Cork Learning City: Toward a Community Wide Learning Environment

Abstract

Cork has had a wide learning agenda for several decades. As early as 1911 the university was already offering extra mural education. A few years later it was engaging with trade unions offering courses for working men, through the support of the City Corporation (City Council). That tradition took off in earnest in 1947. In Cork throughout the 20th century there were experiments around broadening education and the development of new educational models. From this base the city, through the Cork City Development Board, engaged in a two-year consultation ahead of launching a vision for the city over a ten year horizon called Cork 2002-2012: Imagine our Future. Imagine our Future included a ‘theme’ on ‘Cork as a Learning City’, with an orientation towards an all encompassing flexible learning model: ‘We see learning as a life-long activity for all our citizens and not as something to be pursued only by young people’ (91). This plan established a Cork City Learning Forum representative of a wide range of stakeholders. However its most significant legacy was the establishment of the Cork Lifelong Learning Festival. This festival was launched in 2004 and steadily grew in scale and reach into the community to a point where there are now in the region of 500 discrete activities offered by all types of providers non-formal, informal and formal in an annual week long festival. All activities are free and are open to the public. The participation of ordinary citizens during the festival is impressive. The idea of developing a festival was prompted by key educational influencers. It emerged into a very fertile environment in a city that was already extensively networked and became an instant success. It mobilised and animated a wide range of actors and provided the context through which the subsequent Learning City project blossomed. The idea of a learning city became embedded in public consciousness, there was buy-in for the concept from a wide range of stakeholders and it gathered momentum with the growth of the festival and through international engagement with PASCAL International Exchange (PIE) which also delivered the EcCoWell concept and ultimately opened the doors that led to a 2015 UNESCO Learning City Award. The community wide learning environment is an exciting mix of local innovation and participation and engagement with global networks of cities who are developing their own learning environments under a number of learning cities umbrellas.

Keywords: Learning City, UNESCO, Cork