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Laneway Learning

General Manager for Laneway Learning, Maria Yebra, uses Humanitix to host accessible, fun, and interactive lifelong learning experiences for their community.

Maria Yebra, Laneway Learning

Maria believes that everyone should have the chance to learn and to share their skills. She uses Humanitix to help people to improve mental health and wellbeing in her community classes. Find out what inspires Maria and how she promotes lifelong learning with Humanitix.

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“Getting out of your comfort zone and learning new things - it's like a push-up for your brain. Your brain just loves to be out of its comfort zone. Laneway Learning provides cheap fun classes that allows people to just do that, every day.”

Maria Yebra

Laneway Learning

Workshop participants watching a facilitator craft something

How Maria Yebra uses Humanitix

Host profile followers

Ticket buyers can follow your host profile and be notified via email each time you create a new public event!

01/03

How Maria Yebra uses Humanitix

Human support

Our support team is based in Sydney and ready to help set up your event.

02/03

How Maria Yebra uses Humanitix

Make a duplicate event

The duplicate event function allows you to easily create a new event using a previous event framework, saving you time on your event setup.

03/03

Q&A with Maria Yebra

Can you tell us about your event?

What we try to do at Laneway Learning is classes in anything and everything. Last week we had a class on neuroplasticity, followed by a class on zombie films. Tonight we have a class on Italian for beginners followed by a class on the darker side of the Internet. We try and mix it up.

We are community-led and run so we have people emailing us all the time saying "Hey I know this or I know that and I'd love to share it."

We are self-funded, and we’ve been self-funded for 10 years. Which is quite impressive in the non for profits sector. We’re very lean on our operations.

How many people does it take to run your event hosting business?

It's a very small organisation. It’s just me, our manager, and our teacher coordinator. We run about 16 classes a week and thousands of classes a year. People think we're much, much bigger than we are. I think it's just that the Humanitix platform is so good that it allows us to actually host a lot of different things in a week.

It took us from having to spend an hour and a half to set up an event down to literally five minutes. It took the pressure off our admin team because they weren't receiving complaint emails. Now they get an email maybe once every three days. So we didn’t need an admin person anymore.

Maria Yebra

Laneway Learning

What is so important about running community-led events?

I wanted to host events that create intergenerational connections. At Laneway Learning, we have an opportunity for attendees who are 90 years old to learn alongside attendees that are in their 20s. Maybe they feel lonely or want to connect with others. They're all sharing their knowledge and that's what makes our classes special. We have our studios, but also love operating in different and underutilised spaces in our community. So, if a cafe closes at 5pm, our classes would be 6 to 8pm and we have extended the life of bars, cafes, restaurants and shops.

Who can we expect to meet at Laneway Learnings events?

We’ve seen international students and immigrants who have just arrived in our city. It creates a bit of a melting pot of cultures and backgrounds. Activities like these are actually very important to help break down barriers in society. For example, our event attendees come here from very different political backgrounds. And they leave it all at the door and think “We're all here because we want to craft a concrete pot, and we're doing it together”. That's really endearing to see people who I think would never ever have talked to each other in other circumstances now connecting in a safe space over shared learning.

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Laneway Learning create events that connect community using Humanitix.

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A workshop facilitator presenting about making a plush octopus for beginners