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A Report on
The WORKSHOP
FOR EUROPEAN
LEARNING
CITIES
AND REGIONS
7/8 December,
2007 Kaunas, Lithuania
MEETING MINDS, SHARING
EXPERIENCES, ON ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT IN LEARNING CITIES
AND REGIONS
The PASCAL EUROPEAN NETWORK of LEARNING REGIONS
(PENR3L) with the aid of the
EUROPEAN COMMISSION SOCRATES PROGRAMME
The workshop in Kaunas was attended by 44
participants with 14 different nationalities. All of the participants brought
expertise from their own countries and their own experience of developing
learning regions and cities. The workshop followed a similar format to
the Barcelona
workshop and consisted of five key note speakers interspersed with several
active solution groups, which worked on the themes of the workshop and
contributed a series of action points to be taken forward.
Delegates were greeted by
some wonderful music played by musicians from a ‘learning school’ of music based
in Kaunas.
Throughout the workshop a variety of musicians played for the delegates at
appropriate intervals which was greatly appreciated by all. Delegates were also
invited to a reception and musical recital at the town hall. The Mayor of the
city greeted delegates at the workshop and welcomed all to the learning city of
Kaunas.
Throughout the workshop delegates were made to feel very welcome and enjoyed the
thoughtful hospitality of the delegates and people of Kaunas.
The first Keynote was
presented by Professor Norman Longworth, from the University of Stirling,
who provided an overview of the history and development of the concepts of Learning Cities and Regions and some pointers as
to how to proceed. The second
Keynote was provided by Palmira Jucevicienne, Professor of lifelong learning at
Kaunas University of Technology, who explained how Kaunas has come to be one of Central Europe’s most forward looking learning cities. The
third Keynote was given by Peter Krug, coordinator of Adult Education Policy for
the 16 states in Germany.
This keynote provided some valuable insight into how learning regions have been
developed in Germany
and elaborated on the economic challenges and benefits of developing learning
regions and cities. The fourth Keynote was provided by Paolo Federhigi from the
University of Florence who is also the director of
EARLALL (European Association of Regional and local Authorities for Life Long
learning), who opened up the dialogue on the importance of social and community
development in learning regions. The fifth Key note was given by
Wolfgang Jütte, one of Europe’s leading experts
on cooperation and networking, from Danube University Vienna. This presentation
focused on the network analysis and the management of networks that can provide
the intelligence and knowledge needed to build learning cities and learning
regions.
The final keynote was
given by Professor Michael Osborne, from the University of Stirling,
who provided an overview of the workshop and the discussions from the active
solution groups. These presentations are available on the website at:
http://www.penr3l.feek.pte.hu
The active solution groups
were facilitated and reported on so that we could capture the expertise and
insights contributed through the various discussion groups. The groups had a
series of questions to ponder organized into themes and were given the task of
reporting back action points which were written on flipchart paper and displayed
for all to consider. All participants were then given a number of red, green and
yellow stickers with which to traffic light the action points displayed. Red to
express disagreement, yellow for not sure and green for go.
The first theme that the active solution groups discussed was
on economic aspects of learning cities and regions. There were a number of
equally popular suggestions from discussions on this theme. The following action
points all received the highest amount of green stickers indicating a high level
of support:
·
Develop cross sectoral and inter professional learning
·
Expand the role of teachers (personal skills, aspiration raising)
·
Develop social skills around sharing through cooperative learning
·
Develop intelligent leadership combined with a strong bottom up strategy
·
Improve understanding between researchers, practitioners and policy makers
·
Develop communities of practices
·
Develop a dynamic notion of good practice as a set of challenges
·
Start in primary schools developing
parents and pupils as stakeholders in learning regions
·
The full spectrum of education
needs to be addressed to ensure sustainability
All these action points
demonstrate a desire to expand the involvement of stakeholders in learning
communities in new and innovative ways as a way of boosting the economic aspects
of learning cities and regions. There was a concern to develop bottom up
strategies rather than rely on top down implementation.
There was also widespread support for connecting up different sectors and
different types of stakeholders so they can work together in new communities and
networks.
One action point with the fewest green stickers and
some yellow stickers indicating less support and some hesitation from
participants suggested the need to:
·
Change
institutions not learners
There were also a couple of suggestions which
received a combination of a few red stickers, a few green and a few yellow
stickers indicating some opposition and some indecision from the participants.
These included:
·
Professions
are a challenge to opening up possibilities
·
Effective
fiscal policy to aid the development
of learning cities and regions
The hesitation from some delegates around these
issues may well reflect their
ambiguity in their present wording and these points would probably benefit from
further clarification and elaboration.
There were a number of action points generated from
the active solution groups that did not meet approval and indeed received a high
number of red stickers indicating there unpopularity. These included:
·
The word
quality should be replaced by continuous
improvement
·
Institutions
of higher education can become catalysts for developing learning cities and
regions
·
A Competition/public event where
companies can be rated as learning companies/organisations
·
Researchers
need to be more proactive in profiling their work
There was a feeling from some of the delegates that
there may be a danger in allowing universities to take the lead on initiatives.
This seemed to reflect a feeling that possibly universities are not as well
connected to their communities as some university personnel would like to think.
There was also a reaction against the idea of introducing competitions for
businesses becoming learning organizations.
Delegates from the Barcelona
workshop had a similar reaction against suggestions of introducing this kind of
competition.
The voting demonstrated a concern with widening
participation in lifelong learning with an emphasis on innovative and creative
approaches to developing economic aspects of learning cities and regions through
a diverse range of initiatives that would broaden the base of active
stakeholders in shaping learning regions and learning cities.
Theme two
focused on the social and community aspects of developing learning cities and
regions. The action points that received the highest number of green stickers
representing their high level of popularity amongst participants were:
·
The
development of new learning environments to address educational exclusion
·
The need for
greater emphasis on informal systems
·
Shift paradigm
from teaching to learning in the minds
of teachers
·
Creation of
community social spaces to develop
community identity
·
Use
volunteering as a mechanism for inclusion
·
Education of
citizens for a healthy lifestyle
·
Ensure
volunteering practices are recognised and
accredited
·
Use innovative
ways of marketing learning
(supermarkets, radio, posters etc)
There was a high degree of support for actions of an
informal nature to promote learning cities and regions along with a emphasis on
the design of the environment to facilitate learning activities.
The next group of action points received
considerably less green stickers than the above, some yellow stickers, and some
red indicating that they were considered to be important by some of the
participants whereas others were not sure or against these actions demonstrating
a split in popularity.
·
Citizens must
be informed on what Learning
City is
through a deep consultative process
·
A combination
and bottom-up approaches
There were a few action points which received a
majority of red stickers and some green and/or yellow stickers indicating its
unpopularity and opposition from at least some of the participants and
indecision and/or support from a minority.
·
Universities
should become co-ordinators of
social networks in learning regions
·
Anatomy v
Selection, Design v Selection
·
Regular
newspapers, articles, pamphlets to
promote learning and activities to help
people organise learning
Theme two action points and their voting patterns
reveal that the delegates were very aware of the need to develop diverse
initiatives to promote community involvement in learning cities and learning
regions. There were various suggestions of ways in which local government and
community organizations could help to enable wider involvement of sections of
the community in activities to promote the development of social capitol. Again
there was some reticence about giving universities too big a role in this area.
Theme 3 was the final theme
of the workshop. There was some
consideration of the role of PASCAL in taking forward the action points proposed
through the active solution groups. There was also some consideration given to
how PASCAL could be developed in order to provide the best possible working
network. One suggestion was that there could be an interactive environment for
members to communicate with each other on the website so that there is more
horizontal communication rather than just through the experts. Another query
related to how Pascal connected to other networks. It was suggested that this
could be made more transparent through the website and that the global network
could be shown more systematically.
There was a high level of
synergy between the action points emerging from both the Barcelona and Kaunas workshops demonstrating that many of
the concerns and initiatives are very similar across Europe.
There were a few differences which emanated from the differing social, cultural
and economic historical development of the various regions represented. These
factors would need to be addressed in more depth before taking initiatives in
any particular region further.
Each of the action points summarized above is only
the tip of the iceberg as all of these points derived from rich discussion and
illustration from many different cities and regions. We hope that delegates will
take the opportunity to elaborate some of these points through the PASCAL
website. The delegates from Barcelona
were asked to do two things:
1.
Produce vignettes of their relevant activities for inclusion on the
PENR3L website.
2.
Argue the case for their proposals
that they put forward at the workshop, and elaborate on how they might be
implemented and taken forward.
We hope that this brief report on the proceedings
from the Kaunas Workshop will act as a prompt for the delegates from Barcelona and Kaunas to develop this
work and also open up the discussion to a wider audience who may like to comment
on the suggestions and contribute their own ideas and experiences.
The workshop in Kaunas and Barcelona were both stepping stones on the way
to the PASCAL conference on ‘Regional Development and Regeneration’ to be held
in Limerick, Ireland from 28th-30th May 2008.
Please follow the link below to find more details. The 28th will be a
day especially designed to further develop the PENR3L network. The deadline for
abstracts for the conference is the 8th of February 2008.
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