Learning Marathon The 6 month peer-led learning accelerator
2019
Grow yourself, together. New start
You want to grow to meet a challenge you’re facing at work, in society - or in life.
Fuel your growth by joining a peer group and taking on your challenges together.
Your host will guide you along the Path, designed to harness collective potential.
Emerge more capable, purposeful and connected, having met your challenge.
Our future requires a new way of learning that is cooperative, creative and purposeful Amidst increasing uncertainty and inequality, it has never been more important for people to learn to grow themselves, together, to meet the challenges that matter to them. We exist to respond to: A future of work that will increasingly require us to be lifelong learners A need for scalable access to lifelong learning at a time of growing inequality Increasing need for ‘21st Century’ cognitive, creative and collaborative skills.
The Learning Marathon is a 6 month peer-led growth accelerator for groups of 10-12 peers who pool their skills, resources and networks to respond to changes they wish to see. By connecting peer groups we aim to open up access to transformational learning experienes, by supporting
people to power their own development and through doing so amplify the development of their peers. By enrolling you will help to create a more open, non-hierarchical and accessible future for lifelong learning whilst making your own goals a reality.
“I can't believe how much I've made happen. I couldn’t have done this without the support of the group and the structure of Meetups.” - Roxana Bacian, 2016 participant
The Learning Big Marathon quote
What do you get? A dozen peers who are also working on something that sets them alight. Pooling ideas, skills, experience, perspectives and momentum creates a rich 'soil' that will fuel your growth.
Space to tackle a specific professional, personal or societal challenge that matters to you. You'll tackle your challenge as a project, adding something of real value your portfolio.
A carefully crafted 6 month Path that provides structure and accountability to keep you moving, whilst harnessing the collective potential of the peer group.
A host, trained in the Enrol Yourself philosophy and approaches. Your host is there to guide, not to lead, and they will participate alongside you.
You can forget subject silos. This is an interdisciplinary learning environment fit for upgrading 21st Century capabilities like collaboration, creativity and continual learning.
Access to the combined network of the group and associated connections, plus access to Enrol Yourself community activities such as an annual 'Enrol Camp' retreat.
How does it work? Peers
Project
Your hive-mind-support-sytem
Tackle a challenge that matters
Your six month accelerator
A group of 10-12 peer peers pooling their skills, resources and networks to accelerate their development.
You might be trying to boost or change your career, get a sidehustle or venture off the ground - or respond to a societal or personal challenge.
A scaffold of meetups, intensive weekends, a showcase event and more. The Path is designed to harness the power of the peer group to accelerate your development.
In traditional education you’re often grouped with those who have the same background or specialism as you. Enrol Yourself is different because a multidisciplinary group of peers is needed to pool resources effectively.
You’ll be taking learning into your own hands by designing and directing your own project, so that you engineer precisely the capability stretch and portfolio piece you’re looking for.
Path
You and your peers will travel together, with support from your Host: a group member who also takes on the role of facilitator.
Peers Diversity and multidisciplinarity are known innovation metrics: groups are more creative when they have multiple perspectives. For peer-led learning to flourish you need peers you can learn from. This won’t feel like the easiest way to learn. It might be easier to stay within your comfort zone, surrounded by people who share your perspective, but being part of a community which offers you new viewpoints will allow you to grow in new directions. What’s so great about peers? A non-hierarchical group is a rare treasure. It is a very safe space to experiment and try things out - without fear of judgement. The purposeful new relationships you form will blur the line between professional contacts and friends, and will continue to serve you once you complete the Path. How do we match the peers? First and formost we look to match peers with real commitment to the process. We also ask you for profiles you’d be keen to work with, and do our best to connect you.
So there are no teachers? No, but you will have a Host: a member of the group who has been trained to act as a facilitator and organiser to support the group to stick together. They are not your manager or superior but are well versed in the process and there to help you navigate it. You will also take on multiple roles including learner, teacher and coach - and learn through each role.
Peer
Peer
Peer Peer
Peer
Host Peer
Peer Peer Peer
Project Project-based learning is all about addressing real world challenges whether that’s at a personal or societal scale. Addressing challenges develops integrated capabilities which are increasingly demanded by employers - and needed by society. These capabilities are complex and therefore they can be hard to test for. A project led approach gives you the chance to develop something of real value - and prove what you can do. Leading a project invariably requires multiple skills and perspectives, so you’ll move faster and with more potency from within a peer group. Who decides which project I’ll work on? You do. When you apply we ask that you propose a Learning Question which will be the title for your project. We do this to ensure there is a big unifying idea which can ignite your curiosity and activate your intrinsic motivation, and because asking great questions is the basis of inviting new possibilities and working toward change.
How do I choose a learning question? Questions need professional, personal or societal significance. We believe human growth should be about contributing positively to society as well as maintaining employability. We’ve also found this ensures that there is plenty of crossover between the different projects in the group.
Julian set up Rooted, an agile Social Innovation and Impact Organisation.
Q: How can we design with the black community to improve mental health services?
Q: How can we create accessible learning spaces for curious adults?
Q: How can citizens of the global north better engage with global development?
Dan created a board game to engage people with food systems.
Q: How to use the power of play to increase understanding of food systems? Ruth developed #StickyProtest a set of stickers to stick on oversimplified images of poverty.
Bailey developed a platform to connect lifelong learners with interesting speakers.
Q: What is hope? And can it be designed?
Fan created a podcast called Hope Rising which she continues to produce.
Path The Path is a six month learning
your goal and supporting you to develop lasting lifelong learning habits.
which you can construct your development.
What’s the time commitment? The path is designed to fit alongside work whether that’s full-time or part-time, and requires roughly 5+ hours per week. Some weeks will require more or less than this.
The Path keeps you accountable, helping you take small but continual steps towards
Prepare
Explore (2 months)
Develop (2 months)
How has the Path been designed? The Path takes inspiration from coaching processes and design thinking. Coaching supports you to take ownership of your own development through reflection. Design emphasises an interative approach where you continually test your ideas, learn and refine, leading to better outcomes.
Showcase (2 months)
Apply
Showcase Event
Power Up Day
Sustain Finish line Weekend
Peer group forms
Weekend
Power Up Day Intensive weekends Whole group meet-ups Buddy check-ins Get shit done Sundays
Path in detail Evening Meetups
Buddy check-ins
Power up days
The six-months kick off with an intensive weekend of introductory presentations, coaching training, skills and networks mapping and co-designing the journey.
A full evening once every two weeks, bringing the whole group together. This is the spine of the experience combining workshops, challenges, discussion and guests.
Buddy groups check in between team meetups. You decide when to meet and whether to make it face-to-face or online. We'll provide you with session outlines.
You invite an external panel to give feedback on work in progress and boost motivation through creative challenges and reflection. You’ll have two of these.
Coaching
Get shit done Sundays
Showcase event
Finish line weekend
You will have some 1-2-1 coaching, and you will learn the skills to coach your peers. Your Guide will support your journey and help maximise learning potential.
We schedule these across the programme. This is important ‘heads down’ time where you’ll come together to work on your project with encouragement from the group.
This event is designed by the group to showcase your project and journey. A chance to share with family, friends, collaborators, funders: whoever you want there.
A retreat designed to make space for deep reflection, self-assessment, peer endorsement, storytelling, celebration and planning the next steps of your journey.
“I came out with a business idea, a small team of collaborators and my first client! Enrol Yourself gave me the confidence to get out there, challenge myself which I'll keep doing.” - Julian Thompson, 2017 participant
Coopera ti
Because we support you to lead your own development, we do not define a curriculum and you can forget subject silos. Change is an interdisciplinary subject: the challenge you tackle will determine your focus.
Resilience Pro
kills es
21st C skills
Cre at iv
ills k s ve
ble m s olvi n g
We know that demand for capabilities changes over time. Organisations like the World Economic Forum and Nesta regularly conduct research to understand what we should focus on developing. As the world of work changes in response to increasing digitisation and automation it becomes increasingly important to shift our emphasis from ‘horizontal development’ to ‘vertical development’. Horizontal development is the functional development of knowledge and skills, developed at your own particular level of cognitive, emotional and relational complexity. Vertical development is the transformation of how you think, feel and behave in the world, to increase your cognitive, emotional and relational complexity. You can think of horizontal development as downloading a new app to your device and vertical development as upgrading the operating system. Vertical development is interdiscplinary by nature, requiring integration of knowledge, skills, capabilities and attitudes. Challenge driven approaches provide a focal point for this integration. The Learning Marathon is structurally interdisciplinary, cooperative and self-led in order to ensure that participants must embody these attributes in order to take on the process.
Horizontal development Vertical development
“Enrol Yourself led me to ask bigger questions, let thoughts and feelings percolate, see myself through others, play on the edges and explore the adjacent possible.” - Matt Weatherall, 2017 participant
Learning philosophy: 3 pillars 1. Peer-to-peer learning (collaborative, co-operative)
2. Self-led learning (autodidacticism, self-directed)
3. Project-based learning (experiential, action learning)
Peer learning is all about people co-operating to meet their needs, through pooling the best of their energy and resources, and through taking on various roles at different times, such as teacher, facilitator, accountability buddy etc. Ross and Smyth (1995) describe successful co-operative learning tasks as intellectually demanding, creative, open-ended, and involving higher order thinking. According to Johnson and Johnson's meta-analysis, students in co-operative learning settings compared to those in individualistic or competitive learning settings, achieve more, reason better and gain higher self-esteem.
An autodidact is simply defined as someone who is self-taught. A self-directed learner is one who takes the initiative - with or without the help of others - in diagnosing their own learning needs, formulating goals, choosing materials, implementing strategies and evaluating results. This emphasis on holding the whole process makes self-directed learning appropriate for developing entrepreneurial skills.
This type of learning is defined by active exploration of real world challenges or issues to acquire deeper knowledge and produce new interventions, responses or solutions. Project- based learning can help you build and maintain motivation for learning by imbuing your life with purpose and creating all kinds of opportunities to participate in the world. Every project is designed and managed which means there is much common ground between peers who are going through the same process even if their projects are quite different.
Our view is that peer-to-peer learning that is purpose driven is an act of civic participation. This is particularly true in the lifelong learning space where learning is a lifestyle choice and a values choice as well as an increasing economic necessity. Civic participation means individual and collective actions designed to address issues of public concern. This type of learning also manifests aspects of self organisation that are mostly absent from traditional pedagogical models of teaching and learning. Self organisation is both an attribute of social movements, a fundamental entrepreneurial attribute which employers increasingly look for, and a quality of sustainable systems (which sustainability experts reference as a key difference between human and natural systems). Peer-to-peer learning relies on the assumption that everyone in the group has experience and knowledge that they can share and that others will find valuable. Enrollers’ scores for personal wellbeing increase through this process which may be partially attributable to this assumption that every member of the group is uniquely and equally valuable.
Typically an autodidact chooses their subject, their studying materials and the rhythm and time commitment (as opposed to a taught learner who might only choose their subject). Enrol Yourself provides the rhythm and structure so that more individuals can become self-directed learners. Working adults have many priorities and maintaining a habit of lifelong learning alongside a job or career is a challenge. Self-directed learning does not mean you don’t have external input or teachers, but that you hold the vision and monitor it - you set the bar. The onus is on you to find the teacher that you need and you have the freedom to reject some teachings, gravitate towards others, intersect ideas from different fields and disrupt the status quo. Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist, is one of many high profile individuals to claim publicly that learning how to learn will become the most valuable tool of the future as workers continually have to upgrade their skills and capabilities to adapt to the rapidly changing workplace. Directing one’s own learning will become more important, not only because of the need to upskill but also because these rapid changes will make it harder and harder for educational institutions to pre-prescribe courses of content for rapidly changing fields and disciplines.
Running a project is a bit like running a business and requires multiple skills woven into one practice. A project is real and therefore a ground for experimentation and feedback. A project implies an extended period of time and extended inquiry which mirrors the nature of professional work and is also consumate to the complexity of challenges which don’t simply divide down into disciplines. Enrol Yourself projects are titled with open ended Learning Questions designed by Enrollers to frame their goals and guide exploration. This type of learning has been found to have many benefits for learners and their communities including a positive impact on self-worth; high levels of active engagement; relationship building; and tackling real issues in the community. The promise of seeing a very real impact becomes the motivation for learning. Project-based learning emphasises activities that are long-term, interdisciplinary and student-driven. Unlike teacher-led learning, project-based inquiry emphasises collaborative or individual artifact construction to represent what is being learned. This focus on creating something of value means the learner is able to prove their capabilities - without exams or tests.
“My project is a great portfolio piece. It’s good to be able to show that off in a career setting. Having evidence to show what I’m capable of is invaluable.” - Tom Scanlon, participant
Participant Big Stories
Laura’s story Learning question:
Can a micro-hotel be the engine for equitable social and economic neighbourhood development? OursYours Micro Hotel I created the OursYours micro-hotel and documented the journey that I went on - from idea, through research, a maker weekend where I invited friends and family to decorate and construct the hotel, to a live pilot with real guests. I put together a report about what we learnt along the way and showcased different ways the project could scale and impact a neighbourhood in the future. @laurabillings * Laura was a 2016 participant
I spent 6 years researching and developing participatory culture in neighbourhoods, and learning about its potential to transform a place with everyone involved. I then became interested in the connection between these social interactions and ďŹ nancial ones, and how businesses could be designed to be inherently civic - to fund and build participatory social systems. Launching OursYours as part of my Enrol Yourself journey was an opportunity to run a live business prototype, and research its potential to scale in the future. Enrol Yourself gave a backbone of support and creative input alongside my live research project. It was amazing working and learning with such an inspirational group of peers. I am proud to have worked alongside such a brilliant group.
My husband and I stopped running the prototype micro-hotel after 6 months, and we learned a lot along the way that we can apply in the future. Perhaps to a larger site, or to another civic business. Time will tell... Since Enrol Yourself: When the programme ended I took a break for a while, and realised that I was not only interested in the subject of my learning question, but I am also fascinated in the process of collective learning, systems change and how people adopt new behaviours and build things together. Whether that is neighbourhoods, participatory projects, businesses or work place culture. I currently work at the Government Digital Service supporting a community of practice across government and it's the ideal place to innovate on
organisational learning models and ďŹ nd new ways for people to work together well to create better public services.
participatory projects + social outcomes invited to workshops and suppers
neighbours
stay at
networks of people
bookable room
community pot ouryours micro-hotel
visitors
buy in honesty shop
recommendations products
local economy
+
visit + spend at
everyone
local businesses
participation expert
learning, growing, trading, making, cooking, sharing, building
Julian’s story Learning question:
How can we design with and for the black community to improve mental health services? Rooted Rooted is an agile Social Innovation and Impact Organisation, driven by a collective of experienced design, innovation and policy strategists. Over the past six months I have done the groundwork, bringing together the founding collective and working out how to communicate our ambitions. julian-thompson@hotmail.com * Julian was a 2017 participant
I started this learning journey with a broad area of focus; inequalities in the black community, black third community organisations and innovation, with no real idea of what I would have at the end. Now I have both an emerging idea and valuable insights that will keep me moving forward. This learning journey has been more than an exploration of my project, it has been an exploration of my myself – a person who doesn’t want to be a bystander of social injustice, especially in a community I believe is rich with potential, talent and culture. The marathon has helped me reflect on my personal drivers for this project - and the impact I want to have on the world. At points, it’s been uncomfortable, and I have had to get used to sharing my views in a way
I have never done before. I’m continuing to grapple with the roles power, privilege and identity play in change for the black community. Watching my fellow Enrollers’ projects emerge, change and develop has taught me so much about giving yourself the permission to begin learning journeys of all kinds, and the role a supportive community can play on that journey. I started Enrol Yourself questioning what I could bring to a challenge so big. Beyond Enrol Yourself: I leave clearer about my purpose, having started Rooted, a collective within which I shall continue this learning journey. I’m looking for funding opportunities for Rooted, clients and connections to collaborators.
“We don't believe in a one-size fits approach to designing with communities.” Rooted collective
Roxana’s story Learning question:
How might movement be used to explore and overcome self-limiting thinking habits? Anxy (Dance) I made Anxy (dance) to learn about my anxiety using writing, movement and performance. I wrote the script for my Showcase piece in response to interviews I took of others experiencing anxiety. Less of a dance performance, and more theatre, it was an illustration of how individual stories of fear shape how we are afraid and how afraid we are as a collective. hello@roxanabacian.com @RoxanaBacian * Roxana was a 2016 participant
The motivation behind my learning journey came from being confused about where I was going next in my career. I knew I wanted to expand my skill set beyond design and I knew I loved dancing at parties. These seemingly unrelated facts were the starting point for drafting my ambitious curriculum. I wanted to learn about writing, movement, theatre, performance and movement based therapies. During my Enrol Yourself experience I worked with choreographer Jane Turner making a performance in response to the space at Conway Hall, was selected for a 4-day residency at the Roundhouse, learnt Butoh, Blues, Morris dance, clowning, Shakespeare and many other body-based practices. I go away feeling more connected, to myself, to others, and generally in my life. My brain feels more spacious and able to hold in mind
not only my own aspirations and curiosities, but also those of my friends and colleagues. This journey has been the steepest and most up and down learning curve I’ve ever experienced with learnings aplenty, not only professionally stretching my leadership capabilities, but also personally exploding my resilience, commitment and ability for discipline. ‘If the path before you is clear, you are probably on someone else’s.’ - Joseph Campbell Since Enrol Yourself: I’ve been published in a book selling at Waterstones. I’ve performed at Conway Hall and was chosen for a dance residency at Cove Park in Scotland. I’ve started dance therapy and put my career change into action, leaving design behind. Being listened
to in the group embedded my work with meaning and motivation. This played a key role in giving me the courage of today, in writing and sharing my personal experience of anxiety as opposed to other people's. My work a contribution to the group, the group a contribution to my work.
Sarah’s story Learning question:
How can I create and market holistic sex and relationship workshops for adults? Loving with the Lights On Over the past six months I’ve built the foundations for my business. Loving with the Lights On offers a series of educational workshops for adults which I’ve designed, tested and refined. At the showcase I displayed a snapshot of the workshops I’ve hosted and how people have experienced them. sarah@lovingwiththelightson.com @sarahadefehinti www.lovingwiththelightson.com * Sarah was a 2017 participant
It’s been a mad one. I was stuck on the vague phantom of my idea for so long and the whole ‘what-do-I-actually-want-to-do-withmy-life’ question, that it’s insane how quickly things moved forward once I had a clearer idea of where to take my passion. I realised that, for me, being around supportive, encouraging people and having collective working energy around me is incredibly important. I feel more driven when surrounded by driven people, and it was so helpful to be accountable to the group. My initial fear regarding my project was my feeling of incompetence (impostor syndrome). Sharing this journey with minds that work in such different ways has helped me think outside the box and develop skills I was afraid of, like marketing.
There were ups and downs in my life throughout this process, but the group was always so accommodating and understanding. I’m so so grateful I got to share six months with these wonderful people and learn vital life (and work) lessons. I’m so proud of myself for giving it my all. That in itself is an amazing outcome of this journey: learning that I can create something out of my passion and that I’m so much more competent than I gave myself credit for. Beyond Enrol Yourself: I’ll be taking some time for rest before launching my workshop series for 2018. Next year I hope to build on the foundations I’ve created with Enrol Yourself and see my business grow toward financial sustainability.
“Sarah led us through a beautiful, reflective and explorative journey” Workshop participant
Matt’s story
“L’appel Du Vide”
Translation: The urge to throw yourself
Learning question
How can we create a life we want to live? Launch Party On the Learning Marathon I became a house sitter which inspired an idea to make house sitting a norm for young creatives in London. I learnt that it’s this process of experimentation I enjoy the most, so Launch Party will be a platform to do more of these experiments and a networked way to launch the ideas for ventures, events, and stuff, that are inspired by them. matt@alaunchparty.com @alaunchparty * Matt was a 2017 participant
I’ve been experimenting with different ways to live in London for six years; first a warehouse, then a boat, backpackers hostels, and, just before Enrol Yourself, I started house sitting. Living in people’s homes while they were away, rent-free, gave me an opportunity to quit my job and figure out what to do next. I knew that I needed a crew to embark on this journey so I jumped at the chance to spend the next six months with nine others on a ‘Learning Marathon’. Guided by my learning question, originally ‘how can we live purposefully by deviating from norms?’, my first idea was to make house sitting a norm for young creative folk who need access to space on a shoestring. I set up a project to connect homeowners with
emerging artists, called it Launch Pad, and started to test its viability as a business. It would have been easy to call this my ‘what next’, put my head down, and get lost in the doing. Enrol Yourself provided a space to look up and move around, to ask bigger questions, let thoughts and feelings percolate, to see myself through others, to play on the edges, and explore the adjacent possible. For me, the most valuable part of the Learning Marathon was jamming with my fellow Enrollers. One of the many gifts they gave me is the courage to bring more of myself into my work; to keep hold of the thread that connects it to my personal life and to share stories about the experimental way I’m trying to live.
This gave rise to an idea called ‘Life Experiments’, a series of interventions, each breaking a societal norm, that I perform in an attempt to create a life I want to live. Enrol Yourself helped me to slow down to go fast. My original idea for a social enterprise has grown into a network idea called Launch Party, and my confidence has multiplied. Beyond Enrol Yourself: I'm looking for new ideas for life experiments and conducting a nocturnal experiment where I live night as day. I want to hear from people who are living experimentally to create the kind of world they want to live in.
Apply
Is this for you? Can you answer yes to these four questions:
1.
Is there a professional, personal or societal challenge you want to grow to meet?
2.
Do you want to challenge traditional learning formats - and yourself - by joining a peer group?
3.
Do you recognise the value of working toward more cooperative social patterns of behaviour?
4.
Are you an adult human, ready to commit to an average of 5 hours per week over 6 months?
Application process
Locations
We select through a light application process. This is to ensure that we form a group with the right balance of diversity and common interests who will effectively support one another as peers. Details about how to apply can be found online.
To date Enrol Yourself peer groups have taken place in London and Birmingham. We’re on the look out for new hosts, and we’re open to all regions. If you’re interested in hosting you can find more information on the website.
Criteria for selection includes: • Ability to commit to the group and the process • Synergy between applicant learning questions • Willingness to contribute networks, skills and support • Evidence of active community membership • Chemistry with your local facilitator
Check the website for the latest information about locations and applications.
FAQs 1. Who decides what I learn? You do! The Learning Marathon enables you to design and direct your own development from within a collective. You will propose a ‘learning question’ of personal or societal significance which you’re highly motivated to pursue for at least six months. This project will require you to develop existing and new capabilities including entrepreneurialism, learnability and collaborative skills - as well as skills specific to the needs of your project. Projects addressing real challenges are applied and interdisciplinary by nature. The Marathon is less appropriate for you if you want to adopt a specific technical skill or existing knowledge set: there are courses designed for these purposes. If your goals require creativity, adaptability and cooperation with others - then our approach to learning is likely to suit you. Participants are often interested in the intersection between disciplines, for example exploring movement and performance as a way to overcome limiting thinking habits; fusing economics and user experience research to create new pathways into activism; and developing participative games to teach sustainability to children. If you’d like to chat about whether the Marathon is right for you then get in touch at hello@enrolyourself.com
2. How do I decide on a Learning Question? Whilst some applicants come with an existing question, idea or project that they want to develop, others do not and that is totally fine. We ask you to apply with a project proposal titled by a learning question, and we provide some tools to support you to discover what that question might be. You can find these on our website. They will help you to map your goals and ambitions so that you can find a question that really motivates you.
What matters is finding a question that can act as a starting point. Questions tend to evolve along the way, this is all part of the learning process, so there is no need to get too hung up on finding the perfect question. When the Marathon kicks off there will be lots of opportunity to refine it. If you’d like to discuss your goals then please get in touch at hello@enrolyourself.com
3. What if I want to learn Spanish? As described above, some types of learning are more or less suited to the Marathon. Adoption of specific technical skills or knowledge sets may not be activities that flourish within a peer-led environment - so you might be better off taking a Spanish course. However, if you want to apply your Spanish speaking skills (perhaps you want to engage children with language learning or explore an element of Latin Culture) then the Learner Marathon might be the perfect accompaniment to your Spanish lessons.
4. What skills will I develop? Each Enroller is responsible for their own project and focus area. Having said that, the Marathon has been designed to be structurally interdependent and interdisciplinary, which means participants have to operate in a way which reflects this in order to complete the course. This makes the Marathon uniquely positioned to support development of a set of core ‘21st Century skills’, valued by employers. These include: • Complex problem solving • Creativty and innovation skills • Cooperative, relational and interpersonal skills • Resilience (adaptability and learnability) Furthermore the structural interdependence of the Learning Marathon allows participants to hone their ability to integrate these skills, capabilities and resources in
response to complex challenges. This integration is where human intelligence will continue to far outstrip machine intelligence and will become increasingly sought after as technological transformation continues.
5. Can I start my own peer group? Yes. Peer groups are intiated by a local host. Currently we operate in London and Birmingham and we plan to expand further in 2019. We offer a service to hosts including training, support, a fee, marketing and materials budget. If you’d love to see this in your local area then please get in touch or register your interest via this form.
6. Why is there a fee to participate? We aim to lower the cost of powerful learning experience by enabling a peer-to-peer and self-directed approach. However, the structures which support the Learning Marathon require time, energy and design, and we have found that people commit more to their development when they have skin in the game. The fee covers group recruitment, materials, facilitation and administration. Payments can be made in instalments or on a monthly scheme, and we also offer some bursaries.
7. Who should apply? Anyone can apply, but we think it’s useful to have some of the following attributes: • You have a the idea for project or venture up your sleeve and would find the feedback from a diverse and supportive group helpful to get it off the ground • You have spent a minimum of three years working • You are committed to your personal growth but also to helping others grow • You are looking for a skills boost or portfolio upgrade • You want to fulfill a creative passion or pursuit and find it hard to dedicate your time to this without a structure • The idea of collaborative and cooperative learning with a
group of purpose-driven people makes sense to you • You might be working full-time or part-time, employed or independent - and you're able to make a minimum time commitment of 5 hours per week
8. How do you select participants? We select through an application process. This is to ensure that we form a group with the right balance of diversity and common interests who will effectively support one another as peers. Criteria includes • Ability to commit to the group and the process • Synergy between applicant learning questions • Willingness to contribute networks, skills and support • Evidence of active community membership For those who are not selected, you are welcome to apply again in the future. The decision may be representative of the capacity of the group rather than your suitability.
9. How do you address diversity and inclusion? Diversity of disciplines and backgrounds is an important part of what makes the Learning Marathon valuable. Enrollers have come from a range of professions including design, tech, social enterprise, non profit, public service, law, you name it. We believe more diverse participation leads to greater developmental potential for each peer group. As such we are committed to improving upon our inclusivity in the long-term. You can read more about this here.
10. Which models of learning is Enrol Yourself inspired by? We’ve explored many learning programmes and models whilst designing the Marathon structure - and will continue to do so as we evolve. We’ve pulled out a few examples of initiatives that inspired us in the early stages of our development.
School of the Damned have a really interesting approach to peer-led groups. One cohort recruits the next and passes the responsibility on. The Presencing Institute’s U.labs use online learning and encouragement of local chapters to widen access to their tools and theory. When it comes to learning experience and style, both Year Here and Forum for the Future’s Masters in Leadership for Sustainable Development have informed our discussions about learning beyond the classroom and through challenges. We were surprised to find that examples from primary and secondary education, such as Sudbury School, have made us think about how you can design and take responsibility for your own learning. We’ve also been inspired by organisations who make learning flexible and available even to those with the busiest lives, particularly The Poor School and Hyper Island.
11. What do you mean when you talk about lifelong learning? Collins dictionary defines lifelong learning as ‘the provision or use of both formal and informal learning opportunities throughout people's lives in order to foster the continuous development and improvement of the knowledge and skills needed for employment and personal fulfilment’. This goes some way to describing what we mean. In addition to developing knowledge and skills, we see lifelong learning as a continuous process of developing the mindset or approach which underpins everything you do. We also think lifelong learning is increasingly necessary for a society facing multiple challenges in a context of rapid change. It goes beyond fostering personal employment and fulfilment, to fostering what is needed for collective action and a sustainable future. Our current education system allocates specific areas of our lives for learning, and therefore we perceive learning in this way; as separate from life. Lifelong learning could mean re-adjusting our perception, to place learning closer
to the fundamental purpose of our lives. We know this is a somewhat idealistic view, which is why we offer a practical and tangible way to get started.
12. How are you funded? Enrol Yourself was unfunded in the beginning and began when the co-founders could not find what they were looking for on the market. They designed something that they wanted to participate in - a passion project! In 2017 we won the Our Place in the World Award which includes funding and support from UnLtd, Innovation RCA and entrepreneur/philanthropist Tom Shutes. This funding will allow us to recruit facilitators and pilot a distributed model in 2018. We are now looking for further grants and investment to support our ongoing development.
13. Is the programme accredited? The Learning Marathon is not accredited. We do not seek to replicate or displace university education. Participants may already have formal qualifications. Our audience is looking to deepen their development alongside their professional practice and create something of real value, proving their capabilities through a portfolio of work and a strengthened network. These assets are increasingly sought by employers and our learners tell us that showing what they can do directly is more useful to them than institutional stamps of approval.
14. Who’s behind this? We were founded by Zahra Davidson and Roxana Bacian, both designers by background, who met whilst working for service design agency Snook, in Glasgow. Zahra is now our CEO, focused on growing the impact that Enrol Yourself can have by bringing the model to more people who want to learn in a flexible, collaborative way.
“Multiply by twelve the resources, knowledge, experience and encouragement you would have by yourself.� - Clemence Tanzi, 2016 participant
hello@enrolyourself.com @Enrol Yourself