NEWS - PRESS RELEASES

Free Opportunity to Sample Popular Culture

Adult Learners’ Week event at Vaughan College, part of University of Leicester, Thursday 20th May at 6.30pm

Issued 31 March 2010

Are you a fan of Coronation Street or The Wire, Beyonce or U2, Denzil Washington or Meryl Streep?

Would you like to understand more about your watching and listening habits?

Then sign up to a free course taster session at Vaughan College on Thursday 20th May at 6.30pm and learn what you never knew about your leisure activities.

The University of Leicester in conjunction with Adult Learners’ Week is offering a variety of free 1½ -hour taster sessions including the part-time Certificate of Higher Education in Popular Culture, which has been designed to develop skills in critical observation and analysis that will transform the way you feel about your favourite programmes, music and films. The taster session provides a great opportunity to help you find out more about the subject and what it could be like to study at the University of Leicester.

Dr. Clive Marsh, Director of Learning and Teaching said: “This is a very exciting new course and provides an opportunity for people who may have thought ‘Higher education is not for me’ to begin their studies by looking critically at material with which they may be familiar. By seeing things with new eyes, and whilst developing new skills, a whole new world is opened up. Study becomes fresh, connected to daily life, and helps people develop in all sorts of ways”

The two year, part-time course will enable students to focus on and understand the impact that TV, radio, music, films, DVDs and magazines all have. It will focus on the different ways in which culture can be interpreted and understood, the question of what is – or isn’t – art and how our watching, listening and reading habits are affected by changes in technology.

The part-time Certificate of Higher Education in Popular Culture is just one course from a varied part-time course programme which is delivered by the Institute of Lifelong Learning, part of the University of Leicester. The study programme offers a wide range of part-time courses designed to be both rewarding and flexible enough to fit in with people’s busy life commitments.

Formal qualifications or special experience are not normally required for entry to most of the courses and financial assistance is available to many students. People who successfully complete part-time Certificates may also be able to progress to full degree courses.

Places on the free taster courses are first come first served - to sign up please ring Vaughan College on 0116 251 7368.

To discover the full range of taster courses on offer and learn more about the part-time courses that are available visit www.le.ac.uk/lifelonglearning or request information by emailing lifelonglearning@le.ac.uk

Notes to Editors: For more information on this please contact Vicky Anderson, Student Recruitment Officer, Institute of Lifelong Learning, University of Leicester, Tel: 0116 252 5919, email va50@leicester.ac.uk