LILARA Executive Summary

‘As in the drive for Total Quality Management during the 1990s, quality will not pervade unless every person in the organization has been immersed into the concept. So it is in the administration departments of a budding learning city. Each employee will need to know at least the basic principles of the learning region and each department will have its own particular orientation towards implementing them. ‘

(Learning Cities, Learning Regions, Learning Communities)

Background

The LILARA project was conceived as a result of the need to implement the imperatives of the 2000 Lisbon Council of Ministers, from which lifelong learning became the driving force behind the continent’s economic, social and educational development. The places where lifelong learning policies and strategies would be implemented are the cities, towns and regions of every member state. Hence the concept of a ‘Learning City’ and a ‘Learning Region’ in which changing concepts and methods would pervade its institutions and communities and bring an awareness of the value of learning to the quality of life and the well-being of their citizens. 

We are still a long way from that of course in many of Europe’s centres of population, but the idea is beginning to take hold, particularly in the Northern countries, and city and regional leaders are beginning to take note of the advantages it offers. They are in need of tools and materials to help them spread the message to their managers, professionals, elected representatives and ultimately to their citizens. The partners in LILARA had previously completed a project in which they developed ‘Stakeholder Audits’ – tools that would help schools, universities, small businesses and local authorities to understand how they could become learning organisations within a learning region, and thereby help take the first steps towards developing a learning society locally.

LILARA (Learning in Local and Regional Authorities)

Stakeholder Audits were but the first step. Learning Cities and Regions are complex places in which organisations and people work together to create an interactive, interdependent and mutually supportive learning society. They are not easily created. The LILARA project takes as its mantra the TQM notion, expressed in the opening quotation, that comprehensive change will not happen unless everyone in the administration of a city or region knows about, and concerns themselves with, assisting the progress of the learning city/region strategy. At the same time the partners are aware that knowledge of learning cities and regions is in short supply. The challenge therefore was to develop a tool that would simultaneously provide both understanding and new knowledge, while gathering personal observations, raising curiosity and encouraging further learning.

The LILARA Learning Needs Audit is that tool.  It contains three components.

• Firstly, it engages in debate with respondees about  what a learning city/region might be and asks for personal opinions before venturing a definition.  
• Secondly it asks how aspects of that definition might apply to the respondee’s own city/region including the notion of the administration as a learning organisation. By answering the questions the respondee gains an understanding of some of the attributes of a learning city/region while at the same time volunteering an opinion on its potential and desirability.
• Lastly it asks, in view of that new information, what, among 12 key aspects of a learning city/region, respondees feel are a high, medium or low priority for further learning for themselves. Figure 1 shows the domains.

Figure 1. Learning City Learning Issues

There are in fact 5 LILARA learning needs audits. One for local authorities, another for regional authorities and three for the stakeholders in universities, schools and SME’s. Each one was tested within the project and can be found on the project website www.lilaraproject.com The audits were developed in dialogue with experienced local government managers, even going through a ‘plain English’ filter before being released. They are available in English, Italian, French, Hungarian and Norwegian. Local Government employees were asked to link to the website and to complete the audit.

A.            Qualitative data

Having obtained the data the task was now to analyse it and then to satisfy the need for further learning. The results were interesting. In qualitative terms, where respondees were asked to give their own view of the nature of a learning city for example, we obtained a variety of answers, many of which provided a better description than the working definition adopted by the project. These are some examples.

·         My understanding of this phrase would be a city where all citizens could access learning opportunities at any age  The city would provide not only the physical resources but adequate support for learning if required

·         Learning opportunities throughout life, and via work and leisure time, accessed in the city.  Strong links between the institutions [eg NHS, Local authority, university, colleges, schools, business sector etc] which promotes inclusion and a strong and vibrant economy from which everyone can benefit.

·         A city that promotes a culture of learning.through its various public facilities eg libraries, educational facilities, sports facilities ect..  A city that has a number of varied educational installations that cater for all groups in the population ...and offering a range of courses of every shape and subject.   A city that celebrates and rewards effort not just success.  A city that looks outward and encourages its citizens to do similar  .....all this through a medium of corporate confidence and inclusiveness.

·         A place where there is opportunity for everyone, taking into account their circumstances and abilities, so that local communities make use of the skills and interests that inhabitants have. A place where the needs of the elderly and those with special needs, are met in part by the local authority, but in many cases through the voluntary effort of people who have time and inclination to help. In doing this people can develop skills and understanding of the needs of neighbours who are at a different place in age and life.  A place where there is general understanding of the value of the vote is understood and clearly seen to be relevant and effective.  A place where the different values and mores of incoming cultures are valued and celebrated.  A place where access to online information, and learning, is available and taken up routinely by all age groups.

There were many more in the same vein showing deep insights into the nature of a learning city and evidence that serious thought had been put into the completion of this question. The full range of responses is shown in annexe 5.

When it came to commenting on the performance of the city as a learning city the participants were less complimentary, though some offered solutions.

·         The city requires a more diverse range of learning opportunities. The university has a restricted range of departments and college provision within the city is very limited. The authority's best strategy may be to research distance learning opportunities elsewhere and then make citizens aware of them, alongside information on what's already available locally. In addition, the authority should seek to encourage (a) in-house learning activities by local employers and (b) learning activities for the general public by local organisations such as religious groups, local/family history societies and sports clubs. A suitable medium is the 'come and see' or 'have a go' type open day. For example, with Stirling Council's encouragement, the Central Scotland Islamic Centre holds an annual open day, where citizens can learn about Islam and discuss issues with local Muslims. Other religious and cultural groups can be encouraged to do the same.  Sports groups can encourage people to 'have a go'. To make this a success, the authority needs to (a) encourage groups to engage in 'outreach' activities and (b) make high-quality exhibition and publicity material available to such groups on a loan or low-charge basis. The authority need not put on all activities itself - the objective is to enable and encourage local people and groups to promote learning activities themselves. 

·         Not sure that the councillors are signed up to the principles of being a Learning City. There does not seem to be an overarching vision and strategy to promote this locally, although the Council's vision and values reflect that it is very committed to Inclusion agenda.

·         This city has a local authority council which is stuck in the dark ages!  It is totally wrapped in bureaucracy and has a strong aversion to change.  The local population is apathetic,and lethargic during local elections and the resultant Council has had very little change within it's councillors.

It can be seen that many respondees threw themselves into the audit in a very enthusiastic way, and demonstrated their commitment to the idea that a learning city would be an improvement on the current situation. The comment about the vision rift between elected representatives and council officials was borne out in many of the surveys. Very few of the audits were completed by councillors.

B.            Quantitative data

This was also borne out in the analysis of quantitative data, particularly in those questions which led participants to a greater understanding of the different components of a learning city. In more than 75% of cases across the partners, the learning city/region was positively welcomed as a pathway to the future. This is illustrated in the identification of learning needs which was the raison d’être of the audit. Figure 2 below shows the first 200 responses in one of the participating cities.

Figure 2: Learning Needs in a participant local authority

It can be seen that, while social, cultural and educational issues predominate, there exists an enormous reservoir of unfulfilled need for further learning among local authority staff.

C.            Satisfying the need

Such an enormous potential needs cannot be satisfied through conventional educational channels. Bear in mind too that these are only 200 of the thousands of local authority staff and are from only one city among thousands. Certainly the LILARA partners provided workshops for some of those who had taken part in the audit, but the major objective was to establish the need for a continuous professional development system within the local authority that would provide a longer term learning pathway for each individual. The answer lies in the use of the internet. The web already contains many learning materials on learning cities and regions, notably the 14 modules, 59 topics and 200 lessons developed in the Socrates LILLIPUT project (www.appui.esc-toulouse.fr) and the 150 hours of self-study materials from www.longlearn.org.uk based on the book ‘Learning Cities, Learning Regions, Learning Communities’ (published by Taylor and Francis). We envisage that these would form the source materials of a CPD course that could be incorporated department by department in local authority continuous improvement strategies.

D.            Overall conclusions

In the two North European countries and Hungary, the overall results have been as described above – dramatic and extremely useful both to the authorities and the universities concerned. However, not all authorities within the LILARA project participated as strongly as these three. In others partners encountered a wall of ignorance, suspicion, disinterest and an unwillingness to divert resources to a project that was considered both overly idealistic and irrelevant to immediate needs, especially in times of financial constraint. Audits that encourage bottom-up articulation of learning needs are not always welcomed in authoritarian cultures, particularly where the benefits are not immediately obvious and longer term, or where they involve the need for radical change. Partners in these authorities spent a great deal of time trying to persuade local leaders to take part, and in marketing the concept and its merits where European policy is a minor consideration. But it was not a failure in these places. We consider that it marked the beginning of new thinking and the prelude to further action. Even here, some workshops were delivered and audit results were obtained, though not in the same quantity. Local conferences on the subject are now in motion after the project’s end and there is now a local centre of expertise to provide further momentum to the process of creating learning cities and regions where they did not exist before. It will simply take a little longer.

Thus, one of the major outcomes of the project is that it has set the wheels in motion in those places where it was carried out and provided a tool to spread the message further afield, The quantitative and qualitative data we obtained display a willingness to explore the learning city/region concept further but there are other conclusions. These are:

• Knowledge and understanding of the learning cities/regions concept in local and regional authorities is very low, even in places where the ideas have been quite well publicised.
• Vast differences exist between countries and regions in Europe. There is a marked North-South divide in which some cities and regions in Northern Europe are implementing the ideas but most in South Europe are unaware that they exist. 
• Despite much publicity, even in the places that call themselves Learning Cities/Regions only a few managers and professionals are aware that the concept exists. However, on contact with the idea, many local authority employees became very enthusiastic. This demonstrates the value of the audit as a bottom-up tool.
• There is a large demand for education on the subject within local authorities and the audit tools have allowed employees to articulate this – where we applied it with larger numbers the demand for learning was enormous and much more than a city/region can cope with through traditional methods  
• Thus there is a need for internet delivered materials of the sort available from the Socrates LILLIPUT project and those available from www.longlearn.org.uk
• The cultural differences demand different approaches. In the UK, Hungary and Norway larger samples were able to be taken through a mass delivery of the audit. In Ireland, France and Italy the audit had to be administered through chosen individuals who controlled the process.
• Suspicion is often related to the availability of finance and Local Authorities consider themselves to have a shortage of that.
• The LILARA project unearthed a huge demand for more understanding of the learning city/region in some countries and a need for more awareness and publicity in others before action can even start.

E.            Outcomes

LILARA has produced a number of valuable outcomes

• Local and Regional Authority Learning Needs Audit Tools (9) in English, French, Italian, Hungarian and Norwegian developed and tested by the project partners.
• Stakeholder Learning Needs Audit Tools developed and tested by the partners. These are for Universities (English and Hungarian), Schools (English and Italian) and SMEs (English and French) They deal with the same issues as the Local Authority Audits but the number of questions is cut down.
• Workshops (7) administered by the partners to partly satisfy the learning needs identified (egs in annexe 3)
• Learning Materials on many aspects of learning cities/regions developed for the workshops and for a wider audience (Annexe 3)
• Quantitative and qualitative data from the audits running to many hundreds of pages and from which we can identify impressions, current knowledge and learning needs. (Annexe 4)
• An international network of partners capable of pushing forward the learning cities/regions agenda, each one with their own local network of contacts.
• A long list of the European regional organisations in each country to which the results of this project are being disseminated (annexe 5). Other dissemination targets include managers and councillors in local authorities, journals and magazines aimed at local authorities, academics and practitioners to whom the project and its results have been publicised through the three official conferences and many presentations at other conferences and meetings organised in the project’s lifetime. (programmes and presentations in annexe 6
• Publicity materials on the subject of learning cities and regions (annexe 2)
• A website containing the audit tools Now available to everyone without need for password. www.lilaraproject.com
• Three conferences in Stirling, Rovaniemi and Pecs at which LILARA played a leading role (annexe 6)
• but a huge effort will be needed to transform Europe into a learning continent as envisaged in the Lisbon and other agendas.

Evaluation has been carried out internally through the audits and the workshops, An external evaluation has also been carried out by Dr Pellervo Kokkonen and his report is also available.