WEA courses

Baking on a Budget” is an 11-hour course meticulously created to equip participants with essential baking skills while maximising affordability. Participants will master the art of creating delightful baked goods using cost-effective ingredients and simple techniques. The curriculum covers fundamental baking principles, including ingredient substitutions, portion management, and efficient kitchen organisation, ensuring optimal resource utilisation. Through hands-on demonstrations and practical exercises, students will learn to prepare a variety of treats, such as cookies, cupcakes, and brownies, perfect for school fair stalls. By course end, participants will possess the expertise and confidence to bake for school events and friends without exceeding budget constraints.

This course is designed for you to develop your creative side and use your previous clay hand-building techniques to progress to an intermediate level, plus a chance explore the different decorative styles working with Clay. By the end of the course you should have lots of different pottery pieces and different pottery skills. You will be in a group with others and led by a talented Arts and Crafts tutor. Your work will be taken away and fired in a kiln by the tutor and it will be yours to keep!

This is a FREE 5-week course designed for those that enjoy crafts, with the intent in bringing people in the community together to enjoy spending time with like minded people. The course is aimed at any level, whether you are a beginner or have been crafting for many years. The course is created for you to work at your pace on your project. The tutor will give guidance and support with your craft project and provide may materials, although if you have anything to up cycle at home please bring along to the sessions. I you don’t use it we are sure someone will find a great use for it.

We will learn how to paint chosen animal portraits (students can get to paint their own pets, or those of friends) using line, tone, colour and perspective in coloured chalk pastel, acrylic and watercolour. Advice on buying art materials will be given, but please have chalk pastels and coloured pastel paper (can be brown wrapping paper, or scrap book) available for the first lesson. If buying from new I recommend Inscribe half sticks as they are good value. Artists studied will be Albrecht Durer, Rembrandt, Gainsborough, Holman Hunt, Lucian Freud and countless other contemporary examples. Learn the rewarding skill of painting animal portraits - achieve an ability to create a likeness, while developing your own style in a friendly supportive atmosphere.

We will learn how to make abstract art that is unique and experimental, using chalk pastels, watercolour, acrylics, mixed media, and collage. Develop skills in all these media including brushwork and colour mixing. Artists studied will include JMW Turner, Kandinsky, Klee, Picasso, Matisse, Mondrian, Hilma af Klint, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, and countless contemporary artists. You will also be introduced to some lesser-known female artists who have been formerly neglected by the art establishment. A stimulating course which will help you will develop/improve your skills and creative thinking. Have fun and make art in a friendly like-minded group.

We will learn how to make abstract summer landscape art inspired by the world around you (and weather!), that is unique and experimental, using chalk pastels, watercolour, acrylics, mixed media and collage, developing drawing and painting techniques. Artists studied will include JMW Turner, Monet, Kandinsky, Klee, Matisse, Mondrian, Hilma af Klint, Georgia O’Keeffe, Lee Krasner and countless contemporary artists. This course will also introduce you to some lesser-known female artists who have been formerly neglected by the art establishment. Have fun, develop your skills, and make art in a friendly like-minded group, inspired by this wonderful time of year.

Mindfulness through creative doodling – a short taster course for beginners to have a go and learn some simple doodling techniques that can help you to relax. Enjoy creativity in the moment without worrying about making mistakes or feeling pressured to succeed as there is no ‘right’ way and no mistakes. The marks you make are part of a process of relaxation and not a measurement of success, so you can enjoy the process of doodling without the need to compare your results with others. Follow simple step-by-step instructions and have a go. This is a relaxing and enjoyable course for beginners.

Do you have basic hand embroidery skills, but would like more confidence to use them in the creation of your own decorative designs? During this online course you will learn how to design a basic floral wreath using summer flowers as inspiration, learn several new stitches and apply them to your design. The course is great for beginners and improvers who would like to increase their knowledge of hand embroidery and mix up basic and intermediate stitch techniques. You will have the opportunity create your design for the summer floral wreath and apply the embroidery stitches you will be learning during the course.

The course will build on your existing knowledge and experience of using map symbols to navigation in lowland countryside using an Ordnance Survey 1 to 25,000 scale map. We will look at ways of refining your existing skills to add fluency to your use of a map in inclement weather and poor visibility. We will also introduce ways of interpreting landscape forms using contours and other clues contained on your map. We will also learn how to use a base plate compass (Eg. Silva Compass) to take bearings and use these to find a route away from clearly defined paths.

This course is for students to gain more practical counselling experience in triads (counsellor, client and observer) using the ten core counselling skills. To attend this course, it is useful if you have already completed a 6 week counselling skills course or have a Level 2/3/4 counselling qualification. This course has been created in response to counselling student feedback requesting this type of course and can be useful before progressing to the next level of counselling studies, sometimes even essential as some courses do not allow you to progress to the next level if you don't have enough practical experience. The course may be appropriate for some learners with a work experience or a background in a similar sector, so do not feel excluded if you do not have formal qualifications. You should be fine! However, if you wish to make a start on our 'Introduction to Counselling; please search for that on the website. Theses courses run quite regularly so you could complete the Intro course and then progress onto this one If you are feeling confident in your knowledge, please enrol here.