Director: Professor José Chambers, Director of the Comino Centre, The University of Winchester, SO22 4NR Phone 01962-827433 Fax 01962-827598 jose.chambers@winchester.ac.uk

The Winchester Comino Centre was established in 1989, working to explore and promote the use of the Comino approach, as expressed through the GRASP framework. At that time the Centre was based in the Department of Design and Technology and its emphasis was on the use of GRASP as a vehicle for supporting active learning in schools and the encouragement of enterprising approaches within the school curriculum.

In those early years the Winchester Centre was associated with projects such as Mini-Enterprise in Schools and with the establishment of the new national curriculum subject of Technology. It contributed significantly to the DTI’s national programme Enterprise Awareness in Teacher Education and to the work of the Teacher Placement Service. It was also responsible for areas of schools/industry work additionally sponsored by the CBI’s Education Foundation - Understanding British Industry.

The emphasis then shifted to working with schools as organisations and offering support for school improvement, again with GRASP as a framework. Thus the Winchester Centre was instrumental in helping to establish the use of Investors in People in schools, working with the Employment Department, the Teacher Placement Service and Henley Distance Learning. We worked in partnership with Unilever on the Achieving Schools project and contributed to the work of the Campaign for Learning.

Currently we work mainly with the Higher Education sector, in partnership with the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education - www.lfhe.ac.uk.- helping to develop appropriate approaches to leadership and management across the sector. We have developed GRASP-based approaches to personal learning, using these approaches mainly in leadership coaching and action learning. Within The University of Winchester, the Centre works as an internal change agent in the area of leadership and management. In Winchester itself we work with Winchester Area Community Action http://www.waca.org.uk.

We are interested in hearing from groups or individuals who are also seeking to promote personal learning in the leadership of organisations or working to support the growth of active citizenship within responsible communities.