GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

mimicking the upper classes in a way, aren’t they, in terms of their demeanour,

their style and so on and so forth and it is quite a beautiful picture really. I think

in terms of what we should do with Ruskin, we should restart it in many ways.

In these straitened times that we have around funding and these straitened

times around not being able to run courses because they are not viable and so

on, we need to rethink about what we are doing and speak to affiliates, speak

to the trade union movement and look at what we can do in terms of training,

what we can do in terms of political education, but in partnership basically. We

need to be in a partnership and the partnership needs to be real. We need to

design things that people want to do, not what we think they want to do.

Within that is almost the ideologically uncomfortable position of talking about

apprenticeships which does not sit easily with Ruskin College, but this is the

kind of world that we are in and we could do higher level apprenticeships, we

could do apprenticeships at degree level, but in what, you might ask. What I

was thinking was that we could enter into a discussion with trade unions and

other stakeholders in the movement and say, “What is needed? Why don’t we

write an apprenticeship standard? Why don’t we get a group of people together

and think that one through?” because there is potential there that we could do

that and the college would have an income stream and quite a significant

income stream which would then enable us to do lots of other things, because

at the moment that income stream is diminishing. I guess really I am putting

out a request that colleagues in the room think about that and think, “Is there

something that I can contribute to Ruskin in terms of the development of that

qualification?”

I think also we need to rethink higher education as well and consider what sort

of courses should we be doing at Ruskin. We had an interesting conversation

just before my presentation around activism and creative activism and thinking

about a course that embraces social media and different ways of connecting

with the world around us and I think that is really important and again I need

the input really from the people within the movement who potentially might

send people or sponsor people to come to Ruskin College. Just to reiterate

that, I think we need your support. In terms of the apprenticeships, we could

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