Friday’s conference was opened by Fiona Hyslop, Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning. As the Times Educational Supplement Scotland reported in its article on the conference, Hyslop “went out of her way to support learning for its own sake”- she emphasised that the importance of community learning was enshrined in an agreement between the Scottish Government and Local Authorities, and made special mention of the value of courses provided by the WEA.

The keynote speaker was Willy Roe, chair of Skills and Development Scotland and a Commissioner on the UK Commission for Employment and Skills. He stated that “Scotland is going to be short of people, not short of jobs”, as the population is unlikely to grow greatly in numbers but will age significantly. He told conference that this meant it was vital to embrace “not just second chance learning, but constant learning” in order that people had appropriate skills and that those skills were able to be fully utilised. He also emphasised the importance of early learning and praised the impact of WEA Scotland's family learning courses, such as Making The Most of Children's Development and Learning.

Fiona Hyslop and Willy Roe both stayed to answer questions from the audience, before delegates attended a choice of eleven sessions describing a range of educational projects and programmes, several of them run by the WEA. The sessions were all related to the overall theme of social justice, and covered active citizenship; family learning; learning for earning, and cultural and heritage studies.

The Friday conference was ably chaired by broadcaster and journalist Ruth Wishart, and as held in partnership with the Open University. With over 320 people in attendance, it was the best attended WEA event in recent years.

Parallel sessions The eleven parallel sessions delegates attended during Skills for Social Justice were:     •    Family Learning for Social Cohesion (WEA)     •    Widening Participation through building sustainable partnerships: an Open University in Scotland perspective     •    The WEA-UNISON Learning at Work Programme:     •    Addressing social justice through the social practice model     •    Support for employability     •    Tandrusti: Health and Well-being (WEA)     •    Active Citizenship and Social Justice (WEA)     •    Active Citizens: Legal education as a tool for public engagement     •    Making a difference: Co-operative Education     •    The Best Day of the Year: 100 years of Bo'ness Children's Fair (WEA)     •    A' Adam's Bairns: Using Political Song in Adult Education For further details on the sessions, click here.

Association Conference
WEA President Colin Barnes got Saturday's conference underway by welcoming delegates and formally opening the day's proceedings with the President's Report. Delegates were also updated with the Trustees' report on the resolutions of the 2007 conference and on other WEA activity since conference 2007.

Delegates had the chance to debate and vote on thirty-five motions proposed by branches, local associations and regions from across the WEA. Sixteen of these motions were passed, becoming Resolutions of Conference. Peter Cooper and Chris Morton were confirmed unopposed as WEA Treasurer and Deputy President (one of the two Deputy President posts) respectively for another four year term each. Gill Aldridge, Frank Colls, Michael Crilly, Martin Sundram and BettyWolfenden were confirmed as the members of the Standing Orders Committee to 2011. The Conference ended with a report from General Secretary Richard Bolsin and a vote of thanks.

The full Minutes of Conference, including the voting results for and against all the motions and amendments, are available here.

Conference Dinner
On Friday evening the Conference Dinner took place in the Mitchell Main Hall, followed by an informative speech by William Feaver, author of Pitmen Painters. At the dinner, Baillie Malick gave a toast to the WEA on behalf of Glasgow City Council, and ABF Sweden (essentially the Swedish WEA) gave a fraternal greeting- partner organisations from Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany and France were all present at Conference thanks to a transnational project with WEA Scotland. The Hall layout acknowledged the work of WEA students through place cards and menus displaying their artwork; one delegate described these as “fantastic”. Traditional Scottish entertainment carried on late into the night as delegates danced to a live cèilidh band.