Learning for Life: Building Hope and Opportunity Together - Strategy 2025-28
From vision to reality: here’s what our strategy means through the eyes of Head of Service for Learning Jo…
In uncertain times, the CoLab Strategy is our guiding light. It shapes purpose, drives ambition, and gives strength—not only to CoLab, but to the people we walk alongside. Our aim is more than survival; it is to create the conditions where people can truly thrive.
That starts with how we welcome people: with kindness, compassion, opportunity, ambition, and collaboration. Together we create space for hope, learning, growth, and change rooted in shared values.
This strategy doesn’t mark a new beginning—it builds on the past nine years of hard work, learning, and adaptation. It reflects our optimism and ambition to keep pushing further: to test, learn, sometimes fail fast, and always use that learning to create deeper impact.
At the Urban Learning Academy, we don’t design programmes in isolation. We co-produce, listen, and learn alongside learners and partners. By working ambitiously together—and valuing lived experience—we create something stronger than any one organisation could achieve alone. Learning becomes a tool for empowerment and transformation.
As one of ULA’s founding partners and proud host, CoLab sees learning as central to its mission. Through partnership and collaboration, we strengthen not only learners’ lives, but also the wider social fabric of Exeter.
As Head of Service for learning, and after more than two decades in adult and community education, it is both reassuring and energising to see learning at the heart of our strategy. Because we are all lifelong learners—through our experiences, relationships, challenges, and ever-changing contexts.
That’s where the ULA sees opportunity: to connect people, passions, and curiosity; to create the conditions for flourishing; and to invite people to grow, try, and discover new possibilities and pathways.
If this reflection resonates with you, please share it — the more voices in the conversation, the stronger the change.
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