* Which I won’t name, but the current MP likes cigars and fedoras

Several other people from that event are still involved in the party in varying degrees – there’s a guy I run into occasionally in Wakefield. However Activate was expensive – 4 trainers for a weekend, accomodation, paying nearly all the expenses of the attendees were all an investment in the medium to long term.

One concern is over the name “Leadership Academy” – whilst leadership skills are something we lack I wonder if it will put people who don’t have any aspirations of leadership off attending.

A lot of our training is very heavily “event” focussed – which is fine if you can attend but means we don’t reach everyone we could. That could be addressed through distance learning which is something I was keen on when at ALDC but never really had the competency to develop the materials.

Neil is right about co-ordination (though it’s better than it has been). One good point about a dedicated training unit is it would mean training was removed from the turf wars which go on between different organisations within the party about who does what sort of training.

That is not necessarily the same thing as is envisaged by the ‘Leadership Academy’ proposal but is a good objective nonetheless.

As someone who has spent a large chunk of weekends and evenings training other party activists I am a firm beleiver that the party should invest more in training at all levels.

I wel remember the first LDYS ‘Activate’ weekend which included amongst its number one (very young) Jo Swinson and also Katt Price, both of whom went on to serve the party in different ways.

As a party we will be as successful as the people we’ve got, and investing in their skills and abilities should be a no-brainer.

Currently there is a lot of effort put into training at various levels in the party but the coordination of it is poorly resoruced leading to much duplication and a lack of sharing of best practice and ideas.

But james is also right. There’s no point having these aspirations unless we identify a budget to pay for them and provide training in a way that our over-stretched activists can find the time to do.

I very much hope the section in the Bones report will be taken seriously and will rseult in improvement in training across the board.

One suggestion – draw on the experience of LibDems who have worked in the Open University or done Open University courses so that the Academy builds up an ‘Open Learning’ ethos. This is not just ‘distance education’ but a way of of fostering learning as a shared process drawing on the knwledge and experience of ‘students’ as well as ‘facilitators’.. Maybe we could develop materials and resources for the academy that could also be used by other LibDem members, and help make this an UK wide initiative not just another London and commuter belt thingummy.

Declaration of interest; I am former OU project officer and associate lecturer.

By all means let’s offer as many people as much training as possible, regardless of whether they want to be an MP, councillor, agent or organiser. The Bones report seems to assume that the problem we have with candidates is that we have too many of them and we need a way of seperating the wheat from the chaff. If only! What we needs is more people willing to go through the process and transparent and fair selection processes. Competition will do the rest of the job.

But they would decide which one that was based on accreditation by the party centrally?

But would instead tend to choose a candidate based on their accreditation by the party centrally?

I think it’s vital that we train all activists, as you say, but I think (and I hope) that one of the things that the leadership academy will do, is allow PPCs to prove what skills they already possess and what they have been working hard to possess.

This is so that members don’t automatically choose the candidate who’s been hanging around the longest etc, etc. Incumbents in all selections, for all levels of elections, have a massive advantage and that is not always to the benefit of the party, either local or national. It should be open to all aspiring high quality PPCs but accreditation should not be based just on attendance but attendance and delivery.

So, it is has (or should have as we all know very little about it at the moment) different aims from that which your talking about which is a more comprehensive training programme available for activists.

I think it’s fine to have both but we should be careful not to muddle up the aims and objectives of the two.