Background

In May 1998, during Adult Learners' Week, a conference was held in Edinburgh at which adult learners from all over Edinburgh met. They shared their experiences of being leamers, what it meant to them and to consider establishing a forum of students. A video was made that day giving students an opportunity to voice their opinions. Such was the interest a small working group was formed which met regularly and came up with three main roles for the forum: Representation, Information and Networking.

In November 1998, at another conference, we found in workshops that learners needed to talk about either small issues concerning themselves or large issues common to everyone. Some issues were lack of information, lack of confidence, not enough crèche facilities, financial difficulties, accessibility, contents of courses, and many more. With such enthusiasm at this conference we had no difficulty in finding volunteers to be in the group that steered us through the next 18 months. A great deal of hard work and many, many meetings later we have now achieved.