We are pleased to announce that in Rome on the occasion of a major Italian Learning Cities conference on 16 February 2017, PASCAL concluded an agreement with the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning with respect to learning city development.

UIL and PASCAL have complementary roles in fostering the development of learning cities around the world. In view of the great importance both UIL and PASCAL attach to promoting lifelong learning for all and to building a learning society, and given both organizations’ commitment to cultivating a relationship based on mutual trust developed through past cooperation, UIL and PASCAL will collaborate in the following ways, including:

• to develop learning city massive open online course aimed at both practitioners and policymakers, subject to appropriate financial underpinning
• to compile a study on the indicators of lifelong learning and learning cities, building on UIL’s Key Features of Learning Cities and  work undertaken within the Urban Big Data Centre at the University of Glasgow.
• to support selected cities in the implementation of the Key Features of Learning Cities in different phases
• to develop of potential (new) research projects pertaining to adult learning and education (ALE) and its related field

Although this agreement is not a legally binding undertaking, both UIL and PASCAL will strive to fulfil, to the best of their ability, this agreement.

[left photo] Mo Wang of UIL presenting the case of Espoo, Finland, one of the cities that has gained the UNESCO Learning City Award and; [right photo] Roberta Piazza, PASCAL Associate Director, Europe, presenting the case of Acireale, one of the PASCAL Learning City Networks (LCN) members