Festival of Lifelong Learning, where education never gets old

Be it after school or university or on the job qualifications, education is, for some, a means to an end.

The same cannot be said for Iris Fisher, who says age is but a number and education is an enriching part of her life.

Iris took up a pottery course in 2000 when she was in her 60s.

Now 81, and living in Balkerne Gardens in Colchester, she is a profound believer in the value of education.

She told her story at a Festival of Lifelong Learning, an event held at Colchester Town Hall to celebrate adult education.

The festival also looks back to the highly thought of and much missed Grey Friars adult education college in Colchester which provided an opportunity for older people to reach their potential.

The college opened in the 1960s, but was shut down in 2007 due to a round of Government cuts.

Iris said it has not stopped her trying to learn new things.

She said: “I lost my husband Wilfred in 2000 when he was 81, and I decided I needed to get out and about.

“I joined Grey Friars and did pottery, then joined the pensioners’ group which was held on Friday mornings.

“I met a lot of ladies and I really enjoyed the talks.”

After Grey Friars was shut down, the college’s pensioners’s group was transferred to the Wilson Marriage Centre in Barrack Street.

“There was always good attendance,” said Iris.

“When I joined there was a waiting list and they would take up to 100 people.

“There was a different speaker each week on all types of subjects.

“It helps me because I made friends there and I really enjoyed the talks, I learnt a lot from them.”

Unfortunately Iris had to leave the group last year due to poor health, but the grandmother, who retired from the Royal Military Police aged 57, said she still likes to take an interest in new things.

That is the ethos of the Learning Never Stops charity.

The group, set up about 17 years ago, is an access to learning charity which lives by the philosophy that education is a life-long experience and not just one validated by exam certificates.

It promotes initiatives such as ACL, which offers courses to people regardless of age.

The Colchester branch, which also runs from the Wilson Marriage Centre, caters for a quarter of all adult learning members in Essex. ACL has seen learners as old as 100 enrol on courses.

Johnathan Boddam-Whetham, business development officer at ACL, said: “It’s about giving people a second chance, it’s teaching in a different way and it’s about breaking down as many barriers as possible to help people reach their goals.”

ACL and Grey Friars have helped thousands of older people find a new lease of life through education.

Alan Skinner, former principal at Grey Friars College from 1983 until 2005, said he has remained passionate about adult education.

He is a trustee for the Learning Never Stops charity and said: “The council cuts were devastating.

“We don’t have an adult college any more, it was locally managed and monitored.

“There was a massive protest and for me it was the end of my career but we have always remained passionate.

“We called our website Colchester Learning Town as that’s what we think it is -there’s a culture of lifelong learning here.”

In addition to its East Hill venue which is now an upmarket hotel, Grey Friars had a flat in Greenstead from where they ran classes and even a travelling classroom taken from venue to venue on the back of a lorry.

It was a flagship for learning being a part of life.

Chris Farndell, 69, said he owed his success to Grey Friars as it helped him to make the career change from crime scene investigator to photographer.

“I joined the police from school, I was a cadet and then went up to CID,” he said.

“They used to recruit scenes of crime officers from the ranks and taught us photography and crime scene searching.

“I did 30 years with the police and retired aged 49.

“Prior to retirement I was thinking ‘what I was going to do?’ as I was too young not to work.”

His interest in photography inspired him to take a course at Grey Friars and he ended up going from student to teacher.

It meant by the time he left the police he had gained a qualification in teaching, and went on to teach A-Level photography at Colchester Sixth Form College.

“It was all down to Grey Friars that I went from police to teaching,” he said.

“My concern now is that facility is not open to us, and I was just grateful for the opportunity that Grey Friars gave me.”

One of Chris’s photography students went on to do a degree aged 60, which he calls a huge achievement.

Now retired, Chris volunteers at the police museum in Chelmsford, and hosts talks on photography, utilising skills he picked up in both professions.

Representatives from Colchester Institute, Essex University, Colchester Sixth Form College, ACL Essex, the Open University, Friends of Colchester Museums and many more attended the festival.