In a government reshuffle in Britain in July 2014, newly appointed universities Minister and Cabinet Member Greg Clark assumed a role expanded from that of his predecessor David Willetts. Cities were added to his portfolio. The Times Higher Education leader for 24 July, Closing the “town-gown” gap, mentions a concern that this further signals ‘the reduction of universities into economic tools or “engines of growth”’.

On September 19, to coincide with the Ocean City Festival and the new round of European funding programmes, the city of Plymouth and Plymouth College of Art are hosting a meeting between stakeholders across the European Atlantic Sea Board, linked to the Creative and Cultural Industries.

PASCAL, with links to Melbourne and Brisbane, Montreal and Vancouver, Barcelona, Helsinki, Glasgow and Manchester - all cities on 3 continents which have hosted or will host the Commonwealth Games or other mega-events such as the Olympics - can expect to play a role in developing the International Legacy Network, described in the attached documentation, and in building a tool kit to use the lessons of experience and facilitate knowledge exchange.

As part of the on-going ‘mainstreaming community-based research’ project of our UNESCO Chair we are developing a series of case studies on community-university research partnerships looking at policies and supportive structures making it possible for university based academics and civil society academics to work together in the co-creation of knowledge for a better future.

On May 21st 2014 Swansea University hosted a Symposium entitled Entrepreneurial Learning City Regions. It was attended by forty-five invited delegates drawn from the Swansea Learning City initiative and from a number of countries engaged in developing entrepreneurial learning city regions.