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The very nature of thinking "outside the box" dictates that PASCAL opens the floor to a diverse range of topics. In this category you will find the latest topics of interest to our members and contributors.

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The P in PASCAL stands for Place. Much is said within PASCAL and some other network communities about the importance of place. Learning regions and cities have been central to Observatory discourse and activity since the Observatory was created following an international OECD conference on universities and regional [place] development in 2002. The idea has been very practically applied especially of late in East Asian countries, right down to neighbourhood and street block level in big cities and recognised as crucial by UNESCO through its Global Learning Cities Platform created in 2013. PASCAL itself fosters dialogue and analysis of the learning cities movement via Learning Cities 2020.

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Without learning by communities and political systems, ie changing our behaviour from reflecting on experience, development will fail, or at the least be incomplete, short-sighted and unbalanced. It is not only individuals that learn.

PASCAL is about good Governance as well as technical management. With ever-larger and more complex systems – nation-states, global-financial and other corporations, IT systems etc. – we realise that many high-level policy decisions will be barren without commitment and action down the line at local levels. If we are to carry out what we say we want to do, to survive and live better. Is it not essential that a committed and active citizenry works to achieve the results now willed, but not delivered through normal political process?

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Development and environment has become a vital, heated and contested area; in one way very simple, but behind that immensely complication as well as vital. It is tempting to leave it to the more passionate and focused among us, and the bodies like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, and to see green politics as a ‘single issue’ subject not really to do with learning and learning cities.

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Global warming and climate change have certainly arrived on all policy agendas and can no longer be ignored, even though climate change deniers and others who have an interest in maintaining the status quo are not silenced. For a Network with the mission and beliefs of PASCAL however it is impossible to leave the environment to others, as if it is not something that embrace and might engulf us all.

This OTB Website area takes three initial Themes which are likely rapidly to break down into several more discrete yet connected "Topic areas":

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OTB asks about Development: where from and where to?

It invites us to shares stories and move ‘upwards’: from local and personal experience through analysis to public discourse. James Powell and Larry Swanson are monitoring this Theme Forum of personal narratives and analyses of local change initiatives: which ones created better understanding and stronger community?

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Asking what changes the narrative also pushes us beyond individual cases. How to get new understandings to policy-makers and the wider public so as to alter discourse and cause change? It sets Outside the Box (OTB) a challenge – individually and to Pascal – taking us outside PAC and PASCAL to ask how governance and opinion-forming occur nowadays. Who or what determines how we think and talk, what we believe and take for granted, what is on and off the agenda, even the terms that we use?

Can we uncover how political and cultural processes work today, then as the PASCAL Observatory work with the grain to get results?

What is transparent to everyone, and what is a mystery to ordinary citizens? What is the immediate, the short-term, and the deeper impact and power of the social media; of older media; of lobbyists and ‘captains of industry’, as well as press barons? Does one medium and political channel trump the others? Is ‘civil society’ an engine or a sop? And how is it most effective?

Does anyone outside the PASCAL and PAC box listen to our discourse about learning and learning cities, then act on what it says? If so, is this action – local, piecemeal, gradualistic – of a kind that becomes a critical mass, helping a cultural paradigm shift so that we - citizens and governing classes - see and act on the world differently?

I want to know what works and how, so that we can be more effective in turning what James Powell calls maturing conversation into effective action.

We connect this also with another OTB theme area: what many people in the wider world see as a vital problem and challenge: do local solutions help address the disillusion, even cynicism and crisis, of western democracy and leadership in this media and poll-driven era?

This OTB question is lodged under Development, learning and management of place; ultimately all the OTB questions connect in the fragmented world outside each box; but we hope to add to and apply better understanding of some key issues along the way.

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This general theme forum is about OTB itself. It gives the opportunity to comment on; the OTB philosophy, the initial direction of OTB, the initial themes so far adopted, ideas for new themes and shared ongoing reflective evaluation as the site develops.

It may be that this Forum remains inactive for an initial period till there is experience to share. On the other hand some readers may wish to comment almost at once.

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If you encounter an error while using the OTB site, please open a new topic here and describe in as much detail as possible the nature of the error. Please include the computer/tablet type and browser version if you know this. Please limit your submissions to ONE ERROR PER POSTING topic; post additional error reports in their own topic.
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2 Multiple copies of the same posting/comment
by Steve Rubin
Feb 14 2015 - 08:41
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If you would like to see an additional feature added to the OTB site, please open a new topic in this section. Please limit your submissions to ONE FEATURE REQUEST PER POSTING topic; post additional feature requests in their own topic.
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3 Lifelong Learning (LLL): does the term still give good service?
by Chris Duke
Dec 4 2015 - 09:16
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