News

Thinking Spaces

ROWA!’s bid to the Transformation Fund was successful.  Funded by the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, this project will use the money to kick start a “revolution” in informal learning, by opening up new learning spaces to more learners and encourage informal, self-organised learning.

The aim of our project, Thinking Spaces, will be to inspire and develop self-organised workplace and community learning by creating resourced spaces for groups to explore and expand their interests through reading.

Based in Erewash, the project partners will include Erewash Partnership Ltd, Erewash CVS and WashArts, and together we will plan a timetable and community approach for delivery.  Think—a film club in a chippy … poetry reading in the front of a shop … researching local history in the back of a church … learning about child development, or cloud-spotting, or art, or politics or almost anything.

The Thinking Space projects will be supported by ROWA! and its partners until 31st March 2010, by which time we hope that they will be self-sustaining.

PEEP Learning Together

ROWA! will be using the PEEP (Peers Early Education Programme) Learning Together programme to enhance the literacy support for families using
Children’s Centres.  Over the next two years PEEP will become available in every Children’s Centre in Derbyshire, or as outreach support, so helping to improve the
literacy readiness of pre-school children and developing literacy skills within their families. 

Family Reading Matters

Derbyshire is one of four authorities which has been chosen by the National Literacy Trust (NLT) to pilot this strategy to support families to create homes rich in reading, writing, speaking and listening. It’s great to welcome Angela back as the Strategic Co-ordinator to lead this project which is being funded by DCSF.
This Derbyshire Partnership project will include County and District council services, Health Services, Community Safety, the VCI sector and social housing services.

The aims of the pilot are:

• to map the ways in which literacy support is available to families and the take up of these services;
• to improve partnership working of agencies who either support literacy or work with families to improve the development of family reading;
• to find out how families, particularly the most disadvantaged, respond to the pilot;
• to embed support for family reading as a strategic approach in the Derbyshire Partnership.