Wensum Lodge, beside the river in the centre of Norwich, was always called “the jewel in the crown” of Norfolk county council’s adult education service, and services across East Anglia and beyond looked at it with envy. Now the county council proposes to sell the site, arguing that adult education is better delivered on line and at other (unspecified) locations in the community. The decision flies in the face of past suggestions that the centre be developed as a hub for community arts and education in the heart of the city. The move is being opposed by Green and Labour councillors, and 3000 people have signed their petitions.
The 1980s, courses for the unemployed
I first visited in 1983. There were three million unemployed in the country, the government was funding initiatives to try and get people to retrain and adult education services were targeting programmes for those seeking work. I came from Luton to a conference on ways of working constructively with unemployed adults. As part of the day, we were tasked to explore the Lodge and its facilities, which would be part of the offer available to newly redundant adults.
My journey started in Jurnet’s, the twelfth century merchant’s house where the floor is now well below street level and which had been transformed by the wardens, Ken and Brenda Davis, into a restaurant and bar closed by the county council in 2020. Upstairs, in the Music House, was a warren of classrooms, a magnificent long room with large leaded-light windows overlooking the street and a labyrinth of corridors. Outside again, there was a well-stocked pottery, artists’ studios, and a sports centre. The whole place was immaculately maintained with many of the house’s original features – for example the walls of stalls from the days when the Lodge was a brewery, still evident in the Stables.
An overflowing building
Three years later I was working there on a targeted project for unemployed adults. What immediately struck me was the vibrancy of the place. I needed to be found an office. Ken took me to the Music House, up two flights of stairs, opened an outside door, ushered me across a duck-board and unlocked the door to a tiny room. He said, rather apologetically, that the Lodge was rather full. Space was at a premium then.
A host of organisations
Later we moved to share a large office space with two other projects, an environmental science one, funded by the University of East Anglia, and a dance project, funded by the Arts Council. Wensum Lodge also hosted the Open University and the Cambridge University Extra Mural Board. Having all these organisations under one roof was invaluable in terms of networking. Over the years the Lodge hosted an educational guidance service, a nationally acclaimed project for reminiscence work with care home residents, and an adult orchestra that worked with Terry Waite mounting an orchestral production in the cathedral to provide a musical interpretation of his poems.
During the day there was a huge range of courses available – oil painting, water colours, life-drawing, languages, creative writing, counselling, pottery, silversmithing, literature, yoga. What struck me very forcibly was how important at Wensum Lodge this daytime provision was, especially for older people. I don’t know how many times I heard people say, “Oh, this place is a life-line for me, I don’t know what I’d do without it.”
In the evenings the lodge was equally vibrant, with a large range of courses but with younger students. Besides Jurnet’s, there was a dining room on the first floor of the Music House. Later Ken and Brenda opened a coffee bar on the water-front which had been converted from old bread ovens, and in the summer people sat outside to meet.
As a result of its size and central location, it was the focal point of a number of city and county wide groups. Along with the city council, the Volunteer Bureau and the Citizens’ Advice Bureau, we set up the Redundancy Advice Network (RAN), offering support to companies and their employees who were losing their jobs. Norwich Union, later Aviva, used the service and offered to fund a full-time employee as co-ordinator for two years.
Attracting new learners
Perhaps the experience that best exemplifies what Wensum Lodge meant to me was a relatively small event. We received some money to try and attract people who had probably never thought of attending an adult education course. We advertised free residential weekends at Wensum Lodge with a range of activities for people to choose from. Advertising on Radio Norfolk said the only criterion was that you shouldn’t have attended any classes since leaving school. Within the first couple of hours fifty people had applied. They chose painting and pottery classes, yoga, local history, and several others. Talking to an elderly couple on the Friday evening during the meal they said they’d been so excited at the prospect that their enthusiasm had rubbed off on the taxi driver who’d brought them and who said he was going straight home to tell his wife and see if they could get a place too. On the Sunday afternoon the work produced was displayed and achievements shared.
Adult education moves on?
There is no doubt that learning technology has developed enormously, both in terms of the capacity to teach and learn online and the materials available to tutors. During the pandemic the free courses offered by the Workers’ Educational Association and those by the Norfolk adult education service were a godsend. However, to think that online learning can replace learning with others is to misunderstand the importance of groups. Anyone who has taught adults knows that what brings a person to a group is very different from what keeps them there.
A better future
There is the capacity at the Lodge to rebuild and develop the hub that has provided co-ordination and creative development in adult learning in a building that has huge historic significance. If the county council can imagine a future for adult learning in Yarmouth with the Place Hub, why write off a potential future facility for Norwich?
