At Education Partnership North East (EPNE), we are delighted to have been named a finalist in the Edge Award for Excellence in Real World Learning category, supported by the Edge Foundation.
When judging the entries, assessors looked for initiatives which developed a curriculum which enables learners to have experiences that are real, meaningful, challenging and life changing, as well as demonstrating innovative best practice and excellent engagement with employers and local communities.
In our pursuit of finding innovative ways to ensure students are exposed to real world learning and industry, we developed 'Cultural & Social Capital' as an initiative to explore this further, and to develop the cultural and social capital of students who live in an area of high deprivation.
The project is for creative arts, performance, computing, esports and nextgen students at Sunderland College, and it embraces the ethos of creating opportunities by fostering a whole curriculum area approach. We were already doing great things with external employers, via live briefs and opportunities, but we knew we had to harness our ideas and create a structure that pushed us to be brave and bold with the highest of aspirations for our learners.
