Project Dating - Report
Well, it was a bit of a gamble. No-one had tried anything like this before. And it was near to Christmas. But people came along. There were delegates from over 30 organisations. All assembled to do a bit of dating.
The serious part, of course, was the news from researchers who said that our area did not do well in terms of lottery and other funding bids. So, we wanted to do a couple of things about that. First, use the event to provide information on trends and funding opportunities. There were contributions from Jo Baty, Partnership Director LSC, Sue O’Gorman Regional Co-ordinator of NIACE, Gill Eden European and External Funding Manager Bedfordshire County Council and Lesley Nichols ESF Funding Advisor Luton Borough Council. Second, use the event to facilitate some “project dating”. For this we paired people up with people from other organisations and gave them 3 minutes to exchange details on their work, projects and contact details. We had a whistle-blower who blew to signal that 3 minutes were up. People then moved around to repeat the experience with the next person. All in all everyone got time to meet and network with at least 20 other people, before we finally ran out of time, and steam. The consensus was that it was tiring but worthwhile. Our evaluations showed that lots of people left with a much better idea of what other groups were doing and – importantly – a list of people to follow up, who could be useful to them, now or in the future.
So, in spite of all our worries (well, mine) it all went well. A nice way to end the year. And Project Dating will definitely happen again in the New Year.
sferris@learning-partnership.co.uk
