‘Informed Choices’ is a developing programme of democratic political education on Grimsby’s East Marsh. The project is a collaboration between East Marsh United, WEA and Cooperative College and has ties with Talkshop and the Place Based Social Action project to develop an East Marsh Assembly and other democratic participatory infrastructure models. A new branch of the WEA is to be set up, to be known as the East Marsh Community Education Branch. The idea behind the project is to build an imaginative, user-friendly framework of community education for social value in line with, for example, Rogers’ person-centred education and Freire’s dialogic education. Wherever possible, the curriculum will be actualized in all cases by the community learners and will be based on the framework in the diagram, “Informed Choices 3-Year Programme” (below). It is anticipated that this will lead to a joint WEA/Cooperative University Certificate, as well as feeding into the Cooperative University degree structure.
Informed Resources
This is a developing list of articles, books, websites and institutions that are helpful to the informed choices project:
Alexander, T. (2017). Practical politics: Lessons in power and democracy: An introduction for students and teachers. London: Trentham Books, an imprint of UCL IOE Press.
Place Based Social Action 