Telling stories of Older Adult learners in the ‘Third Age’: Neighbourhood houses in Australia

Neighbourhood Houses - Sites of Adult Learning. Australian Neighbourhood Houses are learning centres that are part of the Adult Community Education (ACE) sector. There are more than 1000 Neighbourhood Houses in Australia located in all states and territories. Each state, excluding the two territories (NT and ACT), has its own peak body and there is a national (unfunded) peak body which contributes to policy and issues of common interest, and promotes the sector. They are not-for-profit community-based settings that provide a range of services and support, including adult education. Integral to their philosophy and practice is a place-based community development framework supporting and resourcing local communities to identify and respond to their local issues and needs (Rooney, 2011, Ollis 2018, et al). Neighbourhood Houses and centres in Victoria are integral to local communities. They provide opportunities for social engagement, social inclusion and learning through a range of formal and informal education programmes, developed with and for people with diverse life experiences, for example, migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, people from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) backgrounds, people living with disability, older adults, retirees, young people who have not continued in formal education, and the unemployed. The majority of participants are people who are on low incomes, socially isolated or at risk of social isolation, and with low levels of formal education. This snapshot of older learners in Neighbourhood Houses for the PIMA bulletin draws from a larger research project of Lifelong Learning in Neighbourhood Houses (see Ollis, Starr, Ryan & Harrison, 2016; 2017 & 2018, for example). It uses multiple case study research and produces some of the case studies as poetry to illustrate the complexity of learners’ experiences in Neighbourhood Houses.