Learning skills for life

We’re standing on the edge of a quiet railway line. There’s a mobile phone on the tracks, just a foot or so from the concrete edge, painted with a yellow line. No one is watching, save for a cardboard cutout of a policeman at one end of the platform. Graffiti is daubed on the other side, across both rails: someone must have been across the track before. Surely it can’t be so bad. But the three ten-year-olds surveying the scene stand right back from the edge, shaking their heads.

It’s a good job, as the next moment the sound of an approaching train thunders through. “What should you do?” asks volunteer guide Jenny Beaumont, and the trio offer several solutions: call for help, phone the police, tell an adult. “Should you go on the track to get the phone?” Jenny asks, and they all chorus back: “No!”

They’re nearing the end of their trip to the Lifeskills Centre. Based in the Create Centre in one of Bristol’s bonded warehouses near the Cumberland Basin, the fourth floor of the enormous space has been transformed into lifelike recreations of 19 different scenarios, from a pedestrian crossing complete with cars, to a cafe that has Boston Tea Party branding. Young people have been learning how to keep themselves and others safe in this building for the past 18 years, and the messages are just as important as ever.

Volunteer Jenny Beaumont talks to Ruby, Jack and Kelsi about sell-by dates for food

“We’re teaching them how to avoid and recognise hazards in order to stay safe,” Jenny says as she ushers her group through a nondescript door, which opens up to reveal a street scene complete with real cars, a bus stop, shops and a set of traffic lights. “It’s more about observation than teaching them skills. Quite often they just don’t have the knowledge at this age, so we’re equipping them with it.”

She pushes open the front door of one of the houses that line the streets, taking the little group of children from St Paul’s Catholic Primary School in Yate into what looks just like a normal suburban kitchen. The fire alarm on the ceiling bleeps its low battery warning. “What do you think that sound means?” Jenny asks, and the children look puzzled and try to guess. Jenny explains that if the battery is low it can’t protect them from the fire that is raging in the next room next – pushing open the door, they are met by a wall of smoke and the children scream.

Jenny plays along brilliantly, teaching them lessons as they go: closing the door to contain the fire, getting them to shout a warning to others of the danger, and then handing the phone to ten-year-old Kelsi to let her call the fire brigade. She dials 999 with wide eyes and speaks to the operator with a few prompts from the others, hanging up with a look of relief now she knows that help is coming.

Teachers Helen Clements (left) and Rebecca Barton field the children’s emergency phone calls

In the break room, that was until recently full of volunteers in red polo shirts eating their sandwiches, teachers Helen Clements and Rebecca Barton field the emergency phone calls that are coming in thick and fast from their class of Year 6 pupils. “We’ve come to the Lifeskills Centre every year for at least 15 years,” Helen explains in between calls. “We do it in their last term at primary school because it’s a time when they are doing more on their own and they are about to go to secondary school and meet new people.

“A lot of children this age aren’t very worldly-wise, so this opens their eyes to dangers they might not even have considered. Because it’s so true to real life, they have to think for themselves and use their initiative. Most of them will never have been in situations like this before, so they are being prompted to see how they would react. Some of it is so close to home but it’s always one of their favourite trips.”

The centre recreates real-life situations in impressive detail, including real cars and a fully-stocked Co-op

The centre opened in 2000, and over 175,000 people have visited since then – children of primary school age, young people with disabilities, and members of the emergency services and other agencies who periodically visit to ensure the advice being given is the best that it can be. Unintentional injury is the second highest cause of death for children and young people in the UK, so the education work that is done at the Lifeskills Centre is vital.

“Messages are easier to understand when they are given in context,” Jenny says as she keeps up a relentless pace through the rooms of a house full of hot saucepans and choking hazards, and out into the garden where the children examine the circuit breaker on a lawnmower. “The children often come in quite uncertain but by the time they leave they have opened up, and, for me, the interaction with them is rewarding in itself.”

The children troop back into the briefing room at the end of the session to discuss what they’ve learned, and are full of facts: a train takes 20 football pitches to come to a stop once the brakes go on; a box of tissues in the back of a car can have the same mass as a brick if it hits you during an accident; before helping a casualty you should check for dangers. “Just remember that none of what you saw today was real – the train wasn’t real, we weren’t calling the real emergency services, and the fire wasn’t real,” one of the volunteers tells the group, and the children gasp, amazed: disbelief has been completely suspended during the afternoon, and the lessons learned have been as real as they can be.

The Lifeskills Centre is currently recruiting volunteers to take small groups around on weekday mornings and afternoons. Find out more by visiting www.lifeskills-bristol.org.uk