In the Workers’ Educational Association Archive (2023)

‘In the Workers’ Education Archive’ was a history and writing workshop on workers’ education in Scotland. Using material from the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) Scotland archive, we discussed Glasgow’s history of radical pedagogy and generated new cultural-political writing, imagining possibilities for similar educational projects in contemporary times.

Established in 1903, the WEA has a long history of community education in Scotland. The WEA Scotland archive at Glasgow Caledonian University – opened in 2022 – holds hundreds of community publications from worker-writers, local history groups, unemployed writers’ groups and women’s studies groups which offer a ‘history from below’ of modern Scotland.

The workshop featured a short talk by Kate Wilson on the history of the WEA in Scotland and its projects in areas like Johnstone and Castlemilk, featuring the oral testimony and work of poets, writers and educators who were involved in groups such as the East End Writers and Artists Group and Castlemilk Women Readers and Writers in the 1980s and 1990s. George Greig, who worked as Tutor Organiser with the WEA for the West of Scotland in the 1980s attended and talked about his experiences. We also listened to excerpts from George’s interview with Kate, in which he talked about how these adult education projects drew on the ideas of Paulo Freire to restore confidence and pride in people and placed scarred by Thatcherism and deindustrialsation:

Quite a lot of the work was wae people who were out of work – just about everybody was out of work, I think, at that time. I mean going through the early eighties it was…it was very, very demoralising and people could crawl away back into their wee house and never come out. So that’s why we worked – I mean not just ourselves, there were other people, obviously – y’know to get them to come out and get them to get involved in different things and what have you. I mean some of them go on and did their degrees at university […] I mean there was more than that. But that wasna something that we would…I mean we were pleased that people did, but it wasna like an aim of the association (Interview with George Greig 2019).

Heather Panayiotaki also gave a short introduction to using the WEA Scotland archive materials, democratising archival use. We discussed histories of the WEA and other adult education projects in the city, and how we can interpret and continue these ideas today. Joey Simons then led a writing workshop, using publications from the archive to generate new responses and ideas for adult education projects and writing collectives today.

Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Participants: Joey Simons (Workers Educational Association/Living Rent), Kate Wilson (University of Strathclyde), Heather Panayiotaki and Katie Malone (Glasgow Caledonian University Archive).