My friend Alan Rea, who has died aged 76 of cancer, was an educationist in north-east Scotland whose work on adult education with the Workers’ Educational Association led to the creation of a number of valuable community-based projects aimed at helping disadvantaged people.
His most notable contributions to the WEA began in 1990, when he became tutor-organiser of its north Scotland district, stretching from Inverness to Dundee. Over the ensuing years his ideas and initiatives added hugely to the organisation’s development in Scotland.
Among his most outstanding projects was the lottery-funded Salt of the Earth Project, which he conceived as a contemporary version of the 1930s Mass Observation programme – capturing, through interviews, workers’ experiences of living through the enormous changes of the 20th century. The project’s archive is now held by the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh.
Alan was born in Ruislip, Middlesex (now in the London borough of Hillingdon), to John, an engineer at Lucas Industries, and Anne (nee Carroll), a nurse who had emigrated to Britain from Ireland. He was educated at St Benedict’s school in Ealing, west London, and later studied botany at Aberdeen University.
He gained his degree and remained in the city, but after abandoning a PhD did teacher training at Northern College of Education in Aberdeen. He then taught biology at Ellon Academy in Aberdeenshire, followed by a period working in schools in Greece. Highly regarded by his pupils, he employed a discursive and inquiry-based approach – something he decided would be particularly useful for adult students.
On his return to Aberdeen from Greece in 1981, Alan joined the WEA as a tutor specialising in trade union courses, also becoming an effective shop steward for WEA Scotland staff.
In 1984 he came up with a plan that led to the establishment of a new regional WEA in the Highlands and later, when he had become tutor-organiser, he won a £350,000 lottery grant for the Reach Out Project in Aberdeen, which worked to help with the educational needs of vulnerable people, including ex-offenders, substance misusers and those with mental health issues.
In 2002 Alan retired from the WEA. His large garden at Craigievar in the Vale of Alford, cultivated over 30 years, was a source of great pride and a welcoming haven for friends and neighbours. The conviviality in that setting was occasionally sustained by smoked salmon and cured produce from his own smokehouse.
He is survived by his brothers, Paul and Francis.
