From Ancient Egyptian art to women in leadership: Learning at Work Week
As an education charity, learning plays a pivotal role in our programmes. Students learn about the university experience, how to submit a quality application, they develop key transferable skills, and they are supported to raise their academic attainment.
But learning is not just for our students! Alongside a formal Learning & Development programme, we’re celebrating Learning at Work Week for the third year running.
What is Learning at Work Week?
Led by the Campaign for Learning, Learning at Work Week shines a spotlight on the importance and benefits of continual learning and development. At The Access Project, it enables our staff to explore new things: some work-related, some very much not!
Across a two week period, volunteers from our staff and trustee team are running sessions for their colleagues on subjects close to their heart. Sessions include game mastery, professional networking, photography, Excel, women in leadership, Ancient Egyptian art, and building a culture of giving back.
Driven by The Access Project’s social committee, our focus is on having fun while learning.
Beth, Tuition and Coaching Manager, has been leading this initiative on behalf of the social committee. Beth said: “This is our third year running Learning at Work Week(s), and it gets better every time. We want learning at work to feel fun and accessible, with colleagues and trustees leading sessions on everything from their areas of expertise to the topics they’re passionate about. It’s always such an inspiring time, and a brilliant reminder of how amazing the people we work with are.”
What our staff said
Farena is our Senior Enrichment Officer and Events Lead. Her session on Ancient Egyptian art was the first to kick off this year’s events. Farena told us, “I took myself out of my comfort zone to teach others what I love to do! I love anything to do with Archeology, so I decided to give my colleagues a low down on Ancient Egyptian Art. We had a presentation about the different ways Ancient Egyptian art is portrayed, from pottery to decorated tombs. To finish, we took some Zen time to draw our interpretation of Ancient Egyptian figures, decorating with bold but authentic colours. The results were amazing!”
Tamsin, Insight and Evaluation Manager, described her session. “Thanks to Beth’s encouragement and everyone’s support I found the confidence to deliver a session on Excel. Developing the content was a great learning process for me too, and got me thinking about the different ways people use Excel across our organisation.”
Thank you to everyone that has volunteered to run a session. We’re only halfway through our own Learning at Work Week initiative, and already the sessions have proved to be enjoyable, insightful and thought-provoking. Here’s to week two!