted it so badly. The access course only confirmed I have made the right choice to retrain at this stage of my life.”

After overcoming the obstacle, Daniel moved onto one of our Access to Higher Education courses at Ashley Down Centre, where he focused on Health and Social Care. The intense course created the perfect stepping stone for Dan to apply to UWE Bristol to study Paramedic Science.

You can read Dan’s story here.

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Case study: Daniel Hunt

How you can help

How you can help a school leaver to make their post-16 choice If you have some connection to a school leaver, whether you are a guardian, family member, school staff or anyone else, you will be a source of influence when it comes to choosing where they go post-16. With this in mind, it’s important that you know what options are out there for school leavers, so you can support them to choose what is right for them.

Research the different learning pathways Education has evolved so much in recent years, and there are now more learning pathways than ever!

The right choice for a school leaver depends on what kind of learner they are. City of Bristol College offers three primary learning routes: A Levels, technical/vocational qualifications and apprenticeships.

If the school leaver knows what area they’d like to go into, feels ready to go into work and would prefer to get a head start in the industry, an apprenticeship could be the right choice for them. Apprenticeships are a great way to learn from people in industry, make contacts and build the learner’s CV, all while getting paid and earning their qualification. Contrary to popular belief, apprenticeships can be undertaken in a range of subjects, from engineering and construction to accounting and health & social care.

If the school leaver is academic and got on well with the classroom-style learning and examinations in school, A Levels could suit them. Students take three or four subjects over two years, and can progress into higher education like university or move straight into work.

Finally, technical and vocational qualifications are ideal for learners who know what they would like to do and are ready to learn the skills they will need for a successful career.

Our excellent facilities are designed to provide an inspiring environment for our students to learn in that reflects the real world, so they leave us feeling prepared for a successful career or higher education journey.

Encourage them to attend Open Events Most providers, whether it’s a sixth form centre or a further education college, will host Open Events throughout the year to allow people to visit and see the facilities. It’s really important that school leavers attend Open Events so they can feel whether it’s the right place for them.

The type of questions that we always encourage school leavers to think about whilst attending Open Events are; Is this the right environment for me? Could I spend two years studying with this lecturer? Do they offer the right support services for me? How well do people do on these courses and where do they go afterwards?

Career Coach If a school leaver doesn’t know what it is they want to do, our Career Coach is the perfect tool to help them.

Career Coach comprises plenty of helpful resources for school leavers, including a CV builder and quizzes which can help them match their skills and interests to possible careers. If they know what they would like to do, Career Coach can also work in reverse to tell them what qualifications they will need to achieve their goal.

You can take a look at our latest Student Voice magazine here.

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Community voice cityofbristol.ac.uk

0117 312 5000

enquiries@cityofbristol.ac.uk