FE Constellations: A New Paradigm by Lou Mycroft

 

It’s an absolute delight that FE Constellations has been a co-created venture from the very start. We know we’re doing something radically different in designing a membership model which is community-first, content-second. No-one ever really minds ‘community-first’, but ‘content-second’ is a risk in an FE sector which has always been very focused on CPD – expert led ‘stuff’, new models of pedagogy, hints and tips.

Over the last four years of #APConnect we’ve learned about the exponential power of community – peer-led professional learning which is more than the sum of its parts. After all, content goes out of date pretty quickly. A healthy, energised community is there to help you recycle and repurpose content to now.

We curated plenty of content on #APConnect, the national professional development programme we worked on together for the Department for Education via The Education and Training Foundation, over four years. But – somewhat unexpectedly – we learned that what gave the content lasting impact, what actually shifted organisations from good intentions to actionable ideas, was the momentum built up by people working together pan-organisationally, in community. Momentum needs energy, and energy means people.

So we learned that our purpose was two-fold. Build virtual architectures to support pan-organisational communities and ensure they were communities of belonging. Practitioners need to be present as themselves, not just fitting in, if they are to gather the courage and energy to do the work.

And that’s all ‘practitioners’. FE Constellations is a community for changemakers and they exist at every level and in every operation of the organisation. One of the finest changemakers I know is a chef. Another is head of hospitality. Sometimes it’s educators, but not always. We can only get so far, without each other.

We also have no geographical or funding boundaries to FE Constellations. We intend this to be an international community, operating way beyond the restrictions of the English funding scene. If you work with adults or young people on any initiative involving learning, anywhere in the world, we think you’ll love it here. We can only learn so much, without opening up these borders to new perspectives and different ideas.

 

What’s the Pitch?

FE Constellations is currently in the pre-launch phase before we go live on 27th June 2022; we’re blogging, tweeting and livestreaming our intentions and each message brings responses from the broader community, that we then weave in. Co-creation from the start. One question we’ve been asked a few times is:

“How do we sell this concept to managers?”

It’s a great question and perfectly timed in the season of PDRs (or whatever you call them at your place). We’ve got a few ideas.

1. Be unapologetic about community-first, content-second. Often, people only need to be reminded of cluttered staffrooms and budgets spent on ‘stuff’ which has barely been used and never evaluated. FE Constellations has got impact evaluation frameworks baked in. We don’t need nearly as much expert-led CPD as we thought we did. What we need are changemakers who drive transformation beyond the good intentions of all that stuff, to actionable ideas, supported and energised by the community.

 

2. Tell them about the Golden Unicorns. We all know them. Long-standing, talented colleagues who are fed up with not being heard or appreciated and whose only way to enact their power is to do the job and go home. Together, we’ll release the latent capacity of the Golden Unicorns to trust, thrive and believe.

 

3. Draw their attention to the #APConnect evidence of life-changing potential. We were able to do two significant pieces of co-evaluation research with the APConnect community, as well as being involved in three external evaluations and endless conversations and polls. Good, talented people are still in FE because they were able to draw energy from the community well and bring it back into the organisation. The impact is personal, as well as professional. If you’re struggling with recruitment and staff retention, there’s a lot to learn from this.

 

4. Check our our website www.feconstellations.net Show it to your manager! Or take it a step further and actually join the community on a one week free trial. Have a play around with it That way you’ll be able to really articulate the impact it’s going to have. 

 

The Nuts and Bolts

The money stuff properly adds up to excellent value. We’re transparent about what FE Constellations will cost and you can find options on our landing page. Briefly, it’s £250/year for individuals and £3000 for unlimited changemakers within an organisation (you can also pay monthly, but the annual rate is much better value).

Everyone goes through FE Constellations as an individual, the whole point is to mix with others pan-organisationally. This means that you can join as an individual, or your organisation can join – this way, an unlimited number of changemakers can be part of the community (and if you join as an individual then your organisation signs up, we’ll refund you).

• The price for you as an individual is significantly less than a standard educational conference. For a whole year’s immersion.
• The price for an organisation to enrol unlimited changemakers (not just educators, remember) is less than it would cost ten people to do the FE Constellations’ Changemakers Course, launching in November. For a whole year’s immersion, including that course (and more to come).

We hope it’s a compelling story. We’ll keep adding to it, as you let us know what worked for you. Places are initially limited to 30 founding individuals and 30 founding organisations, so that we can properly create a culture of belonging and collective care. We’ve always been about providing the best possible service – seva – in furtherance of our big purpose:

Our big purpose is to bring together changemakers in FE who are stuck in the system but who have a deep desire to step into their potentia: by gaining clarity through facilitated weekly spaces and deepening know-how in real time. So that together we can connect, collaborate and co-create previously unimagined futures for ourselves and the communities we serve.