Concept: The Journal of Contemporary Community Education Practice Theory
type: channel
description: Concept: The Journal of Contemporary Community Education Practice Theory offers a lively independent forum for critical debate and exchange of ideas in contemporary Community Education. Community Education is seen in the broadest sense to include community work, adult education and youth work and takes place in a range of settings and agencies. We see the concept of community education as dynamic and diverse and do not seek to reflect a fixed view.
publisher: The University of Edinburgh
language: en
publication name: Concept: The Journal of Contemporary Community Education Practice Theory
issn: 1359-1983
items: Volume 17. No1, Spring/Summer 2026 Full PDF Version
items: Dundee: The city that shaped a profession, that shaped a city
items: Constructing The Citizen (or What They Don’t Tell You About Strategy Work)
items: Ambivalent Activism
items: Lockdown Life
items: The Edges of Belonging: Youth Work, Participation, and Everyday Resistance in the Gaps of Policy
items: Music as a tool for social change: A critical exploration through the lens of Community Education
items: Plugged in, switched on, but disconnected? Community, education and democracy
items: Neoliberalism and Urban Regeneration
items: Six Conversations We’re Scared to Have
items: The Needs of Teachers of Adult Community Education
items: Tidal Thinking for artist-researcher collaboration:
items: Disrupting fatalism:
items: The changing political significance of social class in Scotland
items: It's been a long day!
items: From Rhetoric to Reality: Tackling Poverty and Inequality Through a Just transition in Scotland
items: Introduction to a seminar on the State of the Field in Community Learning and Development on Friday 13th June 2024, University of Edinburgh.
items: Rediscovering community again and again and again!
items: Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood (2023)
items: Meta-skills: exciting opportunity or neo-liberal retread?
items: Hamish Henderson and Cultural Activism
items: Community Health and Multi-directional integration in Cables Wynd House, Leith: Community Development Approaches
items: Community Education, Populism and Deliberative Democracy
items: Fear and Loathing in our Local Authorities: Reflections from behind the keyboard
items: The Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism (& how it came to control your life) (2024)
items: Exploring community engagement methods and approaches, a one-day workshop for anyone in the Fife area to build their skills in this environment, Glenrothes, November 2024.
items: Theatre of the Oppressed and its Times: A talk by Julian Boal
items: Family Secrets: Questioning the Past
items: State of the Field and Future of CLD in Scotland
items: The Kirkwood Papers

Volume 17. No1, Spring/Summer 2026 Full PDF Version
type: item
description: Concept: The Journal of Contemporary Community Education Practice Theory offers a lively independent forum for critical debate and exchange of ideas in contemporary Community Education. Community Education is seen in the broadest sense to include community work, adult education and youth work and takes place in a range of settings and agencies. We see the concept of community education as dynamic and diverse and do not seek to reflect a fixed view.
subject: Full Issue (PDF format)
  topic: section
creator: Mae Shaw
creator: Lyn Tett
creator: Kaitlyn Stott
creator: Lesley Martin
creator: Haley Sneed
creator: Charlie McConnell
creator: Keith Popple
creator: Anne O’Donnell
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Mae Shaw, Lyn Tett, Kaitlyn Stott, Lesley Martin, Haley Sneed, Charlie McConnell, Keith Popple, Anne O’Donnell https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-06-26
publication date: 2026-06-26
starting page: 1
ending page: 88

Dundee: The city that shaped a profession, that shaped a city
type: item
description: In 2014 the city of Dundee in Scotland became the only city in the UK to be awarded the accolade of UNESCO City of Design. One of the major U.N. agencies, UNESCO's mission is to contribute to the building of a culture of peace, the eradication of poverty, sustainable development and intercultural dialogue through education, the sciences, culture, communication and information. UNESCO played a central role in shaping the UN’s policies, supporting community development from its foundation in the 1950s. When making the aware, The UNESCO panel highlighted, in particular, Dundee’s approach to engaging local communities in its urban design and redevelopment. Community learning and development managers and fieldworkers played a central role, over four decades, in realising the engagement of local people in their city’s regeneration. In this paper, I want to make the case that Dundee, in particular the local authorities and the higher education professional training institute, played a pioneering role in the making of the community learning and development profession in Scotland. This is not to doubt that many others from across the country contributed significantly[i]. But, as I believe I can demonstrate, it was players in Dundee who shaped this profession in Scotland, second to none. And, further, that the profession had a major role in shaping the city we know today.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Dundee
  topic: keywords
subject: Community Education
  topic: keywords
subject: Community Development
  topic: keywords
creator: Charlie McConnell
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Charlie McConnell https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-06-26
publication date: 2026-06-26
starting page: 1
ending page: 18

Constructing The Citizen (or What They Don’t Tell You About Strategy Work)
type: item
description: Preface: Researcher Positionality and Organisational Setting This paper is drawn from my 2025 Doctorate of Business Administration (DBA), a professional doctorate oriented to workplace problems and contribution to professional practice. Although I had left the City Council where I had been employed before I began my research, I treated my subjectivity as an ‘at home’ ethnographer (Alvesson, 2009). This reflected my knowledge of the organisation and pre-existing relationships. I used the organisational setting to explore the discourses in city strategy work and how they constructed citizen subjectivities. Although the research was not therefore a conventional ‘case study’, nor was it concerned with organisational or individual ‘rights or wrongs’, there was a higher than average level of sensitivity due to an ongoing organisational review. I therefore agreed to anonymise the city. As cities are themselves discourses, choosing not to reveal the city’s identity helped achieve focus and avoid unecessary distraction. My empirical material comprised strategy-related documents from the city in question and texts from interviews with senior managers which I analysed using discourse analytical tools and techniques. The methods take as read that the researcher’s assumptions and expectations are entangled with the analysis.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Citizen
  topic: keywords
subject: Discourse
  topic: keywords
subject: Strategy Work
  topic: keywords
subject: New Public Management
  topic: keywords
creator: Lesley Martin
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Lesley Martin https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-06-26
publication date: 2026-06-26
starting page: 1
ending page: 12

Ambivalent Activism
type: item
description: Who hasn’t felt unsure or confused or conflicted about their involvement in work to change the world? Too often we bury these feelings, believing they are signs of our own weakness or that they will lead to division. And too often, when they surface, they can indeed result in hurtful division or burnout or nihilism. But what if instead of burying them or blaming ourselves for feeling them, we find different ways of dealing with them? This is what this collection of articles from a range of social movements in different parts of the world argues.
subject: Reviews
  topic: section
creator: Anne O’Donnell
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Anne O’Donnell https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-06-26
publication date: 2026-06-26

Lockdown Life
type: item
description: It is not easy to forget and wipe from our memory the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on us, whether countrywide, or individually in our homes and communities, even though it’s a while since the whole phenonium hit the UK in early 2020. Each of us experienced the time in different ways and probably remember different aspects of that difficult period. Without a doubt though the pandemic and the lockdowns were to transform our daily lives and focused our attention on how the government and the authorities throughout the four nations were addressing the impact on public and personal health.
subject: Reviews
  topic: section
creator: Keith Popple
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Keith Popple https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-06-26
publication date: 2026-06-26
starting page: 1
ending page: 5

The Edges of Belonging: Youth Work, Participation, and Everyday Resistance in the Gaps of Policy
type: item
description: This article explores youth work as a form of everyday resistance and relational care that emerges in the cracks of policy and provision. Drawing on practice-based experience in a grassroots youth project in Glasgow and doctoral research using photovoice methods, it considers how young people experiencing structural violence through poverty, criminalisation, housing precarity, and exclusion co-create alternative forms of support and belonging outside formal systems. These young people are often described as ‘hard to reach’, yet their daily acts of resilience, refusal, and mutual care reveal complex survival strategies and political agency. This article argues that informal, care-based youth work does not simply supplement statutory services but actively contests dominant discourses of resilience, participation, and wellbeing. Through a first-person, reflective narrative, I explore how small acts form a radical practice of care rooted in solidarity, not service logic. This survival work frequently falls outside official outcome frameworks but is essential to the relational trust that underpins meaningful youth work. I critique tokenistic models of youth participation and argue for reframing wellbeing as collective, structural, and co-produced. In doing so, the article contributes to theorisations of radical youth work, affective labour, and ethics of care. It calls for greater recognition of the moral tensions and emotional demands of practice in austerity contexts, and more honest engagement with the political nature of care. It ends by asking: What does it mean to practice belonging in a world that so often denies it?
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Youth Work
  topic: keywords
subject: Participation
  topic: keywords
subject: Belonging
  topic: keywords
subject: Structural violence
  topic: keywords
subject: Care ethics
  topic: keywords
subject: Everyday resistance
  topic: keywords
creator: Haley Sneed
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Haley Sneed https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-06-26
publication date: 2026-06-26
starting page: 1
ending page: 11

Music as a tool for social change: A critical exploration through the lens of Community Education
type: item
description: Throughout history, music has been used as a powerful tool to aid social change (Reese, 2015). This article will discuss the interconnectedness of music, critical pedagogical practice and community education values, exploring how music functions as a tool for social transformation, collective learning and participatory action. The choice to use music to grapple with these ideas stems from the opportunity it creates to explore social issues in a creative and widely accessible way. It has been highlighted that music is a universal art form which is engaged with daily by most people (Benjamins et al, 2025). The importance of this is highlighted by international organisations such as UNESCO’s Decleration on Cultural Diversity (2021), which states that cultural art, such as music, is an important part of promoting cultural identities. The use of music in critical community practice is known as ‘Community Music’, described by Dykema (1969) as 'socialised music' (p.218), meaning that it can have an impact on ‘social bonding, cultural transmission, and the expression of social identities’ (MacDonald, 2021: 1). Higgins (2024) goes on to discuss Community Music as ‘relational practice, vibrating to the tune of the politics of cultural democracy and responding to contemporary and historical forms of cultural and social inequality’ (p117). These ideas link to community education practice as it introduces the importance of participatory and inclusive approaches to learning. This aspect of practice is important because community practitioners aim to meet both the immediate needs of individuals and communities whilst also working to address systemic challenges.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Music
  topic: keywords
subject: Social Change
  topic: keywords
subject: Community Education
  topic: keywords
creator: Kaitlyn Stott
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Kaitlyn Stott https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-06-26
publication date: 2026-06-26
starting page: 1
ending page: 12

Plugged in, switched on, but disconnected? Community, education and democracy
type: item
description: This article was prompted by interviews conducted with three qualified and highly- experienced community education practitioners, and many informal conversations with others, about the opportunities and constraints presented by their current working environment. Although these practitioners work in Scotland, the nature of their concerns will no doubt be familiar to colleagues elsewhere - in particular, perhaps, the way in which contemporary policy frameworks claim to offer ever greater opportunities for democratic engagement. In this era of 'communicative plenty' (Ercan et al, 2019), communities are increasingly invited to have their say, advise, consent, and even co-design or deliver services. It is becoming apparent, however, that the extent and density of such endless forms of pseudo democracy may impede opportunities for the real thing, disconnecting all but the most compliant respondents. Indeed, we wonder if this may be its implicit function. Our title is intended to convey the reality of this paradoxical environment, arguing for urgent reconnection between communities, education and democracy.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Community Education
  topic: keywords
subject: Democracy
  topic: keywords
creator: Mae Shaw
creator: Lyn Tett
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Mae Shaw, Lyn Tett https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-06-26
publication date: 2026-06-26
starting page: 1
ending page: 12

Neoliberalism and Urban Regeneration
type: item
description: This is a book of and for its time. It is both a warning and a call to arms. From the excellent introduction by Marjorie Mayo to the final chapter, we are left in no doubt about the context that faces us all one way or another. This is one of its many merits. We are living in an unprecedented global era and this account of campaigning groups over a decade or more has no illusions about both the limitations and the necessity of collective community action.
subject: Reviews
  topic: section
subject: Neoliberalism
  topic: keywords
subject: regeneration
  topic: keywords
creator: Mae Shaw
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Mae Shaw https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-01-31
publication date: 2026-01-31

Six Conversations We’re Scared to Have
type: item
description: My initial impression was that “Six Conversations We’re Scared to Have” is yet another self help book in world that already feels saturated with endless advice on how to improve yourself. When I saw that it was written by Deborah Frances-White, the author of the Guilty Feminist podcast, I was intrigued. As a casual listener of the Guilty Feminist podcast, I have enjoyed how it manages to reflect with humour and compassion on the contradictions and complexity of trying to live a feminist life while being conditioned by and existing in a patriarchal society.
subject: Reviews
  topic: section
creator: Anna Marta Sveisberga
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Anna Marta Sveisberga https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-01-31
publication date: 2026-01-31

The Needs of Teachers of Adult Community Education
type: item
description: The current study described the experiences, challenges, and needs of first time adult community education teachers in the USA. Although the adult education literature often emphasizes the context of learners and their instructional settings, less is known and has been studied about how first-time teachers prepare to teach. Engaging six adult community education first-time teachers who ranged in age from 39 to 74, reflective journaling was used to identify their experiences before, during, and after their teaching experience. Using open-coding, five consistent themes were identified: initial self-doubt, recognition of adult learners' experiences, the importance of flexibility, reliance on interactive and hands-on strategies, and the mutual growth between teachers and their students. The teachers also noted that their credibility came less from their expertise and more from their adaptability, humility, and classroom management that fostered respect and engagement. Implications from these findings include the possibility of improving the experience for teachers by strengthening the onboarding process and providing professional development opportunities for adult community education teachers.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: adult education
  topic: keywords
subject: community
  topic: keywords
subject: professional development
  topic: keywords
creator: Michael T. Miller
creator: Kenda S Grover
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Dean of the College of Education, University of Memphis, Associate Professor of Adult and Lifelong Learning, University of Arkansas Grover https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-01-31
publication date: 2026-01-31

Tidal Thinking for artist-researcher collaboration:
type: item
description: Oceans are fundamental to life on Earth, yet they face escalating pressures that demand solutions across society. Addressing these challenges requires approaches that span disciplines and ways of knowing. Bridging art and research offers great possibilities but comes with its own distinct challenges. Inspired by Oceanic movement and our coastal experiences, particularly SCUBA diving, we consider connections between arts and research through rhythm and sense of place. Marine places further benefit from approaches suited to their fluidity, such as ‘Oceanic thinking’ and embodied maritime practices. Based on conversations between the authors (artist and researcher) which became the supporting text for an exhibition, we propose ‘tidal thinking’ as an approach which resonates with our art and research practices. Tidal thinking emphasises dynamic cycles, creating liminal terrains, exposing learnings, and carrying us through tension and release. This cycle has supported our collaborative work, including a participatory mapping and sketching activity outlined below: ‘beachcombing located memories’. To evoke beachcombing, this activity echoes tidal cycles with sketching, scattering, combing, and sharing located images to elicit personal associations with coastal spaces towards shared reflection. Inspired by marine processes and artefacts, we offer tidal thinking as both a conceptual and practical tool to support educators, artists, and researchers in developing transdisciplinary collaborations that contribute to viable and just Ocean futures.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
creator: Joseph Scott Boyle
creator: Giulia Gentili
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Joseph Scott Boyle, Giulia Gentili https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-01-31
publication date: 2026-01-31

Disrupting fatalism:
type: item
description: This contribution draws on a talk I gave at Edinburgh University on 16th May 2025 that was reviewing the role of the Alexander Report on its 50th anniversary. My talk initially drew on the two main underpinning impulses of the Report: to challenge poverty and disadvantage through participation in education and to promote human flourishing. For example, the report argued: ‘We have acted on our belief that education enables man [sic] to increase his understanding of his own nature, to develop to the full his potentialities and to participate in the shaping of his own future’ (Scottish Education Department,1975: 35).
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: community learning and devleopment
  topic: keywords
subject: raising attainment
  topic: keywords
subject: resilliance
  topic: keywords
subject: social capital
  topic: keywords
subject: self confidence
  topic: keywords
creator: Lyn Tett
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Lyn Tett https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-01-31
publication date: 2026-01-31

The changing political significance of social class in Scotland
type: item
description: The meaning of social class in Scotland has been shifting because of two large economic changes, and because of the expansion of higher education. Numerically the more important is a new class of graduates who work in the service sector of the economy. Alongside that segment is a smaller but growing group who feel economically insecure – sometimes described by class theorists as the ‘precariat’. These trends are seen in many economically developed societies, including in the rest of the UK. But the meaning of the changes is distinctive in Scotland because they interact with the political question of how Scotland is governed. Unlike in other nations, including England, liberal graduates are increasingly in favour of national independence. Also, unlike elsewhere, the precariat are increasingly not conservative while favouring the liberal project of independence. Class remains a useful general concept for understanding social change, but its meaning has to take account of each country’s specific political circumstances.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Social class
  topic: keywords
subject: higher education
  topic: keywords
subject: precariat
  topic: keywords
subject: Scottish independence
  topic: keywords
subject: nationalism
  topic: keywords
creator: Lindsay Paterson
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Lindsay Paterson https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-01-31
publication date: 2026-01-31

It's been a long day!
type: item
description: Education can and should be emancipatory. Yet, for many of our neurodivergent children, it can feel like torture. Common challenges faced by neurodivergent children in our schools include sleep deprivation, sensory overload, social isolation, and repeated questioning - all compounded by a sense of powerlessness and the inability to leave or change their environment. As much as we strive to do our best for our young, it sometimes feels as though, in our efforts to educate, we do more harm than good. There is no doubt that we’ve made significant progress in supporting neurodivergent children. It wasn’t so long ago that some children were forced to write with their non-dominant hand or subjected to physical punishment for failing to make the grade. However, despite this progress, inequality of outcomes for neurodivergent individuals persists. In extreme cases, some are even institutionalized in hospitals, or imprisoned due to a lack of appropriate and available support. Clearly, we still have a long way to go. Given the chronic underfunding of our education system, it feels increasingly important for individuals to come together, support one another, and collectivize their efforts for change. This poem is not about any one person. It is an amalgamation of my own experiences—as a child, parent, husband, educator, and a friend and confidant to other parents of neurodivergent children. I’ve been fortunate to be part of a self-organized parent support group for adults with neurodivergent children. There is something deeply powerful about learning from others with shared or similar experience - helping and being helped at the same time. Sometimes, it feels like you don’t have the energy to take on another responsibility, another evening spent meeting with other parents. But, in my experience, it is almost always worth it. The connection with others, the empathy for each other’s situations - it all helps to re-energize you for the fight ahead. As one of my fellow strugglers …
subject: Poetry
  topic: section
subject: Neurodivergent
  topic: keywords
subject: Education
  topic: keywords
subject: ASN
  topic: keywords
subject: solidarity
  topic: keywords
creator: Stevie McKinlay
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Stevie McKinlay https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2025-07-18
publication date: 2025-07-18
starting page: 5
ending page: 5

From Rhetoric to Reality: Tackling Poverty and Inequality Through a Just transition in Scotland
type: item
description: This article examines the intersection of poverty, inequality, and climate policy in Scotland. It argues that the shift to a low carbon economy offers a transformative opportunity to address structural social injustices that have persisted for decades. Drawing on government frameworks, civil society research, and comparative policy examples, the paper contends that Scotland’s just transition must embed social equity from the outset. It identifies income security, gender-responsive care infrastructure, participatory democracy, and fiscal justice as essential pillars of an inclusive transformation. The analysis demonstrates that poverty is a consequence of political design rather than individual failure, and that only a whole-economy approach can deliver both environmental and social sustainability.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
creator: Satwat Rehman
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Satwat Rehman https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2025-07-18
publication date: 2025-07-18
starting page: 13
ending page: 13

Introduction to a seminar on the State of the Field in Community Learning and Development on Friday 13th June 2024, University of Edinburgh.
type: item
description: Today’s seminar comes out of the concerns the organisers of this event have about the narrow framing of the current independent review of Community Learning & Development. For example, the overview of the review states: Community Learning and Development (CLD) is a professional practice within education with delivery stretching across all stages of lifelong learning…The purpose of CLD is to provide early intervention and prevention to those experiencing, or at risk of experiencing, inequality of opportunity within the education and skills system. (Scottish Government, No Date) As a result of this perceived narrowing of the scope of CLD work, four of us working on CLD programmes in Scottish universities wrote an open letter (Galloway et al, 2024) to express our concerns and invite support from the field of practice. Our concerns are summarised by this extract from the letter: We argue that the learning and development components of CLD cannot be separated without losing the ethos and values of the profession in relation to social justice. We also note that within the terms of reference, ‘educational’ refers explicitly to learning and skills for employment, neglecting longstanding broader social justice aims for lifelong, life wide education as recognised formally by the Scottish Government.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: CLD
  topic: keywords
subject: community Learning and development
  topic: keywords
creator: Stuart Moir
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Stuart Moir https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2025-07-18
publication date: 2025-07-18
starting page: 7
ending page: 7

Rediscovering community again and again and again!
type: item
description: Community is everywhere it seems. Again. This time round, it seems to have been rediscovered as the ultimate solution to the public disorder seen in various parts of the UK in recent times, though not so far in Scotland. The leader of Edinburgh District Council at the time no doubt had his fingers crossed when he talked about '[strengthening] our will to preserve the great community spirit and resilience we enjoy across our capital city'. Even King Charles, that well-known communitarian, has spoken of how he has been greatly encouraged 'by the many examples of community spirit that countered the aggression and criminality from the few'. Of course, there are many who would dispute the basis and sources of these and many other contemporary claims about the veracity of community. As Marj Mayo (1975) summed it up nearly half a century ago: It is not just that the term [community] has been used ambiguously, it has been contested, fought over and appropriated for different uses and interests to justify different politics, policies and practices.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Community Education
  topic: keywords
subject: community
  topic: keywords
subject: class
  topic: keywords
creator: Mae Shaw
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Mae Shaw https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2025-07-18
publication date: 2025-07-18
starting page: 13
ending page: 13

Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood (2023)
type: item
description: I came across Matrescence by Lucy Jones when I was 9 months deep into my own period of postpartum fog. I hadn’t slept for more than 60 minutes at a time, my hair was falling out in handfuls, I was dehydrated, over-caffeinated, simultaneously over and under stimulated, I had not read a book since my baby was born or brushed my teeth more than once a day. I felt both at my most lonely and my most connected, pulled through by my partner, family and close female friends who had done it before me. I had, up to this point, reliably got through life with a mixture of conscientiousness, enthusiasm and perfectionism. I yearned deeply to become a mum but the reality was not what I expected. My love for my son was like nothing I had ever known, and yet, so was the anxiety. I was consumed with obsessively tracking everything he did in the hope I might finally ‘get it right’. I was supposed to be good at this. This was what I was ‘meant’ to do. However, despite all my preparation and research, my baby wouldn’t sleep, needed held constantly, had a bad latch and cried inconsolably in cafes across the city. In my state of extreme sleep deprivation and mental depletion not only was I seemingly getting everything wrong but I felt wrong too.
subject: Reviews
  topic: section
subject: Motherhood
  topic: keywords
subject: Childbirth
  topic: keywords
subject: Metamorphosis
  topic: keywords
subject: Matrescence
  topic: keywords
creator: Mel Aitken
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Mel Aitken https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2025-04-24
publication date: 2025-04-24

Meta-skills: exciting opportunity or neo-liberal retread?
type: item
description: The term Meta-skills has become prominent in education in the last decade and, in Scotland, has increasingly been seen at the forefront of policy agendas. Based on the idea of Metacognition, and so claiming to derive from evidence of Psychology and Cognitive Science, the Meta-skills concept seems to offer an exciting and quintessentially 21st century opportunity. Or does it? Is the idea coherent and evidence-based? Indeed, is it new or merely a rebranding of those key/core/transferable/soft skills that have been contested since the 1980s? Does it represent a further neo-liberal strategy to vocationalise education, prioritising making learners ‘ready for the market’? This paper asks what are Meta-skills and what do they have to offer (or threaten) to those working in adult education?
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: adult education, Meta-skills, training, neo-liberalism, community learning, employment.
  topic: keywords
creator: Rob Bray
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Rob Bray https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2025-04-24
publication date: 2025-04-24

Hamish Henderson and Cultural Activism
type: item
description: This article is based on The Hamish Henderson Memorial Lecture given in the Scottish Storytelling Centre on 9th November 2024. I start with some general thoughts on what is culture, and cultural activism. Then I examine the cultural activism of Hamish Henderson (1919-2002) poet, songwriter, soldier and scholar. He was a world-renowned folklorist, a pioneering lecturer in the School of Scottish Studies, founded in Edinburgh University In 1951, and a leader in the folk song revival of the 1950s and 1960s. His activism was influenced by the ideas of Antonio Gramsci, Italian Marxist philosopher and writer (1891-1937) imprisoned and tortured by the fascist Italian state. Gramsci was also a very important influence on the Liberation movement in Latin American in the 1960s and 70s. I will discuss how the influence of Paolo Freire came to be embedded in the practice of the Adult Learning Project (ALP) in Edinburgh and share some examples of liberating cultural action which demonstrate the values and beliefs ALP shared with Henderson, Gramsci and Freire.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Culture; Activism: Gramsci: Freire: Adult Education: Conviviality
  topic: keywords
creator: Stan Reeves
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Stan Reeves https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2025-04-24
publication date: 2025-04-24

Community Health and Multi-directional integration in Cables Wynd House, Leith: Community Development Approaches
type: item
description: In this article, I reflect on my experience of working alongside community activists trying to support community health and multi-directional integration in Cables Wynd House (‘the Banana Flats’), Leith, and how its reputation in the city may have presented difficulties. I bring together insights from Community Development, Migration Studies and other disciplines, as well as reflections on my own practice, and suggest a model for working towards community health and multi-directional integration in neighbourhoods on the receiving end of area-based stigma.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Community Health
  topic: keywords
subject: Multi-directional integration
  topic: keywords
subject: Cables Wynd House
  topic: keywords
subject: Community Development Approaches
  topic: keywords
creator: Hannah Kirby
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Hannah Kirby https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2025-04-24
publication date: 2025-04-24

Community Education, Populism and Deliberative Democracy
type: item
description: Politics have been transformed by populism in this past decade resulting in political culture becoming increasingly polarised and angry. This article aims to better understand populism by drawing on a range of perspectives in fields such as political sociology, psychology and psychoanalysis. The article accounts for populism’s rise by exploring factors such as financial crises, changing demographics, especially in relation to education, and the transformative impact of social media on political culture. The article also considers the role of emotive reasoning in shaping populism and political persuasion more broadly. Drawing on ideas associated with Jurgen Habermas, the article argues that deliberative democracy, when applied to learning environments in community education, provides a way of making politics less polarised and angry and more deliberative and dialogical.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Community Education
  topic: keywords
subject: , Populism
  topic: keywords
subject: Deliberative Democracy
  topic: keywords
creator: Gary Fraser
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Gary Fraser https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2025-04-24
publication date: 2025-04-24

Fear and Loathing in our Local Authorities: Reflections from behind the keyboard
type: item
description: On the Block is an occasional column which allows authors to express themselves in unconventional or provocative ways. In this issue we publish a piece by an anonymous author whose experience of working in a local authority leads to questions about the constraints of practice within the current context.
subject: On The Block
  topic: section
subject: Local Authority
  topic: keywords
subject: community engagement
  topic: keywords
creator: Anonymous
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Anonymous https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2024-12-18
publication date: 2024-12-18
starting page: 4
ending page: 4

The Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism (& how it came to control your life) (2024)
type: item
description: While there have been other books on the rise of neoliberalism[1] this book seeks to bring the concept of neoliberalism to a wider public. It aims to offer a readable, accessible guide, to make visible the key concepts of this ideology, how it has been promoted, and to develop an argument which opposes a political logic that in recent years has advocated these concepts as the new “common sense” - immutable principles for which there is no alternative.
subject: Reviews
  topic: section
creator: Margaret Petrie
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Margaret Petrie https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2024-12-18
publication date: 2024-12-18
starting page: 4
ending page: 4

Exploring community engagement methods and approaches, a one-day workshop for anyone in the Fife area to build their skills in this environment, Glenrothes, November 2024.
type: item
description: Community Engagement: we hear it a lot, particularly from politicians when talking about controversial topics and projects: “We engaged with the community, and this is what they wanted”. In tourism, it can be used to find the balance between the social impacts of development – ensuring that what we, as development practitioners, do is in the community’s best interests. Responsible tourism looks at the social, economic and environmental factors; one of these is objective – money – you can count it. Another of these is theoretically measurable on both macro and micro levels, though tough to define - environmental. The final is very subjective and nearly impossible to measure with any proper level of accuracy – social. That’s where community engagement comes in.
subject: Reviews
  topic: section
subject: Community Engagement
  topic: keywords
subject: economics
  topic: keywords
subject: environment
  topic: keywords
subject: social
  topic: keywords
creator: Matt Pointon
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Matt Pointon https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2024-12-18
publication date: 2024-12-18
starting page: 4
ending page: 4

Theatre of the Oppressed and its Times: A talk by Julian Boal
type: item
description: I’m always impressed by someone who can stand up and speak coherently without notes. It’s an underrated art form, and one that Julian Boal performs with conviction and authenticity, all the while in a second language. He is promoting his new book, Theatre of the Oppressed and its Times (2023), at an event jointly hosted by Active Enquiry Theatre Company and the University of Edinburgh’s Moray House. I arrive at Boal’s talk intrigued by what it’s like to be the son of a revolutionary theatre practitioner, probably the most famous theatre maker ever.
subject: Reviews
  topic: section
subject: Oppressed
  topic: keywords
subject: revolutionary
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subject: art
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subject: theatre
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creator: Sarah Ward
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Sarah Ward https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2024-12-18
publication date: 2024-12-18
starting page: 4
ending page: 4

Family Secrets: Questioning the Past
type: item
description: I opened the antique chest I inherited from my great-great uncle Alexander and began unravelling the strands of his life as an evangelical minister in late nineteenth-century Italy, bringing to light the cover-ups in Britain’s history of Empire and the ways in which a handful of families even today continue to shore up their wealth.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: family history, slavery, wealth, inheritance, landed aristocracy, cover-ups
  topic: keywords
creator: Jean Barr
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Jean Barr https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2024-12-18
publication date: 2024-12-18
starting page: 9
ending page: 9

State of the Field and Future of CLD in Scotland
type: item
description: I was asked to provide an input at Moray house on the state of the field of Community, Learning and Development (CLD). This was on 14th June and therefore, before the findings of the review called by the Minister for Higher and Further Education on how the CLD Service offers support and development to learners in Scotland’s communities (Scottish Government, 2023a). The following is a slightly amended version of that talk to provide greater reading clarity.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Community, Learning and Development
  topic: keywords
subject: CLD
  topic: keywords
subject: Education
  topic: keywords
subject: Scottish Government
  topic: keywords
creator: Sinéad Gormally
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Sinéad Gormally https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2024-12-18
publication date: 2024-12-18
starting page: 13
ending page: 13

The Kirkwood Papers
type: item
description: Over many years, Colin and Gerri Kirkwood have made a significant, distinctive and influential contribution to the practice of community-based adult education in both Scotland and the UK as well as further afield. In this article, they provide a brief introduction to the archive of their work which has recently been established at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: community based adult education
  topic: keywords
subject: Scotland
  topic: keywords
creator: Colin Kirkwood
creator: Gerri Kirkwood
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Colin Kirkwood, Gerri Kirkwood https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2024-12-18
publication date: 2024-12-18
starting page: 8
ending page: 8