“I feel that everyone is here to help each other, and I appreciate all the varied ways of learning.” This is what a student at the Centre for Learning Disability Education at City Lit told me recently as I was compiling my reflections.
City Lit’s department for adults with learning disabilities in London offers creative arts-focused courses. Hundreds of students have enrolled since its foundation in 1979 (90 now attend its programmes) and the fact that the centre where I began my career is approaching its 50th year has sparked this personal, retrospective article.
All classes, from singing to mixed media or performance art and photography, are taught by specialists. Students negotiate their personal learning goals with tutors, and activities encourage independence and choice-making for the wide spectrum of learners. There is collaboration with diverse arts organisations such as the Royal Academy of Music.
It is adult education – not therapy.
I started teaching there in 1981, leading Speaking for Ourselves classes – self-advocacy, essentially, a burgeoning movement at the time. The City Lit and its students played a vital role its national development.
I joined the department known today as the Centre for Learning Disability Education when it was headed by Jan Wyatt MBE (it is now led by Michael Donlevy, also a Community Living trustee). The late Wyatt was a professional musician and educationist whose collaborative techniques and belief in her students’ potential aligned with the 1980s shift from institutions to living in the community.
Historically, adults with learning disabilities in education were always tasked with developing literacy and numeracy skills, often to the exclusion of all else. Education was mainly focused on more able adults; this was an era when learning disabled people were deemed ineducable.
Under Wyatt’s leadership, the City Lit enabled students to work in subject areas of their own choice, developing their skills and potential in group settings. The emphasis was and still is on creative approaches to learning. Students are encouraged to recognise what they can do, learn to make choices with support and take power over their own learning – and their own lives.
One of the first things I was asked to do was to set up a book box system so students could learn how to choose books that they would like to read and how to borrow and return them.
The students usually brought their own money to pay for lunch. For some, it was the first time in their lives they could choose their own food and drink; some had not long moved out of long-stay hospitals.
I recall the story of one man pacing up and down the room, because he had been asked whether he wanted tea or coffee – a question he had never been asked before. He was carefully weighing up this momentous decision.
Among City Lit’s notable alumni is Gary Bourlet, Learning Disability England (LDE) co-founder and the first person appointed to the inaugural paid self-advocate position at People First London in 1989. Bourlet is now LDE membership and engagement lead and a City Lit fellow.
As for staff members, Tamsin Cottis, who taught The Politics of Living course in the 1980s, is now a child psychotherapist. In 1991, she co-founded Respond, a national charity supporting those with learning disabilities and autistic people who have experienced abuse, violence or trauma.
Hearing from students about the impact of the City Lit confirms that the visionary ethos of the department on its foundation almost half a century ago is still guiding the work today.
“I feel that everyone is here to help each other, and I appreciate all the varied ways of learning,” observes one student.
Another says: “The good thing about coming to the City Lit is that it gets me out of the house and lets me see my friends that I have met at the college.”
John Hersov is an independent consultant and facilitator
