On Monday 19th May a group of volunteers from Arbourthorne Community Primary School came to the Urban Institute for a workshop to recognise the learning and skills they had developed through social action projects in the community. The workshop was led by Professor , Central St Martins, University of Arts London and Beth Perry, who has been working with the primary school to support their initiative An Even Better Arbourthorne and who leads the UI's work on urban epistemics.
Volunteers across the country are helping their communities out, giving their time, energy and enthusiasm to make their neighbourhoods even better. Often this work is not recognised, and it is sometimes difficult to show what skills and experience people gain, particularly if they lack formal qualifications. People learn in different ways throughout their lives, but education is usually seen to end when people leave formal schooling settings. There is a real need to recognise and value learning in the community, and help make it count for people trying to develop their skills for life and/or work and build confidence.
Paul and his team have been working on an approach to as part of a wider commitment to a ‘curriculum for life’. The REBEL tool has been used and applied in many contexts, including within universities with students, and within local authority settings.
REBEL is an interconnected system of open-source tools and techniques. It was developed by a team of academic practitioners and community-based education activists and consists of a competency framework, website, physical card game, supporting workshops and workbooks. The toolkit is designed to address 3 desired outcomes from community action:
- Enabling learning to learn: developing self-awareness, active curiosity and critical enquiry - reflecting, analysing and adapting to agile and complex contexts or environments.
- Building effective skills, and competencies: recognising and developing specific skills and capabilities through projects, initiatives, structured experiences or planned collective action.
- Enhancing critical insight and reflection: confidence building and self-esteem in how people value their own thinking and contributions, especially in relation to how communities respond to urgencies and emerging demands and realities facing communities.
In 2024 a new partnership between Paul and Beth has been exploring how to apply REBEL as a tool to recognise learning by volunteers within the community primary school in Arbourthorne.
The May workshop was the third exploratory workshop in this process. The volunteers used the REBEL tool to reflect on their learning, around key school values. After a jam-packed day, they left the workshop with three certificates, for team-work, self-belief, and for their overall contribution as a volunteer.
Arbourthorne Community Primary School sees its role as ‘more than a school’ and actively builds ways to engage with the wider community. Our hope is that Arbourthorne Community Primary School could become the first REBEL primary school in the UK, using the tool to recognise and certify the skills and expertise developed by volunteers and staff in AEBA, and then support other community organisers and volunteers across Arbourthorne to gain recognition for their work.
You can find out more about the work of the school in this film and report about An Even Better Arbourthorne.