Formerly Leeds Trinity & All Saints, the institution attained University College status in September 2009, following the granting by the Privy Council of Taught Degree Awarding Powers, the institution offers a wide range of subjects at undergraduate, postgraduate and foundation degree level.

With around 3,000 students studying for full and part-time degrees Leeds Trinity retains a community atmosphere which provides a supportive and friendly environment to help people realise their full potential.

Most of our degree courses include professional work placements, and our well-established links with local business, industry and schools (as part of our PGCE courses ) offer opportunities for you to gain relevant experience and get a head start in the job market.

Primary school teacher, Laura Kirsten Taylor, says, “My Primary Education degree at Leeds Trinity gave me the academic knowledge I needed as well as extensive opportunities to practise and develop my teaching and interactive skills in the classroom as part of the course.

As a result, upon graduation, I secured a permanent position as a teacher at a thriving primary school in Halifax. My experience here has been fantastic as it’s a large, multi-cultural school and I continue to build upon the great foundation that Leeds Trinity gave me to develop my professional skills. I would say if you want to become a school teacher, apply to Leeds Trinity!”

Our highly-qualified and experienced teaching staff are passionate about their subjects, and committed to delivering a stimulating learning experience to enable you to reach your full potential.

The quality of our university courses are consistently recognised by professional bodies, and students regularly give us a vote of confidence, giving us consistently good feedback in the National Student Survey. In 2010 we jumped 30 places in the rankings to top the second quartile of institutions.

Deciding to go to university is a big decision, more so than ever with the proposed changes to fees and funding. But at Leeds Trinity we believe it’s important to think about the long-term benefits that higher education offers, and we’re very proud of the fact that 93% of our graduates go on to employment or further study within six months of graduation*.

Richie Anderson is now a broadcast journalist with the BBC. He says,

“Immediately after graduating, I started my job with the BBC as a broadcast journalist for BBC Radio West Midlands in Birmingham. I love my job as it’s incredibly varied and fast-paced, and I’m using all the skills I learnt during my degree course.”

“The teaching was very hands-on and challenging which means that when you go out into the world of journalism you have a good sense of editorial judgement. The skills I learnt in radio broadcasting, as well as the advice from my lecturer were a massive factor in me landing my job. She gave me the confidence to go out and get into the media during the recession.”

Spain contains multitudes. Indeed, such are the vast cultural differences between regions, that anyone travelling from Madrid to Barcelona, for example, would get the overwhelming sensation of having passed into another country entirely. Likewise, the country’s southern most tip, seemingly a stones throw away from the northern most point of Africa, has been subject to Moorish influences for centuries and, whereas in a city like Valencia you’d find a strong Catholic influence on the behaviour of the locals, it’s a different story in Granada where the legacy of decades of living under Muslim rule lives on.

How can anyone possibly take it all in? Well it’s not easy and you’ll need a good way of getting around. Finding a good car rental deal is a great start. In can be a good idea to get this out of the way near the start of your holiday, perhaps at the airport. No matter where you’re landing you should be able to do this. For example, car hire Malaga airport is a useful way to start a trip, or if your flights landing a bit further north car hire Alicante may be just the solution.

Of course there are other options available, although, none of them are as flexible as car hire. For instance the national rail operator RENFE offers services which will allow you to get around all of Spain’s 17 autonomous regions and the FEVE trains provide an adventurous way to see the north of the country.

If you are planning your entire holiday around spending short spells in major cities, you may get away with sticking with the underground ‘metro’ train service, but be aware that these are very crowded and dictate to you the terms of where you can go and when. For younger children they can even be a little intimidating.

• Established a postgraduate programme in social development practice, validated by London Metropolitan University, that was delivered in partnership with leading NGOs in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia.
• Ran a series of Dialogues on Development to create space in which governmental, third sector and business organisations had open dialogue on development issues in order to create openness to new ways of working together.
• Facilitated a learning programme for eleven different donors, in partnership with Grantmakers East Group, on grantmaking in complex and uncertain situations.
• Produced a number of papers, articles and a monograph on social development practice.
• Conducted developmental consultancy interventions with organisations including Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Carpathian Foundation and the Trust for Civil Society in CEE.

Quote:

“The donors programme demonstrated that many grantmakers in our region are making similar mistakes, such as acceptance of western ‘values’ that might not be contextually and culturally appropriate; making assumptions that the donors’ perception of community need is the actual need; donors’ inadvertent creation of dependencies through their grants; and failure to work with all of the stakeholders in making grants. Some of these mistakes have come up in our grantmaking. It caused me to stop and consider how we, as grantmakers, can create an environment that is more conducive to better grantmaking.”

George Zarubin, Eurasia Foundation

MA Social Development Practice 2006-08

‘An innovative and groundbreaking programme’
Gary Craig, Professor of Social Justice, Hull University, UK

Do you ask these questions?

1. How do I makes sense of, and develop appropriate responses to, the situations I am working in?
2. How can I help groups/organisations/communities work through change to bring social benefit and renewal?
3. What is my role, legitimacy and capacity to assist development processes?
4. How can my organisation create a developmental culture?
5. What concepts and approaches is my work based on?
6. How do I work with risk and uncertainty?

The development school (tds) had revised its popular postgraduate practice based programme to help students explore how to bring about meaningful social change.

The programme was:

1. Focused on your practice
2. Connected practice with learning and policy
3. Provided a forum for joint initiatives
4. Created a platform for influencing others

The programme enabled students to gain greater capacity to think about, design and use developmental strategies and practices for social renewal.

Key features were:

1. Validated by London Metropolitan University at certificate, diploma and masters levels
2. Two year programme starting early 2006 with six 7-9 day residentials with interim assignments and online support from a personal tutor
3. Core topics include development concepts and approaches, effective development practice, creating developmental cultures in organisations, professionalism and self in practice
4. Highly interactive with strong focus on working on cases from practice
5. Extensive reading and web-based learning support
6. Based near Budapest Hungary and run in English
7. Two parallel groups of 12 students with 4 internationally acclaimed tutors
8. Fees ranged from €4000 – €15 000 excluding travel/accommodation (see scholarships below)

Targeted to: Those based in public or civil society organisations in Central and Eastern Europe whose role is to help groups (NGOs, communities, community groups, public institutions) develop their quality and relevance and best serve the needs of their communities. Primarily, these groups are likely to be ‘external’ to the organisation in which the individual is based but they could be branches, field offices, outreach services or members of a network related to the same organisation.

Supported by: Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Open Society Institute Roma Participation Program (4 full scholarships available), Open Society Foundation Slovakia (2 full scholarships available), VIA Foundation Czech Republic (2 full scholarships available), Rockefeller Brothers Fund (1 full scholarship).

“The Development School gave a thorough grounding to my work and understanding: new insights, an overview of different approaches, better reading of my environment, a range of tools and a sense of vocation.”

Cili Simonyi, BOCS Foundation, Hungary and tds graduate

Do you ask these questions?

1. What understanding of change and development informs our funding strategy?
2. What do developmental funding practices look like?
3. How do we work with risk as a donor?
4. What sort of relationships do we want to build with grantees?
5. How do we learn and develop as a donor organisation?
6. How do we assess our impact?

Building on its work with a wide range of donors tds had a postgraduate practice-based programme to help you explore these and other pressing challenges and issues in your work.

Postgraduate programme in Funding and Development Practice

1. To be validated by London Metropolitan University with opportunities to continue to diploma and masters levels
2. One year programme starting early 2005
3. Three five day residentials with interim assignments
4. Online support from a personal tutor
5. Core topics include understanding development, developmental funding practice, creating developmental cultures in donor organisations
6. Highly interactive with extensive focus on working on cases from participants funding practice
7. Extensive reading and web-based learning support
8. Based in London UK and/or Budapest Hungary
9. English language programme
10. Maximum of 12 students with 2 core tutors
11. Fee of £5,500 excluding travel and accommodation

The programme was for individuals in senior roles in donor organisations. The programme did enable students to gain greater capacity to think about, design and implement developmental funding strategies and practices.

“Working with The Development School helped us root our work in a much deeper understanding of change and development; resulting in greater capacity to identify the sorts of processes that we wish to support – the sorts of processes that lead to lasting social change for the poor, marginalised and disadvantaged communities of Central and Eastern Europe/Russia.”
Shannon Lawder, Regional Director, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation

In each country we worked in close collaboration with partner agencies which included:

1. Partners for Democratic Change Slovakia
2. Opportunity Associates Romania
3. Partners Hungary
4. Women’s Alliance for Development Bulgaria

Academic partner

London Metropolitan University

Graduates

Students came from a wide range of agencies which included:

1. Local Government Reform Foundation Bulgaria
2. BOCS Foundation Hungary
3. Romanian Association for Community Development
4. Bulgarian Charities Aid Foundation
5. Romanian Foundation for Children
6. Zilina Community Centre Slovakia

Donors as learners

Donors who came on the learning programmes include:

1. Foundation Mozaik (Formerly NGO Development Foundation) Bosnia and Herzegovina
2. Counterpart Creative Center Charity Fund Ukraine
3. Open Society Foundation Slovakia
4. The Eurasia Foundation USA
5. Academy for Educational Development Croatia
6. The “Dynasty” Foundation Russia

Clients

Clients for consultancy processes included:

1. Charles Stewart Mott Foundation
2. Carpathian Foundation
3. Trust for Civil Society for Central and Eastern Europe

Supporters of the School included

1. Charles Stewart Mott Foundation
2. Rockefeller Brothers Fund
3. Grantmakers East Group
4. Trust for Civil Society in CEE
5. Individual private donations
6. Consultancy income and programme fees

the development school (tds) emerged from three inter-woven branches of thought and research about how we make sense of the world in which we live and work (our ‘environment’); how we best learn and how we create meaningful processes of social development in order to enable social renewal.

Making sense of the environment

“It is like we have learned the language and the symbols that show we have transformed but if you look beneath the surface, it feels like something important is missing.”. (NGO leader)

How we make sense of our environment conditions how we engage with it. tds views each situation as dynamic, unpredictable, relational and culturally unique. We encourage working with (rather than, say, trying to control) what is present in each situation and recognise that development needs to be systemic (a change in the whole) to bring social renewal.

Further we believe that an ability to critically assess dominant concepts and terms in the development field enables us to situate our own understanding and approach to social development.

Creating meaningful development processes

In the early nineties a study of the professional development needs of managers of UK social care organisations, faced with huge changes in their working environments arising from community care legislation, concluded that managers of nonprofit organisations had increasingly complex roles within dynamic environments which required skills that went beyond those taught in most management courses. The study’s author, Jenny Hyatt, termed these ’skills without edges’.

These ’skills without edges’ included imagination; strategic thinking and acting; political astuteness; power-aware networking; creativity and risk taking; participatory approaches; cultural awareness and adeptness; appropriate use of judgement; ability to work with an ethical practice and professional integrity.

Subsequently, in work with a wide range of civil society and public organisations in twenty countries, the study’s author realised that these ’skills without edges’ made the critical difference in enabling people to develop their services, organisations and communities for deep and far-reaching social benefit.

Learning well

tds’s approach to learning is based on three elements – exposure, reflection and practice.

Exposure to difference – different concepts, different practices and different cultures to those we are familiar with
Reflection – on our own understanding, our approach, our practices and our selves as practitioners
Practice – opportunities to look deeply at what we do and experiment with approaching our work differently
Enabling social transformation

Mainly, we work with individuals and groups who are based in civil society and public sector agencies who learn to make intelligent social interventions to bring about greater social and economic justice in a world marked by deep inequalities.

“The School has helped me to better understand the challenges of working with community groups, their internal dynamics and the complexity of local realities. It has helped us redesign our way of working with community based organizations and the support that we provide to community development practitioners. In turn, that has helped groups better engage with their situations to bring about concrete improvements in their communities and advocate for further needed changes.”

Florian Nitu, Executive Director, Romanian Association for Community Development and tds graduate