Adult Learning Festival 2026

Saturday 18 April 2026 09:00
Various
Category : Open events

Our inaugural Adult Learning Festival, a celebration of lifelong learning is free to attend, and will give you a wide range of opportunities designed to inspire personal growth, skills development and curiosity.

 

Explore the events and book your FREE tickets here - don't forget to follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn for Adult Learning Festival videos throughout the week. 

Programme of events:

Monday 20th April 

Levelling up your potential; the benefits of lifelong learning

Time: 11am

Location: Santander Work Cafe

Join us at the Santander Work Cafe at 11am, where keynote speaker, Chris Kissack will share his own journey embracing upskilling his knowledge base as well as why now it's never been more important opportunity to upskill and learn new things. Chris will also explore the benefits of online learning.

 

During the event we will be officially launching our Virtual Campus!

The presentation will last approximately half an hour followed by an opportunity to meet tutors from UCM, explore learning opportunities and speak to the Job Centre and Careers Team.

Book your FREE tickets here.

Tuesday 21st April

Managing & leading People Taster Session

Effective performance is unlikely to take place by chance and as such a crucial factor in getting the best out of people will depend upon how well they are managed and led. To this end, this Upskilling course is designed to support your development and understanding of concepts concerning the functions, and purpose of management and leadership including staff motivation, management roles and approaches, leadership styles, performance management and areas of Human Resource Management such as recruitment and selection.

Time: 4pm - 5pm 

Location: Homefield Road Campus

Enjoy a taster session in this Upskilling course.

Book your FREE tickets here

Tai Chi Taster Session (session 1)

Time: 4pm - 5pm 

Location: Homefield Road Campus

Enjoy a taster session in this Just For Fun course.

Book your FREE tickets here

Agriculture Information Session

Time: 4pm - 6pm (drop in)

Location: Homefield Road Campus

Find out about the wide range of courses available for the agricultural industry to upskill.

Book your FREE tickets here or drop in to chat with our team.

Intro to Excel Taster Session

Time: 5pm - 6pm 

Location: Homefield Road Campus

Enjoy a taster session in the 'Introduction to Excel' Upskilling course.

Book your FREE tickets here

Buddha Bowl Demo

Time: 5pm - 5.30pm 

Location: Homefield Road Campus

Enjoy a demonstration around how to build a Buddha Bowl (one of our fantastic Just for Fun courses). What is a Buddha bowl? It's a nutritious, one-bowl meal featuring small, artfully arranged portions of varied plant-based foods, typically including grains, roasted or raw vegetables, protein, and a flavourful sauce!

Book your FREE tickets here

Tai Chi Taster Session (session 2)

Time: 5pm - 6pm 

Location: Homefield Road Campus

Enjoy a taster session in this Just For Fun course.

Book your FREE tickets here

Wednesday 22nd April

Power BI for Beginners Taster Session

Time: 4pm - 5pm 

Location: Homefield Road Campus

Enjoy a taster session in the 'Power BI for Beginners' Upskilling course.

Book your FREE tickets here

Emotional Intelligence in the workplace

Time: 4pm - 5pm 

Location: Homefield Road Campus

Emotions play a part in our everyday lives and how we manage and respond to them in the workplace can have a significant effect. Although Emotional Intelligence is a relatively young concept, the social phenomenon it purports to represent is probably as old as human societies themselves. Over the last two decades, researchers such as Daniel Goleman have been engaged in a quest to identify, measure and develop human capacity to read and manage emotions for personal or business benefit.

This is the taster session for the upskilling course which explores

  • Whether Emotional Intelligence is an intelligence at all
  • The merits of ability based and mixed models (intelligence vs personality traits)
  • How Emotional Intelligence affects work performance
  • How to measure Emotional Intelligence

Book your FREE tickets here

Spanish Language Taster Session - Learn spanish 

Time: 5pm - 6pm 

Location: Homefield Road Campus

Enjoy a taster session in our Spanish Just for Fun course.

Book your FREE tickets here

Astronomy Taster Session 

Time: 4pm - 5pm or 5pm - 6pm

Location: Homefield Road Campus

Enjoy a taster session in our Astronomy Just For Fun course.

Book your FREE tickets for the 4pm session here or book your free tickets for the 5pm session here

Archaeology Taster Session 

Time: 4pm - 4.30pm

Location: Homefield Road Campus

The Isle of Man has an extremely rich and diverse archaeological heritage, commencing with the first inhabitants of the Island, the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) hunter gatherers down through the ages to the modern period of industrialisation. This taster session I will focus specifically on the Viking Age and the Late Norse Kingdom of Man & the Isles, spanning from approximately AD800 to AD1270. This era saw the Island colonised by individuals originally of Scandinavian descent, whose occupation and presence here is clearly evidenced in the rich tapestry of sites and artefacts which we identify today - for instance  Viking pagan burials sites, cemetery interments, Manx stone crosses, fortifications (St. Patrick’s Isle & Castle Rushen), coin hoards, coastal promontory forts, political and administration centres (Tynwald Hill) and farmsteads. The effect and influence of these incomers cannot be overestimated.

Enjoy a brief, but exciting taster session of our Just for Fun course - a window of opportunity to enjoy the prosperous and enduring cultural legacy that we have been so fortunate to inherit from our Viking forefathers, a past that we should indeed cherish.

Book your FREE tickets here

TT Motorcycle Racing - riding at the margins

Time: 5pm - 5.30pm

Location: Homefield Road Campus

The TT presents the ultimate challenge in motorcycle road racing, where the likelihood of serious injury or death is an ever -present reality. For the TT competitor the very nature of the event is one of enduring existential risk. It can be viewed as successfully negotiating boundaries, a dynamic tension between control and chaos, a fine dividing line between holding altogether and potential tragedy. Within TT culture this riding at the margins is known as “the edge” (made famous in the video Closer To The Edge). The attraction and challenge for the TT racer is to find just where “the edge” lies! So, join us today on an exhilarating ride as we try to find “that edge” through the experiences and narratives of several leading TT exponents, within a brief, but compelling presentation, which really brings the TT alive!

Book your FREE tickets here

Photography Taster Session 

Time: 4pm - 5pm or 5pm - 6pm 

Location: Homefield Road Campus

Enjoy a taster session in our Photography course.

Book your FREE tickets for the 4pm session here or book your FREE tickets to the 5pm session here

Reflexology - Massage Techniques Taster Session 

Time: 4pm - 5pm 

Location: Homefield Road Campus

Enjoy a taster session in our Reflexology - Massage Techniques Upskilling course.

Book your FREE tickets here

Introduction to Outlook Taster Session 

Time: 4pm - 5pm 

Location: Homefield Road Campus

Enjoy a taster session in our Introduction to Outlook Upskilling course.

Book your FREE tickets here

Finance for Non-Finance Managers Taster session

Enjoy a taster session in our Finance for Non-Finance Managers Upskilling course which covers:

  • Analysis and interpretation of financial statements
  • Operating and capital budgeting techniques and their use in planning and control; cash flow forecast, profit versus cash
  • Aspects related to organisational finance including product, service costing, absorption costing, overhead allocation, apportionment and absorption
  • The underlying principles and concepts of finance and accounting
  • The ability to read and interpret simple financial statements
  • An introduction to the process of using structured financial data to assist in the process of management decision making.

Time: 4pm - 5pm 

Location: Homefield Road Campus.

Book your FREE tickets here

Cisco Taster session

Time: 5pm - 5.20pm 

Location: Homefield Road Campus

Enjoy a taster session in our Cisco Upskilling course.

Book your FREE tickets here

Indian Head Massage Taster session

Time: 5pm - 6pm 

Location: Homefield Road Campus

Enjoy a taster session in our Indian Head Massage Upskilling course.

Book your FREE tickets here

Intro to PowerPoint Taster session

Time: 5pm - 6pm 

Location: Homefield Road Campus

Enjoy a taster session in our Introduction to PowerPoint Upskilling course.

Book your FREE tickets here

Sustainable Business Practice Taster session

Time: 5pm - 6pm 

Location: Homefield Road Campus

Enjoy a taster session in our Sustainable Business Practices Upskilling and Professional Development degree courses. The full course address the urgent need for sustainable business practices in today’s world. Our goal is to empower you with the tools, techniques and critical thinking skills necessary to drive meaningful change in their organisations. Through this course, we’re not just teaching about sustainability – we’re fostering leaders who can implement it. You will be challenged to critically examine your workplaces through the lens of sustainability, analysing how company policies impact management and strategic decisions. During this course you will engage with core concepts and frameworks to help you build sustainable development into your professional goals and decision making. You will develop practical solutions that provide tangible organisational benefits to you, your organisations and the biosphere. By analysing various definitions, frameworks and models of sustainability, you will learn to navigate the complex landscape of environmental management and identify effective strategies to mitigate risks and capitalise on opportunities.

Book your FREE tickets here

Interior Design Taster session

Time: 5.30pm - 6pm 

Location: Homefield Road Campus

Enjoy a taster session in our Interior Design Upskilling course.

Book your FREE tickets here