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Loyalist College running community workshops

Ron Pickering

Ron Pickering has been teaching water colouring for 20 years. Photo by Connor Robinson, QNet News

By Connor Robinson [1]

TRENTON – In a quiet room overlooking the sales floor of Smylie’s grocery store in Trenton Tuesday night, a small group of students is busy with their first class of the semester, preparing to hone their skills in watercolouring.

Linda Kuzoff, a retiree from Colborne, has enrolled in the watercolour workshop along with five other students with an interest in art.

“I’m getting back into art after being into it as a teen,” she said. She describes the teacher – Ron Pickering [2] –who has been teaching the course for 20 years as ” the best teacher and very patient. ”

The watercolouring class is part of Loyalist College continuing education program [3]. Community outreach is part of the college’s mandate. The college is offering a number of different courses in six different fields, including photography and painting. New programs that are going to be started this fall include a floral workshop run by Avondale Flowers [4] in Belleville and a small-engine repair course for the new year.

A poster showing Loyalist Colleges workshop choices for the 2019 fall semester. Photo by Connor Robinson, QNet News

Many workshops are offered to adults, with a long-running watercolour-painting class that many of the students have taken more than once along with Microsoft Excel [5] courses to help people brush up on their computer skills. There are also workshops oriented toward families such as a Bake with Your Child series of workshops where parents are encouraged to learn how to make pizza and cookies from scratch with their kids.

Besides vocational programs, two languages are also on offer as courses for students. French is offered on Tuesdays and Spanish on Thursdays, both at the college. There is also a photography course to help you “step up your Instagram game. ”  You can find a full list of courses being offered here [6].