Please find below the call for papers for the next conference of the Between Global and Local: adult learning and development network, April 25-27, Ghent, Belgium. Deadline for submitting abstract is January 22:

Urban living and urban developments question increasingly the social and spatial conditions for living together. Urban developments can refer to changing social and spatial conditions within cities as well as in rural areas. In the latter case, this may involve a reflection on how urbanising trends and developments affect for instance local community traditions. In the current discourses, urban public space is on the one hand assumed to lack the conditions for the development of social cohesion, community life and citizenship. On the other hand cities are assumed to represent dynamic sites of social innovation and transformation. Recent changes in the social and spatial structure of cities increase the need to act and reflect upon the tensions in these ‘readings’ of community and urban developments.

The report states that literacy is a ‘big deal’ because:

• The labour market requires ever higher literacy skills (by 2020, it is estimated that 35% of all jobs will require high-level qualifications compared to 29% today);
• Social and civic participation are more literacy-dependent in the digital world;
• The population is ageing and their literacy skills, including digital literacy skills, need updating;
• Poverty and low literacy are locked in a vicious circle, each fuelling the other;
• Growing mobility and migration are making literacy more and more multilingual, combining a wide range of cultural and linguistic backgrounds.