Skills4Learning was a skills development programme for teachers and museum professionals, it was part of the South East Strategic Commissioning Education Programme. It’s aim, through supported skills sharing and targeted funding, was to:

• develop the capacity and confidence of museum/archive staff to work creatively and effectively with teachers at local schools through training and skills development
• broker sustained partnerships at local level between museums/archives and the education sector.

The programme paired museum/archive professionals with teachers in a programme of professional development. It  looked at a range of key educational issues – both for museums and schools – and explored the breadth of opportunity offered by museums for schools. With the final aim of creating understanding of each others agendas, working environments, barriers and challenges to build confidence and knowledge to work more closely and creatively together.

A series of  workshops were delivered in the museum and the school environments using the expertise of participants and learning sector professionals to share best practice and skills. A development day was held to develop their project and a final session held to share learning and evaluate the projects.

The final outcome for each of the partnerships was a joint project. The projects were funded through small grants also from Strategic Commissioning and were developed in direct response to individual partnership need.

The programme reached over 50 professionals across the south-east, with separate programmes delivered in each of the 4 sub-regions. I was responsible for the researching potential participants in consultation with local experts such as local education advisors, developing the programmes tailored to the needs of the sub-regions, mentoring participants through the programme and in development of their projects, coordinating the budget and programme delivery, and evaluation.