Transcript for A New Doco All About LL!
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Background talking
So Laneway Learning was started by a small team of four passionate people that love learning, and we were inspired by an idea in New York called the Brooklyn Brainery.
Here in Melbourne we run classes in unused cafes and bars on weeknight evenings and they’re cheap classes in pretty much everything. So we’ve done classes in everything from homebrewing to, I don’t know, crochet to the science of rollercoasters.
Melburnians have this real desire to learn something new. It translates really well from the idea in New York. And the Melbourne cafe scene, and the laneway scene as well, we’re kind of undercover, alternative education.
I think it’s about educating people in a fun way. It’s about sourcing passionate teachers from the local community and helping people learn in a relaxed atmosphere. They can be learning, having a bowl of soup or a coffee, or a beer, and they could be learning anything, and I think that’s what we’re trying to pursue.
We definitely like to use spaces that aren’t being used, especially in the CBD. The CBD kind of dies at night because all these cafes close at 3pm. There are loads of people walking around the city looking for things to do and especially for the guys that are finishing work at 5 o’clock, and their trains are delayed so what are they going to do? Well they can come down to Laneway Learning and learn something new.
It’s just a different way of learning. It’s taking people out of the classroom and office atmosphere and giving them an alternative option for learning something. So, we try to make our classes interactive and a bit different from what you would get in a school, college, or even at work.
Recently we did something a little bit different. We wanted to give back to community that’s been so good to us so we ran a special Sunday event called ‘Sunday Spectacular’, right here in Somerset Place in the CBD. It was all for a good cause as well, we managed to raise just over $2500 and we’ll be donating that in small chunks to different young people’s community projects around Victoria. So it was all pretty exciting.
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