The Tate Modern Gallery in London has organised a seminar series called: Topology: Spaces of Transformation that has been running since November of 2011 and will continue to June 2012.

Yesterday, the 28^th of April, 2012 was a session on “Epistemologies of the South: Reinventing Social Emmancipation” –The panellists were Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Shiv Visvanathan, Suely Rolnik and Sarat Maharaj.  From a knowledge democracy perspective this was a fascinating set ofpresentations and worth while passing on to others.

Instead of reducing and flattening economic distinctions, globalisation has made them sharper.  The latest bit of commentary from Richard Florida. 

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In today’s overly pragmatic neoliberal climate of technological and social rationalisation, worker ‘flexibility’ and employability competencies, and market-oriented competitiveness, the stories Zipsane shares in his article entitled Untraditional Creative Partnerships – Seven Wonders of Arts and Culture in Education gives one hope.

I was reminded of the Cape Town statement recently by Jin Yang of the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning in Hamburg. It was developed at the conference on Lifelong Learning, Higher Education and Active Citizenship held from the 10 - 12 October 2000 in Cape Town, co-hosted by University of Western Cape, the UNESCO Institute for Education and the Adult Education Research Group of the Danish National University of Education. I attach it here for us to reflect on how in the past decade universities have progressed in relation to the criteria laid out in the statement.

At the request of the region of Jämtland, which is a distinct part of  Sweden,  Norman Longworth visited Sweden last week. He was speaking to a Regional Development conference of the Europaforum Norra Sverige. Some 200 politicians from the four Northernmost regions of Sweden, chaired by the Swedish minister of regions and enterprise, Annie Loof.  All these regions are large but sparsely populated with great untapped resources.