Learning cities: the United Kingdom experience

This paper presents some preliminary findings from work in progress, the Eurolocal project – European activities on the local and regional dimension of Lifelong Learning. Through this work the project aims to help create and reinforce Learning Regions throughout Europe and expand peoples vision to help a Region achieve its potential. The use of the terms ‘Learning City’, ‘Learning Town’, ‘Learning Region’ and ‘Learning Community’ is rapidly becoming commonplace in the European lifelong learning debate. The European Commission has supported several projects and programmes to create learning regions notably the Socrates R3L programme, the TELS, LILLIPUT, INDICATORS, PALLACE, LILARA and PENR3L projects. Other initiatives also recognise the value of lifelong learning, however little work has been completed to synthesise all this knowledge, nor to disseminate it as a coherent whole to those who would benefit from it. The Eurolocal project seeks to accept that challenge in the following ways; a) By gathering all knowledge tools, materials, reports, strategies, recommendations, proj- ects etc on learning regions in Europe, b) By creating a sophisticated interactive and dynamic web facility to store the information and to stimulate feedback, c) By testing the materials and tools in appropriate organisations, d) By marketing the learning region concept and the existence of the facility to all European regions. Four partners, the University of Glasgow, Learning Regions Deutschland, Universus Bari and the University of Pecs are involved in the study; each is responsible for gathering information from the states under their name and one or more European organisations. The initial objective for each partner is to gather information on learning regional development that will be useful to other regions and can be uploaded onto the Eurolocal website i.e. a ‘store-house’ that enables participants to enhance their scope and reach. It is intended to disseminate and exploit the data for the benefit of interested parties thus creating ‘added value’ to the materials and information as regions compare and contrast their learning regions and contribute to an ongoing dialogue on the topic