U3A ORIGINS and HISTORY
And what does that mean?
When you’ve retired and have all this free time to fill, but you don’t want to just potter around, you should consider the University of the Third Age. It aims to encourage people like you to come together with other like-minded people to join in educational, creative and leisure activities. It’s all about keeping the little grey cells ticking over. Not only do you learn, but you also pass on your knowledge to others. It gives you the opportunity to take part in something you’ve perhaps always wanted to do, but never had the time to, or it gives you the chance to try something absolutely new that you never even thought of before - and it will widen your circle of friends enormously.
It’s not new. It’s been going since 1972 when the idea of a place of learning for older and mature people with leisure time on their hands started in France, with connections to their universities. This was followed by the creation of the International Association of U3As (AIUTA) and the next step was - the World - not quite domination but certainly influence. There are U3As as far apart as Australia, Sweden, India and South Africa. There are links with the Open University and recently, connections have been formed with Nottingham Trent University to help with more advanced study.
The first British U3As were formed in 1982 under the auspices of the Third Age Trust which became an associate member of AIUTA. There are now more than 800 U3A groups through-out the UK with an ever-growing membership of over 270,000. A typical U3A has about 250 members but could be as small as 12 and as large as 2000. Each U3A group is self-governing and self-supporting and its individual activities are planned and carried out by the members themselves. Each has many smaller study or activity groups run by the members who have knowledge and expertise gained from a lifetime’s occupation, profession or hobby that they are more than happy to share with others. It’s a give and take situation.
The U3A approach to learning is – learning for pleasure. There is no accreditation or validation and there are no assessments or qualifications to be gained.
There is so much to be gained from joining a U3A with its many and varied activities and interests and you can do that quite easily. To move to the next page and find out all about BURTON JOYCE & DISTRCT U3A and how to join us, click here.
Question: U3A - what does it stand for?
Answer: ‘University of the Third Age’