OBSERVATIONS AT FEILDING

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 325, 14 September 1945, Page 13

OBSERVATIONS AT FEILDING

THE FEILDING COMMUNITY CEN T. RE.

By

A: E:

Campbell.

New Zealand Council

for Educational Kesearch.

OMMUNITY CENTRE is beginning to be what the lady of legend called Mesopotamia-a comfortable term that may or may not mean something. To many people it still means anything between a club-room and a university extension centre, and of those who have more accurate knowledge very few have recent experience. So it is interésting to have the story of the Dominion’s only functioning Centre told by a man who knows what such places are equipped to do, what this particular place has already done, what developments are likely in

the future, and what effect they may be expected to have in the life of such a society as New Zealand must always be. The Feilding experiment is seven years old. It began in 1938 with the appointment of Mr. and Mrs. Somerset to the staff of the Agricultural High School with instructions to organise a new method of adult education in a rural area. It is still feeling its way in certain directions, and Mr. Campbell is not yet prepared to say that it has already answered the question that lay behind its establishment in the first place: whether community centres should be established on a national scale. He does say that Feilding has established a case for the establishment of centres in other places, and "he would go further than that if he felt sure either that there are other Somersets available or that people who are not Somersets could achieve comparable results.