Source: PIMA Bulletin 17, April 2018

Darlene Clover and I are returning to London on the train from Wolverhampton where we had the pleasure of attending a conference organised by the irresistible Sir Alan Tuckett on the subject of The Learning Age 20 Years on. The Learning Age: A Renaissance for a New Britain (1997) was a green paper brought out by New Labour under the political leadership of David (Lord) Blunkett, then Secretary of State for Education and Employment.

PASCAL subscribers may be interested in this item summarised from the Toronto Globe and Mail from University of Winnipeg, President Annette Trimbee and Vice-President of Indigenous Affairs, Wab Kinew:

Featured below and attached please find the Catania Statement, the Sixth Big Tent Global Communique on Higher Education and Engagement released on October 9^th in the City of Catania, Sicily, Italy at the University of Catania on the occasion of the 12th Annual Conference of the PASCAL International Observatory.

Marc Spooner and James McNinch of the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina were the co-chairs of a recent symposium held in the heartland of Western Canada.  The symposium brought together some of the best known critical participatory research, Indigenous, decolonising, knowledge democracy and higher education scholars in North America with the notable international addition of Dr. Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Maori scholar and Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of Waikato, Aotearoa.

In 1998, the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council created the funding mechanism called the Community University Research Alliance, which began what is called the institutionalisation period of community, based participatory research in Canada.  For the first time the funders required that all research applications had to be made by an alliance of community and higher education researchers.