Non-School Nottingham

Website housekeeping

Bit of practical news: “comments” on this site are being switched off for now, due to lack of available headspace for answering or checking them.

Events will still be posted.

Sorry if you commented recently and your comment was ignored!

If you’re wanting to tell us about an event, group or service, please see How to send details of an event or group.

If you wanted to enquire about an event described on the blog, please look in the listing for that specific event; usually there’s an email address which will reach the organiser.

If you’re thinking about home ed as a possibility for your child, a good starting point is the advice here, and then you probably want to get onto one of the local online groups. Veteran home ed parents are a great source of advice for newcomers! There are lots of us happy to answer questions or share experiences. Usually if one person on the group’s too busy, another will answer. Or you might get several people chipping in from different angles.

(This website is not meant as that kind of resource – it’s more of a jumping-off point to other resources.)

If you specially want to talk on the phone, an alternative is to ring the Education Otherwise helpline. They’re a UK charity centring on non-school education.

Email here still works, though may not be answered quickly. “info at non-school-nottingham dot org dot uk”. Priority will be given to answering new home edders and those considering it. But if that’s you, please do try to get onto an email group or Facebook group which suits you, because that’s a lot more people to potentially give you answers 🙂

Not Back To School Picnic, September, Nottingham area

One afternoon in September, there will be a Not Back To School Picnic. This is an informal community meetup for play and chat. Newcomers are very welcome.

If you’re a new home edder or potential future home edder, and you want to find out when & where it is, you could:

get onto the East Midlands Home Education email list, or one of the local home ed Facebook groups
email picnic – organiser at non – school – nottingham dot org dot uk (take out the spaces and convert dot to “.” and at to “@”).

More about the picnic

People taking part will bring their own food to a park. The children will play while the adults chat. (Or sometimes the children chat and the adults play!)

If you’re new, we’ll try to introduce you to people with similar age children or similar interests, or people from your geographical area.

Dance meetups, 11 to 18, Nottingham city centre, Fridays in March

Three new dates for the informal dance meetup:

Friday 9 March
Fri 16 March
Fri 23 March

For timing, venue, contact email and other details, click through to the earlier post about non-schooler dance meetups in Nottingham.

Friendly event, usually not super busy, good for dipping into if you’re new to non-school education and in the right age range. You don’t have to be “good at dance”!

Dance meetups, 11 to 18, Nottingham city centre, various afternoons

Non-schoolers age 11-18, dancing for enjoyment. You don’t have to be “good at dance”!

Date: We’re resuming for 2018. To hear when dates are fixed, make sure you’ve been in touch with dance-meetup at non-school-nottingham dot org dot uk, so that you can be sent emails.

In the past, we’ve varied the day-of-the-week, so that it won’t always clash with the same other things, to enable more people to join in sometimes.

Age range: 11 to 18. Unfortunately this has to be an exact limit, as it’s set by the venue we’re using (presumably related to their funding agreements). In practice so far, it’s mostly 11 to 14 year olds who have been interested. There has been some talk of setting up a similar event for under-11s at a different venue.

Time: Meet in reception around 12.45/12.50 for dance session 1pm to 3pm.

Venue membership, free: If you’ve not been to NGY before, you’ll need to get a membership card. You’ll need the card to beep into the door from reception to go upstairs. Beep out every time as well, as it’s how they keep track of who’s in the building in case of an emergency.

It’s free to join. Filling in the membership form takes maybe five minutes, and then allow another five minutes for the reception person to make your card. If you like, you can download the membership form here, print it out and fill it in beforehand, to save time on the day.

From 3.30pm, 11-18-year-olds can use the social space for free (table-tennis, pool table, comfy chairs, snack bar etc).

Venue: Dance studio at NGY myplace, 29-31 Castle Gate, Nottingham NG1 7AR.

Area: Nottingham city centre, just off Maid Marian Way.

Price: £2 each, for the dance studio hire. Pay the reception person when you arrive. (NGY’s dance studio can be booked by any NGY member at a rate of £1 per person per hour.)

Booking: You don’t have to book as such – but it’s a good idea to be in touch and say you’re planning to come, just in case there was a week when plans changed at the last minute.

How it works

The young people themselves are deciding what to do in the 2 hours.

At the first meetup, people took turns to choose a song to dance to. Not everyone knew each other beforehand, but everyone was friendly.

One idea for future meetups was that half the time could be more of the “choose songs and improvise to them” and the other half could be developing and rehearsing duets or trios or group dances. But it just depends on what people decide to do on the day.

A quote from the first meetup: “No-one was in charge, but we all had ideas”

Guidelines for the session

We want everyone to have a good time!

so here is a kind of “dance group code of conduct”:

(let us know if you have ideas for making it better!)

* Look out for each other in a friendly way, so e.g. if someone seems to be left out or seems not to know what’s going on, it’s everyone’s role to include them, as a team.

* Discuss together how to use the time and what everyone wants to do. Consider dividing up the time into chunks. For example, you might agree at the start to have 20 mins doing X, 20 mins doing Y, then stop and have a think about what to do next.

* Try to make sure that everyone gets to do at least a little bit of what they wanted – e.g. if one day, most people want to do Thing A but one person wants to do Thing B, have at least 5 or 10 minutes that day where some Thing B gets to happen.

* Take turns making suggestions, and listen to each other’s ideas. If you’re doing one big dance, think about ways to build up a big dance from smaller pieces so that everyone has come up with part of it.

* It’s OK for someone to be a leader or choreographer for one particular dance. Over the weeks, everyone should get a chance to take that role if they want to, or to put in ideas to someone else’s dance if they don’t want to choreograph a whole one.

* If you’re leading the group in learning something, think about respectful ways to point out to people how you’d like them to do it, e.g. “Could we have everyone doing it like this?” (and demonstrate how you want it and how you don’t want it)

* No criticising other people’s clothes or bodies, and no teasing (except maybe some friendly teasing with people you know well enough to know for sure that they don’t mind it). Not that we think you would do this, anyway! Just saying.

* If there are any problems with the room, e.g. the music player doesn’t work or it was too hot or cold, talk to the person at reception. If they can’t help you themself, they can probably find someone who can.

* If there are any disagreements or problems that don’t get resolved entirely satisfactorily, talk about it afterwards with [coordinating parent] and your parents.

* The main aim is to enjoy the dancing and enjoy each other’s company in a friendly way, as well as the satisfaction of practising and learning 🙂

Practical tips & what to bring:

Music

The dance studio comes with a music speaker that has an input cable with a small plug, like the kind on headphones. So if you want to bring music to play, it needs to be on something with that kind of headphone socket (e.g. a phone or an ipod).

You can get the venue’s wi-fi password from the person at reception, and there were no problems with the wi-fi being too slow. So as long as it’s working, you’ll be able to get music from the internet, as well as whatever you brought.

Clothes & shoes

Wear comfortable clothes that you can move about in.

Most people will probably dance barefoot, but if you’d rather wear shoes, wear soft clean grippy ones.

Dancer checklist for the day

Comfy clothes
Water bottle
£2 for the studio hire
Your NGY card if you already have one
Anything else that you might need that not everyone would, e.g. asthma inhaler or whatever

Optional extras…
Music, on phone/ipod/similar
Notebook & pen/pencil, or phone or tablet, if you might want to make notes or swop contact details
Snack, or extra money for the food counter if it’s open
Dance shoes, if you don’t want to dance barefoot

Access: The NGY building has a wheelchair-friendly toilet, and a lift and ramps. If you have any other access needs, email dance-meetup @ non-school-nottingham dot org dot uk, and/or contact the staff at NGY, and we’ll do our best.

Map showing NGY myplace:

Bigger map showing NGY myplace

Transport: It’s just off Maid Marian Way and about 320 yards’ walk from the Old Market Square, hence not far from any of the city centre bus stops. Nearest tram stop is Old Market Square.

Parking: One simple method for parking is to use one of the Park and Ride sites and get the tram into town. Feel free to comment if you have other tips for city centre parking.

Trampolining at Planet Bounce, City Centre, Friday 15 December

Date: Friday 15 December 2017.

Plus, if it goes well, potential for carrying on in the new year – perhaps every 3rd Friday in the month, or more or less often depending on demand.

Time: Arrive 12.30 for bounce 1pm to 3pm, allowing time for safety briefing and first-time formalities.

Age range: 4 to 65, set by Planet Bounce for this session time. It’s a public session, usually not very busy during term time.

(Possibility of setting up a separate under-4 home ed meetup to run at a different session time, in future, if there’s enough interest.)

Venue: Planet Bounce, 153-155 Huntingdon St, Nottingham, NG1 3NL.

Area: Nottingham city centre, round the back of the Victoria Centre. Huntingdon Street is the one which has the John E Wright stationery shop, and used to have Staples.

Price: £13.49 for 2 hours (approx £6.75 per hour), which is a discounted rate. Plus £2 for grippy socks if you don’t already have them.

Booking: One of the home ed parents has kindly volunteered to organise us into a group so as to get the discount. The minimum number to get the discount is 15, and you’ll need to book and pay in advance. To ensure this works OK, there will be a three-stage process:

Put your name down to reserve a place. You can do this via the following email address: homeedbouncenotts at gmail dot com. (Or, if you happen to know the organiser, you could send a message by some other convenient route.)
A week before the session, the organiser will count numbers, and make an announcement to say if there are enough people to get the discount this month.
If yes, everyone who’s reserved a place pays their money to the organiser up front, via bank transfer or PayPal (or cash if you’re going to see each other).

At this point, you will also need to give your child’s full name and date of birth, and – if you didn’t already – your own email address.
If there aren’t enough people that month to get the discount, then of course people can still choose to turn up that day and meet, if they want to. But in that case, it would be pay individually on the day, no discount (so £10 for the first hour, £5 for the second), and not the responsibility of the group organiser.

Important note on bookings & refunds: If the rest of the group is relying on your money to get the discount (e.g. exactly 15 people had paid, and 2 drop out), unfortunately you won’t be able to get a refund if you have to drop out. However, if, say, 20 people had paid and then 2 had to drop out, your money would be usable at any future session, or refunded if the group’s not meeting any more.

Planet Bounce rules that you’ll need to know:

Before a child may bounce, the parent must complete a waiver to accept responsibility for the child’s behaviour, and for any injuries which weren’t the venue’s fault. One waiver lasts a year.

Reading and signing the waiver form can be done either on a little computer screen at the venue, or online beforehand. If you’re doing it at the venue, allow an extra 15 to 20 minutes, in case there are queues to get onto the computers.

All the parents will get an email near the day, confirming the booking and reminding them they might like to do the waiver in advance.
Every time you bounce, you have to get the safety briefing. About 15 minutes before the session starts, all trampoliners will be called in to hear this safety briefing. At the end of the briefing, you get your hand stamped to prove you were there.

If you’re late, they’ll run another briefing for the latecomers – it just means you’d miss that little bit of the session.
Everyone who bounces has to wear grippy socks. You can buy the socks at reception, and they cost £2 a pair. Or you can bring your own, if they’re the right kind.

Planet Bounce Frequently Asked Questions

Planet Bounce – page where you can sign the “waiver” online

Map showing Planet Bounce:

Bigger map showing Planet Bounce

Nearest bus stop: Any that stop near the Victoria Centre. Nearly all the “colour lines” go there. Navy line doesn’t go very near, but you can get off a Navy and onto a Green line and do the “City Loop”. You can walk through the Victoria Centre and out via the doors to Glasshouse Street, then turn left up Glasshouse Street, walk up to the T junction which is Huntingdon Street, and you’ll see Planet Bounce across the road.

Nearest tram stop: “Royal Centre”.

Parking: Nearest car park is probably Huntington Street car park (NCP). There’s also parking at the Victoria Centre.

On access, we have the following info from Planet Bounce:

We do have a lift which gives you access to the front desk and café area. Unfortunately, there is no lift to the courts area.

We do have children come to us with autism and other disabilities so we have an understanding of working with parents and guardians to support visitors in any way we can.

Minecraft (MCPE) meetup, Sherwood, Wednesday once a month

MCPE = Minecraft Pocket Edition, a particular version of the Minecraft software, used on tablets & similar devices. Bring your own device to play, or come and watch and chat. Technical & game-learning help available, both on the day and beforehand to set up.

Date: Wednesdays 8 November & 6 December 2017 – and likely to continue once a month after that too.

Time: 3pm to 5pm.

Age range: “Teens-ish”. Primarily 12 to 17, not minding if a few 11-year-olds or 18+ wanted to join in too.

Area: Sherwood, about 3 miles north of Nottingham City Centre, on Purple Line (or Lime Line) buses.

Venue: Get in touch to be told the address.

Price: 50p for drinks & snacks.

Booking, or enquiries: Email minecraft at non-school-nottingham dot org dot uk.

Minecraft is a “virtual environment” where you can build things and travel around. Within the environment, you can do lots of different things – explore, play games with friends, build virtual electronics and mechanics, etc. A lot of home ed young people already play it.

There are various versions of the software, and at this group we will be using Minecraft Pocket Edition, version 1.1.x (where the x represents any number 1 to 9).

This version will run on

iOS

Ubuntu phones & tablets

Android, e.g.

Amazon phones & tablets

NVIDIA devices

Samsung phones & tablets

Sony phones & tablets

(and whichever other phones, tablets etc are running Android).

It won’t run on PCs, Windows devices, or consoles such as the Xbox, PlayStation or Wii.

If you’re not sure what version you’ve got, or whether your device can run the software, or how to install it – get in touch!

The technical side of the group, and the server admin, will be run by one of the home ed teens, who had the idea for this group in the first place.

Before the day, he will check in with each participant to see what kind of games or challenges they’d like to do in the Minecraft session, and give support if anyone needs help with the software.

On the day, we will gather in person, play Minecraft and chat.

Depending on what people want to do, the in-game activities could include creating, exploring, survival, building with Redstone (virtual electronics/mechanics), trolling, using command blocks, customising your character, parkour, “player versus player” etc. If you don’t know yet what these are, don’t worry! There will be plenty of help to learn your way around the game.

We will put people into small groups depending on favourite activities and level of experience. E.g. a new person who just wanted to build something could be put with other new people who just wanted to build something.

If it turned out there were so many interested people that it wouldn’t be feasible for everyone to come on the same day, we may divide the group onto different days as well as different instances of the game.

As a bonus optional extra: there’s a way to play from home on days when you couldn’t make it to the group, joining in with friends you made at the group. And you can do that on other days as well, not just the group meetup day.

The game is virtual but the friends are real!

A Minecraft Guide For People Who Don’t Get Minecraft

The Educational Benefits of Minecraft

Travel: Purple Line buses go fairly near, and there is parking outside.

Physical access: limited for this, sorry. The venue is a house. The meetup will take place on the ground floor. There’s a doorstep at the entrance of about 5cm. The only toilet is upstairs. If this access wouldn’t work for you, but you’d like to be involved, please email info at non-school-nottingham dot org dot uk and/or the meetup organisers.

Advice meetup, Bestwood, Thursday 19 October

A few “veteran” home ed parents, some with grown-up children, are kindly offering to chat at this informal library meetup with other parents who’d like their advice. This is for parents newly home educating or seriously considering it, or people who’ve been home edding for a while & would like to confer with someone more experienced. (Not for people with a purely professional interest.)

Date: Thursday 19 October 2017.

Time: 1pm to 3.30pm.

Age range: All ages welcome. While the parents are chatting, children & young people can browse in the library, play on the park, try the nearby skate park etc. Southglade Leisure centre is on the same site, inc swimming pool with flume.

Venue: Southglade Park Library, Bestwood, Nottingham, NG5 5GU.

Area: The library is on Southglade Park, on the number 16 brown line bus route (also not far from 15, 17, 79, 89, threes, 141 – see travel info below). It’s about 3½ miles north of the city centre, just east of the Hucknall Road.

Price: Free.

Booking: No need to book.

Southglade Park Library page on City website
Southglade Park Library page at Culture24
Southglade Park Library page at Leisure for Kids
Southglade Leisure Centre (inc swimming pool with flume)

Advice Meet-up

Due to the high number of new home educators and others asking for information or support, four of the admin team [of the Nottingham/Notts home ed Facebook group] are going to be available to try to answer questions and offer advice where needed.

We will be at Southglade Park Library. There will be access to the public library, there is a play park and skate park in the same area. We look forward to meeting you. The Admin Team. 🙂

Map showing Southglade Park Library:

Bigger map showing Southglade Park Library

Nearest bus stop: “Padstow Road“, on the 16 route, Brown Line. It’s near the gate to the park, and the library is about 200 yards away.

“Gala Way” bus stop is on the Hucknall Road, about 500 yards away to the west. Trent Barton “threes” & 141 stop there.

“Eastglade Road” bus stop is the nearest on the Beckhampton Road, about 850 yards away to the east. Buses which call there: Brown Line 15, Turquoise Line 79, Purple Line 89.

“Gorse Court” bus stop is about 900 yards away, on the Hucknall Road, and the number 17, Brown Line, stops there, before turning off to the west.

Trams: Bulwell tram stop is about a mile to the west. You’d need to be on a Hucknall tram. Tram information.

Parking: Car parking is available at the Southglade Park site.

Access: Access info not available yet, but from photos it looks as though the whole building is on one floor. Will update if we find out more.

Dance meetups, 11 to 18, Nottingham city centre, Wed / Thur / Fri

Non-schoolers age 11-18, dancing for enjoyment. You don’t have to be “good at dance”!

Date: We’re currently planning to vary the day-of-the-week, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday – so that it won’t always clash with the same other things, to enable more people to join in sometimes.

~~The next one actually booked is:~~

~~Thursday 19 October~~

~~Other dates we have in mind for autumn 2017, to be confirmed when the studio’s actually booked:~~

Update: All the following dates are now booked for autumn 2017, at the new time, see below.

Friday 10 November
Wednesday 15 November
Thursday 23 November
Thursday 30 November
Friday 8 December
Thursday 14 December
Wednesday 20 December

Any updates or cancellations will be amended here.

~~Time: 1.30pm to 3.30pm.~~

Please note new time: Meet in reception around 12.45/12.50 for dance session 1pm to 3pm.

If you’ve not been to NGY before, you’ll need to get a membership card. You’ll need the card to beep into the door from reception to go upstairs. Beep out every time as well, as it’s how they keep track of who’s in the building in case of an emergency.

From 3.30pm, 11-18-year-olds can use the social space for free (table-tennis, pool table, comfy chairs, snack bar etc).

Venue: Dance studio at NGY myplace, 29-31 Castle Gate, Nottingham NG1 7AR.

Area: Nottingham city centre, just off Maid Marian Way.

Price: £2 each, for the dance studio hire. Pay the reception person when you arrive. (NGY’s dance studio can be booked by any NGY member at a rate of £1 per person per hour.)

Booking: Non-schoolers the right age can just turn up on the day. But if you want updates, or just to let us know to look out for you, email dance-meetup at non-school-nottingham dot org dot uk.

How it works

The young people themselves are deciding what to do in the 2 hours.

At the first meetup, people took turns to choose a song to dance to. Not everyone knew each other beforehand, but everyone was friendly.

One idea for future meetups was that half the time could be more of the “choose songs and improvise to them” and the other half could be developing and rehearsing duets or trios or group dances. But it just depends on what people decide to do on the day.

A quote from the first meetup: “No-one was in charge, but we all had ideas”

Guidelines for the session

We want everyone to have a good time!

so here is a kind of “dance group code of conduct”:

(let us know if you have ideas for making it better!)

* Look out for each other in a friendly way, so e.g. if someone seems to be left out or seems not to know what’s going on, it’s everyone’s role to include them, as a team.

* Discuss together how to use the time and what everyone wants to do. Consider dividing up the time into chunks. For example, you might agree at the start to have 20 mins doing X, 20 mins doing Y, then stop and have a think about what to do next.

* Try to make sure that everyone gets to do at least a little bit of what they wanted – e.g. if one day, most people want to do Thing A but one person wants to do Thing B, have at least 5 or 10 minutes that day where some Thing B gets to happen.

* Take turns making suggestions, and listen to each other’s ideas. If you’re doing one big dance, think about ways to build up a big dance from smaller pieces so that everyone has come up with part of it.

* It’s OK for someone to be a leader or choreographer for one particular dance. Over the weeks, everyone should get a chance to take that role if they want to, or to put in ideas to someone else’s dance if they don’t want to choreograph a whole one.

* If you’re leading the group in learning something, think about respectful ways to point out to people how you’d like them to do it, e.g. “Could we have everyone doing it like this?” (and demonstrate how you want it and how you don’t want it)

* No criticising other people’s clothes or bodies, and no teasing (except maybe some friendly teasing with people you know well enough to know for sure that they don’t mind it). Not that we think you would do this, anyway! Just saying.

* If there are any problems with the room, e.g. the music player doesn’t work or it was too hot or cold, talk to the person at reception. If they can’t help you themself, they can probably find someone who can.

* If there are any disagreements or problems that don’t get resolved entirely satisfactorily, talk about it afterwards with [coordinating parent] and your parents.

* The main aim is to enjoy the dancing and enjoy each other’s company in a friendly way, as well as the satisfaction of practising and learning 🙂

Practical tips & what to bring:

Music

The dance studio comes with a music speaker that has an input cable with a small plug, like the kind on headphones. So if you want to bring music to play, it needs to be on something with that kind of headphone socket (e.g. a phone or an ipod).

You can get the venue’s wi-fi password from the person at reception, and there were no problems with the wi-fi being too slow. So as long as it’s working, you’ll be able to get music from the internet, as well as whatever you brought.

Clothes & shoes

Wear comfortable clothes that you can move about in.

Most people will probably dance barefoot, but if you’d rather wear shoes, wear soft clean grippy ones.

Dancer checklist for the day

Comfy clothes
Water bottle
£2 for the studio hire
Your NGY card if you already have one
Anything else that you might need that not everyone would, e.g. asthma inhaler or whatever

Optional extras…
Music, on phone/ipod/similar
Notebook & pen/pencil, or phone or tablet, if you might want to make notes or swop contact details
Snack, or extra money for the food counter if it’s open
Dance shoes, if you don’t want to dance barefoot

Map showing NGY myplace:

Bigger map showing NGY myplace

Parking: One simple method for parking is to use one of the Park and Ride sites and get the tram into town. Feel free to comment if you have other tips for city centre parking.

Teens-ish meetup with tour of NGY myplace, city centre, Wednesday 18 October

Tour of a fab resource in Nottingham City Centre that’s available to all young people 11-18 (& for some things, older). Plus discussion of possible future groups and meetups.

Date: Wednesday 18 October 2017.

Time: Tour at 3pm. Arrive around 2.45pm to allow time for getting membership cards and/or visitor access cards. If you’re there early, or first, there’s no need to wait for others before talking to the friendly reception person and sorting out your card.

Venue: NGY myplace, 29-31 Castle Gate, Nottingham NG1 7AR.

Area: Nottingham city centre, just off Maid Marian Way.

Age range: 11 is the minimum age for being a member of NGY. Parents are welcome to tag along for the tour, but needn’t unless you specially want to.

Probably best not to have younger siblings along on this occasion; Nottingham Central Library is about 500 yards away, and is open till 7pm on weekdays. If the weather’s warm(ish), another option is to bring a towel and go paddling in the nearby market square fountains.

Price: Free. (It’s £1 per person per hour for the dance studio, and 50p to use the gym – but free to look round, and free to use the social spaces when they’re open to your age group.)

Booking: If you know in advance that you’re planning to come for the tour, it would help to get a sense of numbers if you email teensish @ non-school-nottingham dot org dot uk.

Membership: Young people age 11-18 may like to join NGY, to be able to use the facilities in future. To save time on the day, you can download a membership form here and print it to fill in in advance. Or just pick up a form from reception on the day. It’s free to join – unless you lose your card, in which case you’d have to pay £1 for a replacement.

NGY myplace Facebook page.

Tour of a fab resource in Nottingham City Centre that’s available to all young people 11-18.

On this occasion, a load of home ed young people are going to look round together. But please note that 11-18-year-olds can actually drop into NGY myplace any time it’s open anyway, and if someone’s free to take you round, they’ll give you a tour then. So this isn’t the only opportunity to find out about it.

After we’ve looked round the building, we’ll spend a bit of time together, talking about groups or activities that young home ed people would like to have happen, and the practicalities of starting up a new event. The recently started Nottingham home edders’ dance meetup and Minecraft meetup both came partly from young people suggesting them, and it seems likely that other young home edders have other great ideas!

At 3.30, the social space opens to 11-16-year-olds (it’s 16+ in the early afternoon), so you’d have the option of staying on for a game of pool or table-tennis, or just to hang out with friends.

If you can’t make this meetup, but you have an idea for somewhere that home ed teens might like to go, or a meetup themed around some activity, you can still get in touch and share your idea. Feel free to email “info at non-school-nottingham dot org dot uk” with suggestions, or for a chat if you’re thinking about organising something & not sure how best to do it. (Note: a few emails have gone missing recently, so please don’t assume your email arrived if you haven’t had a reply.)

Map showing NGY myplace:

Bigger map showing NGY myplace

Parking: One simple method for parking is to use one of the Park and Ride sites and get the tram into town. Feel free to comment if you have other tips for city centre parking.

Access: The NGY building has a wheelchair-friendly toilet, and a lift and ramps. If you have any other access needs, email teensish @ non-school-nottingham dot org dot uk, and/or contact the staff at NGY, and we’ll do our best.

Minecraft (MCPE) meetup, Sherwood, Wednesday 11 October

Date: Wednesday 11 October 2017 – and probably other dates in the future, not necessarily Wednesdays, depending on what people want & how the first one goes.

Time: 3pm to 5pm.

Age range: “Teens-ish”. Primarily 12 to 17, not minding if a few 11-year-olds or 18+ wanted to join in too.

Area: Sherwood, about 3 miles north of Nottingham City Centre, on Purple Line (or Lime Line) buses.

Venue: Get in touch to be told the address.

Price: 50p for drinks & snacks.

Booking, or enquiries: Email minecraft at non-school-nottingham dot org dot uk.

Minecraft is a “virtual environment” where you can build things and travel around. Within the environment, you can do lots of different things – explore, play games with friends, build virtual electronics and mechanics, etc. A lot of home ed young people already play it.

There are various versions of the software, and at this group we will be using Minecraft Pocket Edition, version 1.1.x (where the x represents any number 1 to 9).

This version will run on

iOS

Ubuntu phones & tablets

Android, e.g.

Amazon phones & tablets

NVIDIA devices

Samsung phones & tablets

Sony phones & tablets

(and whichever other phones, tablets etc are running Android).

It won’t run on PCs, Windows devices, or consoles such as the Xbox, PlayStation or Wii.

If you’re not sure what version you’ve got, or whether your device can run the software, or how to install it – get in touch!

The technical side of the group, and the server admin, will be run by one of the home ed teens, who had the idea for this group in the first place.

Before the day, he will check in with each participant to see what kind of games or challenges they’d like to do in the Minecraft session, and give support if anyone needs help with the software.

On the day, we will gather in person, play Minecraft and chat.

Depending on what people want to do, the in-game activities could include creating, exploring, survival, building with Redstone (virtual electronics/mechanics), trolling, using command blocks, customising your character, parkour, “player versus player” etc. If you don’t know yet what these are, don’t worry! There will be plenty of help to learn your way around the game.

We will put people into small groups depending on favourite activities and level of experience. E.g. a new person who just wanted to build something could be put with other new people who just wanted to build something.

If it turned out there were so many interested people that it wouldn’t be feasible for everyone to come on the same day, we may divide the group onto different days as well as different instances of the game.

As a bonus optional extra: there’s a way to play from home on days when you couldn’t make it to the group, joining in with friends you made at the group. And you can do that on other days as well, not just the group meetup day.

The game is virtual but the friends are real!

A Minecraft Guide For People Who Don’t Get Minecraft

The Educational Benefits of Minecraft

Travel: Purple Line buses go fairly near, and there is parking outside.