Stop Wensum Lodge Norwich cutting accredited creative arts courses

Wensum Lodge was once well-known as a thriving Norfolk County Council-run arts hub for the Eastern region. It is still the only place in the region, and certainly in Norwich, to offer accredited qualifications in many of the creative courses run there. These are all due to be cut in September 2017, with only 3 months notice.

The recent numerous managerial staff changes and funding squeezes have caused problems at the Lodge, which might be ameliorated were they able to attract more paying students - something which they can do if their online presence and communications strategy improved, and if they continued along the accreditation route.

Current students enrolled on courses at Wensum Lodge are often making career changes, or are developing skills in the creative industries which they then plan to use to undertake freelance work - all of which add to the creative life of the city. The value of hosting accredited courses is significant: they are instrumental in training individuals that have allowed our region to develop a strong reputation for the creative arts, and they facilitate the development of careers in those areas. This makes a positive impact on multiple levels: for the creative economy of the area - financial and reputational, not to mention the mental health of students taking these courses.

Cutting courses that are poorly advertised and administered makes very little sense when the courses themselves are highly subscribed. On a practical level, some classes could be relocated to more appropriate providers, but the arts courses that are offered cannot. For example, the nearest places offering accredited Ceramics courses were in London, and then almost exclusively in the northwest of the UK.

What Wensum Lodge should be doing is investing in publicity and learning support networks (computing, and online presence, amongst other things) in order to encourage more paying students rather than cutting classes that are popular and a valid part of the Eastern region's creative artistic ecosystem.