Jo Manser, Group Director of Merrist Wood College and University Centre, reflects on the college’s £21m redevelopment, what the new facilities will mean for learners, employers and the wider Surrey community, and how the investment is helping to shape the next chapter of Merrist Wood.
Over the past two years I’ve had the pleasure of watching an extraordinary transformation take place at Merrist Wood College and University Centre. There’s something very tangible about seeing a new building take shape. You watch the walls go up, the spaces begin to form and, eventually, a construction project becomes somewhere people can actually learn, work and develop.
The completion of our new facilities following the Department of Education’s £21m investment, represents a major moment for both the college and Activate Learning. But for me the most important thing isn’t the buildings themselves, it’s what they will allow us to do for our learners, the employers we work with and the communities we serve across Surrey for many years to come.
A proud heritage, built for the future
Merrist Wood has a long and proud history as a specialist land-based college. That heritage is incredibly important to us and remains a major part of what makes the college distinctive. Our expertise in areas such as horticulture, arboriculture, animal management, equine, countryside management and landscaping is recognised well beyond Surrey and I always take great pride when meeting an employer partner who says, “I studied here.”
But Merrist Wood today is much more than that.
We support learners at different ages and different stages of their lives, from those who need additional support to take their first steps into education, through further education and apprenticeships, to adults returning to learning and people progressing into higher education. Alongside our specialist practical facilities, learners increasingly need access to science, technology and digital skills because those capabilities now run through almost every industry.
Our new Norman Shaw and Peyto Shrubb buildings, together with our new commercial glasshouses, have been designed with that changing world in mind. They give our learners access to modern workshops, laboratories, technology and specialist environments that more closely reflect the places they will encounter when they move into employment or further study. That matters because education can’t stand still while the world around it changes.
Preparing people for a changing world of work
The jobs our learners will enter are evolving and changing faster than ever. Employers are responding to new technology, changing environmental expectations and the transition towards a greener economy. People are also likely to move between careers, retrain and develop new skills several times during their working lives.
Colleges have an important role to play in making that possible.
Our responsibility isn’t just preparing somebody for their first job. It’s also about creating opportunities for people to develop the skills, confidence and knowledge they need throughout their lives, while working closely with employers to understand what skills they need now and what they are likely to need next.
An investment in Surrey’s skills and communities
That is why this investment at Merrist Wood is also an investment in Surrey and its communities. By developing the college, it has given us greater capacity to work with employers, schools, universities, local authorities and other partners.
It creates more opportunities for people to progress through different levels of education without necessarily having to leave their local area. Our new partnership with The Open University, for example, is helping us strengthen higher education at Merrist Wood and create further opportunities for local people to progress to degree-level study.
Developing the skills for a more sustainable future
Sustainability has also been an important part of how we have thought about the redevelopment. At a college where so much of our teaching is connected to the natural environment, it would be difficult for it not to be. But sustainability at Merrist Wood is about more than the environmental performance of a building. It is reflected in what we teach, how we manage our estate and the skills we help people develop.
Our learners will be entering industries that are having to think very differently about resources, biodiversity, land use, energy and climate. We have a responsibility to make sure they are ready for that world and, importantly, able to help shape it.
A college rooted in its community
Colleges are at their best when they are connected to the places around them. Merrist Wood isn’t just an institution that happens to be located in Surrey, it’s a part of it. Working with its employers, responding to its skills needs, supporting its communities and creating opportunities for the people who live here.
As part of Activate Learning, we can combine that local focus with the expertise, partnerships and resources of a much larger education group. That gives us an opportunity to think beyond individual courses or individual campuses and ask a bigger question: what will our communities need from us over the next five, ten or twenty years?
The beginning of Merrist Wood’s next chapter
The new facilities at Merrist Wood are one part of our answer to this. They give us an extraordinary platform, but buildings on their own don’t transform lives. What matters is what happens inside them. Whether it’s the learner discovering a career they didn’t know existed, the adult gaining the confidence to retrain, the apprentice developing a skill an employer desperately needs, or the student progressing from further education into a degree and then into their chosen profession.
These are the things that will determine whether this investment has been successful.
As we prepare to officially open the new facilities this month, I have taken a moment to reflect on how incredibly proud and I excited I am of what we’ve created. But I’m more excited about what comes next.
For Merrist Wood, this isn’t the end of a redevelopment project. It is the beginning of the next chapter of the college and an opportunity to work with even more organisations and communities across Surrey to make sure the education and skills we provide continue to meet the needs of the people we serve.
The ‘Big Build’
