What is the target audience for  PENR3L ?

There are 4 main target groups for the seminars and conference, and for the ensuing network:

• Managers and administrators in local and regional authorities who take responsibility for implementing lifelong learning city and region actions.

• Leaders and researchers in expertise centres in universities and other establishments with a wish to contribute more in the field of learning cities and regions.

• Decision-makers in adult education establishments, business and industry, teacher training, schools and other stakeholder establishments in the locality.

• City, Regional and community leaders including elected representatives who make the decisions to develop strategies and policies for learning city and regional development.

• All of them are stakeholders in the construction and maintenance of Learning Cities and Regions.

Why should local and regional government attend the workshops and conference?

The extent to which a city and its people learn will be a measure of their ability to meet the challenges of the 21^st century in terms of prosperity, stability and the well-being of its citizens. That basic concept is emphasised in almost every report produced in the past 20 years. Many cities and towns do already aspire to improve the provision of learning and have installed new learning centres and publicity machines to encourage people to use them. Most local authority websites have a section devoted to lifelong learning. But few have understood that a learning city/region is one which involves everyone in the process of continuing personal development, contribution and decision-making, much in the same way that a learning organisation constantly involves its employees in quality improvement and decision-making at the appropriate point. Provision, support and exhortation is not enough. Learning Mindsets and methods also need to change. Placing learning at the forefront of a city’s or region’s strategies and policies can engender a qualitative progression, but it entails much more than adjusting educational opportunities. Learning should pervade every aspect of local and regional government practice using the lifelong learning tools and techniques that help to stimulate people to develop their own potential to the full. There are tools and techniques to help with this, individual personal and professional continuing development programmes to put in place and learning materials to insert into these.

For example, based on the notion that every employee in local administration should have some knowledge of, and a personal stake, in the development of the authority as a learning entity, the LILARA (Learning in Local and Regional Authorities) project has developed a Learning Needs Audit. Preliminary results indicate a vast reservoir of learning needs in local authorities that will need to be satisfied in the six authorities with which it is working’. Multiplied across the European continent, the demand is limitless. The European Commission’s policy paper on the local and regional dimension of lifelong learning puts it thus ‘‘No city or region can afford not to be a learning city or learning region if it wishes to develop future prosperity, maintain social stability and realise the potential of its citizens.’ (2). Local and regional government will need all the help it can get from PENR3L and PASCAL.