About Courses

Sometimes, it seems that HYCC could borrow a quotation once used about the BBC: we seek to "inform, educate and entertain" as many people as possible within the community. While we would hate to speculate on the ways we unintentionally entertain our visitors, we have plenty of ideas on information and education!

We are often asked the difference between courses and activities. By our definition, courses differ from activities in that they run for a set length of time and usually have one or two people with specific knowledge or skill teaching this to a larger group, whilst activities are ongoing and usually (apart from dance) only require an occasional helping hand to run smoothly. Activities can also be joined at any time, while courses have a set structure and if you miss too many sessions you fall behind. We hope that makes sense!

The assortment of courses we offer can be very variable in terms of length, cost and subject matter. All of these also depend on whether it is HYCC who have decided on running the course or whether an outside organisation such as Profound Services, Acumen, Accent Foundation or Durham County Council have asked us to provide space for them to run one. HYCC has no control over, or say in, what outside agencies charge learners or whether they offer concessions; nor do we have anything to do with the subject matter or whether a qualification is offered at the end of all your hard work.

If, however, it is a Centre-run course then we have much more flexibility. Most subjects are offered because either several people have approached us wanting to learn about a specific topic or skill, or a tutor has asked whether we think people might be interested in the subject they excel in. More rarely, the Management team might suggest a course they believe might be popular or useful (although for some reason, Camel Herding for Beginners was rejected).

We try, as often as possible, to provide courses and activities which are free (or very cheap!), but this is not always practicable from a business point of view — at the very least, the majority of tutors obviously need to be paid fees. At the same time, we are fully aware that the majority of our customers cannot afford to pay high course fees and to require them to do so would be against everything we, as a Community Centre, stand for. A perfect example of this is the set of leisure courses we ran in 2013: Sewing Skills, Indian Cookery (twice), Clippy Mat making and Digital Photography. HYCC received £5,000 from County Durham Community Foundation — every penny of which was spent on making sure everyone received a fair reward for their efforts. For more information on how the Centre is funded, have a look at our Organisation page.

We also need to have enough people in a class to make it worth everyone's time and effort. We rarely run courses for fewer than five people, so if you sign up for something, please make sure you can make the commitment to several sessions. We have had days when the tutor has sat twiddling their thumbs in an empty room, and if that happens more than once, we have no choice but to cancel. And we don't like doing that!

Nevertheless, we are committed to continuing to making the Community Centre a hub for low-cost learning for all ages, abilities and interests, whether a course lasts half a day or a full year. By providing opportunities for people to meet others with similar goals and interests, to share experiences, chat and mingle, we hope to enable local individuals to widen their horizons, and realise that whatever their background, there's always room to learn something new!

And by the way — if you have any ideas about something you think might make a good (and popular) course, or if you think you could teach a group of people something new, don't hesitate to let us know. Just don't suggest camel herding — for some reason, the caretaker really hates that idea.