The ULA was founded by CoLab, Exeter College, Exeter City Council, and Devon County Council, and has since grown to include Exeter City Community Trust and the University of Exeter, forming an agile and innovative alliance. We work with a values-led, aspirational approach to collaborative working, valuing difference; respect; reciprocity; honesty and ensuring all voices are being heard.

As an alliance and learning partnership, we continue to nurture and grow our offer of learning opportunities in Exeter. We are committed to delivering community learning programmes throughout the year, including a Spring/Summer and an Autumn/Winter programme.

The Urban Learning Academy recognises the power of adult learning and the need for the provision of learning opportunities to be accessible to everyone in our community. The head of UNESCO stated that “the ultimate twenty-first century skill is the ability to learn” and yet for many that is very hard to do. A November 2022 report from the Learning and Work institute said that “making learning more flexible, accessible and affordable is important, but not enough. We also need to make sure learning is relevant to people’s lives, communicate the benefits, and “build a culture of learning”.

Evidence tells us that adult learning contributes to a healthy and productive society and yet the national adult learning budget had been cut by 50% in the last decade. The vision of the ULA is to harness Exeter’s passion, creativity and entrepreneurship to provide inclusive learning opportunities for everyone in the community.

Research tells us that people from disadvantaged communities are less likely to access adult learning and that inequality of provision is increasing. The ULA will work to change this in Exeter. In services there has been a narrative that people are ‘hard to reach’ in our experience they aren’t – it is our services and our opportunities that are hard to reach. We hope the ULA will work across the city to provide hundreds of different ways for people to access learning in a way and at a time that is right for them.