By Katie Nixon
After 7 weeks of training in London and seeing nearly all of the London centres, I think most of us who were to be based in Nottingham and Bristol had been wondering for a while what our day-to-day lives would consist of once we were based at our own centres. I was quite anxious to get started on my new role as a Primary FOCUS Coordinator at Nottingham Central, and I can safely say that the role and centre are everything I hoped they would be.
After 7 weeks of training in London and seeing nearly all of the London centres, I think most of us who were to be based in Nottingham and Bristol had been wondering for a while what our day-to-day lives would consist of once we were based at our own centres. I was quite anxious to get started on my new role as a Primary FOCUS Coordinator at Nottingham Central, and I can safely say that the role and centre are everything I hoped they would be.
Being in a
set-up centre is on the one hand very busy, but also very exciting. As
deliveries have been arriving in drips and drabs our centre has slowly been
coming together, and I think all four of us can now visualise what the end
result will look like. Being based in a community centre has also been lovely,
there is a constant buzz of activity and the others using the space are so
helpful and understanding. A big thank you goes to our resident caretaker Stewart
who has already done us many favours for which we are so grateful (he will be
receiving a large Christmas present from all of us!)
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| The Vine Centre, located at the heart of the Hyson Green community. |
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| The classroom is starting to come together! |
The thing
about a set-up centre is that there is a lot to do and everything happens quite
quickly, but the whole time you have a definite sense that something important
is coming, and for us that is having the young people in our centre. As school
relationships start to form and we prepare for both our open evening for
secondary students (14th November) and open day for primary (16th
November), we are becoming ever more excited at the prospect of working in
partnership with the University of Nottingham to offer support and guidance to
the young people of Hyson Green. My walk from the bus stop up to our centre in
the morning always involves a little stop to chat to the local postman, and I
just can’t wait until this becomes a regular occurrence and the walk is filled
with even more familiar faces and smiles (I may have to start leaving my house
a lot earlier if I want to fit in a chat with all of them!)
I feel so
lucky to have been given the chance to not only contribute to the amazing work
that IntoUniversity does, but also
to have part of the responsibility of bringing this to a whole new area and
community within Nottingham, and hopefully inspiring the young people there to reach
their full potential.
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| By Katie Nixon, Education Worker and Primary FOCUS Coordinator, IU Nottingham Central |
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