St. Pauls Family and Learning Centre has been open for ten years now and it is a good time to review what we have been doing and what our customers and tenants think of the service. In that time funding for learning has altered, and in recent years, dramatically. The proposed conversation with tenants, customers, staff and the community is about learning what St. Pauls does well and what should improve and how we can change our focus to match the changing national and local priorities. It is clear that we can't stand still and that we must widen our use of the centre. We want to plan for the future and need the help of all the community to feed in ideas. This conversation is about making the centre viable in the future but also exploring what more we can do to use the resources we already have. The centre is a great space, looks exciting and new and has the cafe, crèche and library and we want more people to use it either as tenants or customers.

St Pauls Learning and Family Centre is a service for everyone and as libraries and the role they play as community hubs becomes the responsibility of the neighbourhoods they inhabit their ability to support learning and entertainment needs community collaboration and a team activity to provoke thinking and creativity.

We rely so much on those in positions of power to provide the services we need to live healthy, happy lives. But as we all know the times they are a-changin' and chances are your local library needs you. There is the chance to collaboratively & creatively rethink how St Pauls Learning and Family Centres’ services are delivered to meet the needs of the local community. 

This is not about intellectual property; it is about open collaboration, good ideas and getting all of the people who can make them a reality together in one room whilst giving members of the community the support they need to actively manage the services their services in the future.

Reaching out to people who will use a service to help design it has become the only way to make sure it is sustainable and desirable. Employment, housing, health, learning, entertainment & community engagement should all be part of a holistic local ecosystem.

If you live in St Pauls or not, whether you use the centre or not, please get involved. Any level of participation you are willing or able to provide is extremely welcome and would be of tremendous value to the success of this project.

The main aim of the project is to make sure St Pauls has a centre that fits into people’s everyday lives and they love to use.