My friend and former colleague Graham Birkin, who has died aged 72, was a teacher and community worker who devoted his working life to helping people overcome educational and social disadvantage.
In particular he was involved in Sheffield city council’s pioneering Take Ten paid educational leave programme, which ran from 1983 to 1994 and enabled low-grade manual, craft and clerical workers to take a 10-day course without loss of pay.
Graham was team leader of the programme, but in line with the way he lived out his politics he rejected the hierarchy implied by the job title and informally shared the difference in his salary among other members of the team, including myself.
Gently but firmly, and with a great sense of humour, he encouraged Take Ten participants to develop their own interests and potential. No single course was the same and a large part of the content was decided upon in discussion with course members.
Born in Southend, Essex to Dorothy (nee Churchill) and Craven Birkin, a civil servant, Graham was educated at Southend high school for boys before studying politics and philosophy at Sheffield University (1968-71).
After a year in Lebanon that established a strong commitment to the Palestinian cause, he did teacher training at Garnett College in London, then taught at Hampstead school and Kingsway-Princeton further education college, where he found many ways to enliven the syllabus and took disadvantaged pupils along with A-level social science students on a trip to Cornwall.
In 1979 Graham joined Centerprise in Hackney, a bookshop and community centre in north London, as a community worker, before returning to Sheffield in the early 80s to work for the local adult education service, which led him on to the Take Ten programme.
When Take Ten was scrapped he returned to the adult education service, before taking a job with the EU-funded Cicero project, which promoted adult education across the UK. Those lucky enough to work with him will never forget his compassion, empathy and ability to help people make sense of complex issues. He never formally retired and was still organising adult education courses when he became ill and was forced to stop.
Outside work, Graham received a number of asylum seekers and refugees into his home in conjunction with the ASSIST Sheffield project, often for periods of up to six months.
He loved hill-walking, climbing, swimming in lakes, rivers and seas – the rougher the better. He spent many years as a volunteer organiser with the charity Flysheet Camps, giving underprivileged city children access to the Derbyshire woodlands. He loved visiting the woods even when no longer able to run camps, and with the help of family and friends made a number of trips there after a stroke and the onset of dementia.
He is survived by his partner of 27 years, Jan Jude, his children, Jack and Ruth, from his marriage to Jenny Owen, which ended in divorce in 1997, three grandchildren, Eben, Luca and Frieda, and his sister Anne.
