Family Learning Festival aims to mark and inspire a love of learning in family life

#LoveLearning – Starting this Saturday (17 Oct), the Campaign for Learning (@CForLearning) is launching the #FamilyLearningFestival, a two-week long national celebration which aims to mark and inspire a love of learning in family life.

The festival, suitable for families with children of all ages, will start on 17^th October and run until 1^st November and will be celebrated across England, bringing families together during lockdown and boosting parent confidence in supporting their children’s learning. 

The Campaign for Learning aims to build a culture of learning everywhere. Organisations are set to deliver brilliant and creative events, showcasing ideas and learning opportunities that families can easily participate in. 

This year’s theme ‘Love Learning’ centres around learning out and about, learning at home, and how to help families to feel great through learning together. The topic aims to highlight the longer-term support and services available to families, demonstrating how to make the most of home learning and showing which activities can support family wellbeing.

This year’s festival is more important than ever, as it seeks to help parents who are struggling to support their children’s learning following a very disrupted academic year. The Nuffield Foundation found that 60% of primary school parents and almost half of secondary school parents reported that they found it quite or very hard to support their children’s learning at home during the lockdown.

Despite the Government’s recent announcement on further restrictions for many regions, organisations are continuing to adapt by offering digital events and activities for the Festival which families can access online.

The City of London is hosting a range of free activities including Martin Luther King poetry activities, story time sessions in Bengali and family cooking lessons.  Families can dance in Dancin’ Oxford’s digital playground and find great craft activities at Tameside’s Culture Camp.

A survey on a previous family learning festival found that 74% of organisers developed new learning opportunities through involvement in the festival and almost all participating organisations indicated that they would get involved in the Family Learning Festival again.

Juliette Collier, National Director for Campaign for Learning said:

“We are really pleased to coordinate the Family Learning Festival once again this year, after it has proved such a success in previous years. The Festival offers a great opportunity to provide ideas and learning opportunities that will continue to benefit families in years to come.

“This year has really cast a spotlight on the importance of family involvement in learning, and we want to help everyone to feel more confident and supported in encouraging learning beyond the classroom.

“I really would urge all organisations to get involved in any way they can – it’s a chance to celebrate the fun side of learning and the diverse ways in which we do it.”

To find more information about how you can be involved as an organisation or how your family can sign up to events, take a look here.