In order to try to respond to the needs of these learners and improve the quality of our educational work in equality, inclusion and cohesion, our specific project objectives were developed under six key areas of improvement. These were: 1) Integrating Conflict Transformation Methods in an Educational Setting 2) Integrating Community Building Methods in an Educational Setting 3) Understanding ‘affective polarisation’ and its Implications for the Provision of Community Education 4) Up-skilling BAME Trainers 5) Addressing Imbalances in Power in Our Provision of Adult Education 6) Decolonising Our Syllabus and Methods. In addition to these specific objectives, we were holding three transversal project objectives: T1. Participation in the exchange of best and innovative practice between organisations and professionals in the European adult education sector. T2. Consolidation of our capacity to engage in international cooperation with the training provider and their network. T3. Increase in linguistic competencies of staff and their opportunities for future employment.
At project application and around the time of Brexit, we were looking at the documenting work of social scientists M.Goodwin and R.Eatwell. They identified a widespread rise in the 'Four D’s': Distrust in political leadership; Destruction of social/community identities; Dealignment from traditional political allegiances; Deprivation and economic inequality. In line with their observations, we were seeing that the communities with the highest levels of disadvantage were often most impacted by these conditions. As outlined in the Department of Education's publication 'Barriers to Learning for Disadvantaged Groups', these same groups and communities, especially those high on the multiple deprivation index, were the groups least likely to take up adult education opportunities. In response, and since 2009, we had been developing educational interventions and building training capacity to support social transformation towards greater equality, inclusion, and cohesion. The shifting landscape across the UK raised new challenges and opportunities for our work and led us to identify specific new strategic goals, and to develop this project.