On May the 4th 2016 both myself and Sandra Trigg attended Ventnor Day with a view to promoting and representing POA Learning at the festival.

Ventnor Day was arranged at very short notice - the festival was only conceived four weeks before it actually took place. It was initially the brain child of Ventnor Town Council but the short lead time was due to BBC agreeing to be involved and requesting to host the local evening news program ‘South Today’ from the festival on a specific date. BBC Radio Solent also agreed to promote the festival.

The idea behind the festival was to promote and highlight the work the local town council ‘Ventnor Town Council’ have taken on and successfully undertaken primarily from the Isle of Wight Council. As other bodies find that their funds are being reduced and they have been struggling to provide the services Ventnor Town Council has stepped in to plug the gaps where they can. This they do by charging an additional levy on local residents and also by using volunteers and using other bodies to provide the service.

It was through this that POA Learning became involved with Ventnor Town Council. One of the services that they were looking to take on was adult education and training and also employability skills. With this in mind Ventnor Town Council approached us and asked if we would be interested in helping with this, Out of this the Ventnor drop in session was born and although still in its early days they numbers are growing and it does look like the session will be a success. And I thank Tony McCarthy the Ventnor Town Clear and Jason Mack the mayor of Ventnor for their support of this session.

As a result of the BBC’s involvement the festival was scheduled to run until 7pm and so did not start until 2pm. However there was a lot of setting up to be done and I was onsite at 8 am to assist with the initial set up before heading off to the prison to see some learners. We were back before lunchtime and set our stall up close to the main building where the drop in session takes place.

These events are always a good networking opportunity and it was good to catch with various organisations such as the health visitors, the council adult education team, Ventnor Library and make new contacts which in this case was having a good chat with Island Care, who were very interested in the vocational course packs and the local area co-ordinators from the council who were very interested in the functional skills that we can supply. Follow ups to these conversations will be taking place this month,

We took along the quick read books as they are always a good conversation started and when somebody has had a free book then they seems more well-disposed to listen to the rest of what we have to say.

Happily the weather was excellent and as the festival took place on the clifftop close to the sea it really was a very scenic venue for a festival to be held. We were located in the main body of the festival but it spread out over a large area down towards the sea. There were over 50 stall holders in attendance with a wide range of activities on offer including Yoga, Tae Kwon do, Head massages, and military re-enactments. There was also a good range of music on the stage which was just behind us but thankfully was not too loud as too prohibit conversation. There was also a café which consisted of blankets to sit on. It was a very informal and friendly festival.

There did not seem to be a formal point when the festival opened, it just seemed to get progressively busier. A lot of the people who attended in the initial stages seemed to be fairly mature but quite a few were interested in what we were doing.  As the day progressed and the schools finished more family type groups could be seen attending and our highlighters seemed to become the trophy of choice for local kids. There were plenty who stopped and had a chat and hopefully we will have signed up 4 new learners for the Ventnor session, 2 for the Ryde one and potentially a good number of sign-ups for the vocational packs, we certainly passed out a good number of course lists.

As the day went on the numbers thinned a bit soon it was packed again as the TV show began. However the TV show gathered a crowd around them which hid most of the festival from the cameras but they did show some good shots of the venue.

Once the filming had completed the festival emptied pretty quickly and we were involved with the clean-up which went on until about 8pm.

Overall this was a very worthwhile exercise in promoting POA Learning and union learning within the community. It always surprises me that so many people know virtually nothing about trades’ unionism and it is always worthwhile to be out and about and talking to people one to one. The networking with our peers is always valuable and events like this do a lot to keep the recognition and acceptance of POA Learning locally at a good level.  So we finished the day sun burned and tired, it was a hard day but a worthwhile one and I hope that we will see the benefits of our efforts in the coming weeks.