Case studies

Reaching the villages of rural Dorset

The Beaminster Community Learning Centre, known locally as the Yarn Barton Centre, is situated in a small Dorset town in an area of outstanding natural beauty.  It offers a range of IT and basic skills training to the local community, and celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, making it one of the longest serving UK online Centres in the country.

The Centre, run by manager Laura Taylor, has become an important hub of the town of Beaminster. As well as running a busy schedule of courses, information, advice and guidance sessions are available.  The Centre also provides drop-in internet access, houses the tourist information and environment advice points and is the location for the box-office of the annual local arts festival. 

In such a rural area, ill-served by public transport, there is a great need to ensure services are accessible to the wider community.  Six years ago, tutor Adele Kemp was employed to introduce an outreach programme to the many small villages in the area surrounding Beaminster. 

The eight week “In Touch” courses spend the first four sessions in  a village location – a hall, club or pub.  It then brings people from those classes into the centre – offering transportation by taxi f required.  Students can acquire confidence and some basic mouse and keyboard skills working in a familiar environment, and then progress to exploring the internet and setting up their own myguide email account when using the broadband available at the centre itself.  A variety of websites are used to introduce people to the breadth of what they can do on the computers – from online public services to internet shopping, Google Earth and online banking. 

Laura says:    “Most of our learners want to understand IT for their own personal needs – to communicate with each other or with family and friends around the world.  For others it is to master the art of confident online shopping or banking, particularly important in an area prone to post office, village shop and local bank branch closures.  We show people how to make the most of IT and make it work for them in their everyday lives.  HSBC have supported our “In Touch” project by coming along to classes help learners get to grips with using online banking and financial services.  It’s an important on-going requirement to ensure learners are at ease with such services, and we’ve seen interest in this area grow significantly over the last few months and years. 

“We have some marvellous volunteers and community champions who work with us to deliver and maintain our outreach programmes.  The community champions are the people who know everyone and we find they are the best vehicle to ‘get the word out’ to the community.  In addition we make sure we have a presence in many local parish magazines and newspapers.  In some cases the local community, after our initial help, picks up and runs their own IT provision.  However, many learners choose to progress with us on o our other courses – learning more advanced ICT skills. 

“Once people have mastered the basics, they often move on to areas that interest them – like digital photography and web design.  As they become more comfortable and more proficient, they get interested in other areas and want to keep learning the next bit and the next bit.  Some people go on to do courses with professional and academic qualifications – for instance at Weymouth College. But for beginners, the college is often too big a step to take. Learners tell us they like the fact that our centre has small groups and that they can progress at their own pace. Sessions with large groups or in a formal educational atmosphere would not attract either the numbers or types of people that currently benefit from our approach.  We them gently through their learner journey, allowing them to jump on and off whenever they feel they have reached their personal goals.”

The Yarn Barton Centre’s plans for the future include promoting UK online centres to a broader age range in the community, helping to bring different generations together with a family learning project, and also forging closer links with a variety of local businesses. Laura and her team have already made significant strides with the business community to try to make the centre more sustainable and attract additional revenue streams. “We feel we have much to offer local employers looking to train their staff and help them brush up on their It and other skills, such as Numeracy and Literacy, ” adds Laura.