About the Open Centre

The Open Centre is a registered charity ("The Open Centre" - charity no. 516633) and company limited by guarantee ("The Open Centre Derby Limited" - registered number 3747144). It is overseen by by a Board of Trustee Directors - all of whom are unpaid.

The Trustee Directors set the framework within which the professional staff of the Centre operate.

What the Open Centre is The Centre is a unique resource in the UK. No other town or city has an organisation which has done so much work with school pupils and adults in providing the personal experiences that help them to understand the different communities that make up our common culture. The Centre has established very close relationships with the many communities in Derby and its Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is the hands-on experience and contact it can offer as part of the education and training it provides. Far too often, education and training is done in an abstract way - either by chalk-and-talk (marker and whiteboard, presenter and PowerPoint) or by sitting in front of a PC monitor for an "interactive training and testing module." People learn the theory - as theory. We all, from infants to adults, learn best when we have the opportunity to see, touch and feel - by being amongst the communities we are learning about. The Open Centre is the only organisation that can provide this.

We believe it is absolutely essential that the experiences gained, and questions raised, by a visit to us need to be followed up through later talk and discussion. Much of this work in schools is done as part of the Citizenship/PSHE/RE syllabus but we are very happy to provide discussion leaders for follow up work with both pupils and adults.

The "Open" in Open Centre means that we have open minds and we encourage others to have the same. Life is short, and for those of us with grey hair, getting shorter every day, but we keep our minds open to new ideas and new experiences and we try to learn something new every day.

Please see the Friends of the Open Centre page for a little more about what the Open Centre is.

What the Open Centre is not

The Centre is not a faith-based organisation.

The Centre happens to be based in the St James Centre but it has no affiliations to any faith-based groups. As part of its activities the Centre works closely with many different communities, faith organisations and places of worship as well as with representatives of totally secular organisations.

The Centre does not promote any world view, or set of beliefs (religious or otherwise) - it provides experiences that enable participants to understand other people's views and beliefs.

The Trustee Directors come from a wide variety of backgrounds - from the religious to the non-religious. Trustee Directors are appointed for what they can contribute to the Centre, not for their personal beliefs.

The Centre is not a Community Centre, it is not a place where people drop in for a coffee and a chat about their problems. The area where the Centre is based, Normanton and Pear Tree, is well served by organisations who provide this sort of service and where community groups can arrange meetings and events.

Funding

Derby Open Centre is a non-profit making charity. Its Trustee Directors provide their time and expertise for free but it still has to meet the costs of staff, building, offices and normal business expenses.

The Centre does its best to minimise its charges so that everyone can benefit from the services it offers.

The Centre relies on grants and the generosity of groups and individuals to meet the majority of its funding.

We are very grateful to Derbyshire County Council for providing us with an annual grant.

We are very grateful to Derby City Council for providing us with an annual grant. Please click here to link to the Derby City Council RE web page.

These two grants enable us to offer our services to schools in the County and City at a highly subsidised rate. We operate under a Service Level Agreement with both Councils and we provide them with regular reports as to how their funding is being used.

We are very grateful to National Lottery Awards for All which is partly funding an investigation into the future requirements for the Open Centre.

We are very grateful to The Joseph Rank Trust which has provided us with a grant running over three years from December 2009.

We are very grateful to Derbyshire Humanists for funding our IT systems, web site and marketing activity.

We can only expand the services we offer if we have sufficient funding. We therefore welcome donations and grants from individuals and organisations and we will, of course, provide due credit here.