The role of cultural institutions in lifelong learning and community building is a core theme of PIE so that relationships between cultural policies, learning strategies, and sustained development is central to PIE objectives.

The recent PIE Briefing Paper 3 titled Culture, Learning and Development comments on the PIE role in these areas and provides some useful references. It raises the question of what PIE can contribute in furthering these relationships and desired outcomes, and concludes with two key questions for the PIE dialogue:

1. Should culture, learning and sustained development be seen as the distinctive PIE triangle for development?
2. If so, in what ways could the PIE dialogue in these areas be developed?

The document below is the Introduction to the publication from the PASCAL Conference held in Ostersund Sweden in June 2010 on the subject Heritage, Regional Development, and Social Cohesion. This Introduction, written by Peter Kearns, provides an overview of the papers and makes comment on the important roles of heritage and culture in substained socio-economic development. The experience of a number of countries in Europe, Africa, and North America receive comment in the papers. An interesting paper on the experience of learning cities in the UK poses the important question, relevant to all PIE cities, of why the high tide of learning city development in the UK appears to have passed.

The entire publication may be obtained from the following address at a cost of 18,50 Euros :  http://www.jamtli.com/english/10739.