Notes from the fourth meeting of the PASCAL Learning Cities Networks “Reimagining Inclusive Economic Futures” (RIEF) on 6 Jan 2021

Attendees: Judith James and Chris Shepherd, co-leads for network; Mike Osborne, Director of Pascal; Rob Mark Networks Coordinator, PASCAL;  Palmira Jucevicienne and Robertus Jucevicienne, Kaunas, Lithuania; Jean Preece and Annie Tubadji, Swansea, Wales UK; Diane Tabbagh, Wyndham, Australia; Leone Wheeler, Australian Learning Communities Network; Kristiina Erkkilä, Espoo, Finland; Bill Esmond, Derby University; Michelle Murphy, Derry and Strabane Learning City; Shilpi Roy and Nishat Tasnim Maria, SHLC, Khulna University, Bangladesh.

Main themes of the meeting:

1. Rob Mark explained the range of Learning City Networks in PASCAL and invited participants to explore the different networks.
2. We revisited the four themes on which our network is focusing:
   
   
   • Entrepreneurship Ecosystem
   • The vision of a new world of work
   • The vision of a new world of not-working.
   • Resilience and response to external crises – sustainability, pandemic, etc.
3. We discussed a proposal to host a webinar after April.
4. We discussed a contribution to a conference (3 and 17 September 2021) hosted by our Taiwanese partner.

Leone and Diane explained about the rich conference held as part of Wyndham Learning Festival with a focus on entrepreneurship. The Council in Wyndham runs events under the banner ‘Wynovation’ which has key speakers and hands-on training and CPD for the community and SMEs.

Kristiina explained the importance of entrepreneurial learning and its influence on the mindset of individuals. She also described how a new collaboration between entrepreneurial businesses and educators had produced new ways of learning, with a focus on sharing information rather than passing on information from teacher to student. It is important to network to prevent the isolation of teachers working on this.

Palmira and Robertus described how entrepreneurs were deeply involved in the rejuvenation of the Old Town in Kaunas. They helped to provide a vision of which way it should be developed, which changed as the development progressed. However, there were problems related to this involvement- an attempt to create a business cluster was unsuccessful, due to a lack of cooperative culture. Currently, entrepreneurs are renting spaces, but it is uncertain how long they will be there as the premises are closed due to the pandemic. The emphasis of researchers is now on how to move from the traditional typical SME to more sophisticated knowledge-intensive high-value businesses. This will involve creating an ecosystem suitable for those businesses- linked to an area such as health, etc. There is a push for shared value creation (Michael Porter) helping businesses to understand how they can benefit more from contributing to society- not just CSR – more than that. When it is explained it becomes apparent that they have been thinking that way – perhaps this will be the new reality after Covid.  

It takes a long time for businesses to accommodate these new ways of thinking, and this problem is not just in Kaunas.

Annie described how this need for a new way of thinking was not confined to entrepreneurship but is also evident in the development of culture. In the world of digital reality, the new digital highways belong to exceptionally large companies. We also need to understand the impact of Blockchain. What difference does this make for individual entrepreneurs, as they need to be more than survivors? There will also be a need for experts in Artificial Intelligence.

Jean told us about community-based developments and the increase in social enterprise.  Is this a sign of new cooperation within communities developing? An example of new cooperation has been when the community council gave permission for street furniture and blocked streets to traffic so that businesses could carry on outside. This is a promising new relationship, hopefully, as a lot of shops are disappearing, there is a need to make town and city centres interesting enough to get people back to using them.

Jean then described social enterprise-which works both with the council and with voluntary groups to grow trees that can be used to re-green public spaces. Within the volunteer groups, a lot of people are learning new skills, from which they can generate an income. It is also helpful for those who have challenges in finding employment.

Mike Osborne pointed out that so far, we have posed two major questions. How can we create an entrepreneurial mindset across the various sectors of education? How can we convince entrepreneurs to engage and contribute to the learning city? Clear and evidenced expositions of benefits on both sides are needed. It would be good if we can get a few short case studies related to these and other main issues we identify. It looks like there are at least four stories to be told from what we have heard so far. Briefings that are short: focused on 'What we have done', 'Why it is important', ‘What its impact has been', 'What our stakeholders think’, ‘What is potentially transferable to other contexts'.

Since the meeting, participants have sent this useful information for sharing as follows:  

Kristiina:

In Espoo, Finland, the mindset is that the city can offer a platform for the people, communities, companies, and educational institutions to co-create new and better things together. The Mayor of the City gathers a round table of the community leaders, including business leaders, to inform and discuss the current themes and future challenges with them. On different levels, similar avenues of communication are opened and kept going and the city officials are often the orchestrators of these networks.

In terms of building entrepreneurial ecosystems, it is important to start with sharing the idea and information about entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial mindset. Including these ideas into different levels of education is the starting point and working with and through educators is important. In Espoo, the representatives of educational institutions together built a path for entrepreneurial learning opportunities from early childhood to higher education on an interactive website with concrete offerings by different institutions. In that process, the idea of better cooperation between these organisations to boost entrepreneurship came up. Now the goals for building a better working environment for entrepreneurship education is one of the Espoo Learning City development goals and there is a network of entrepreneurial educators from all institutions to work on that. The city has organized entrepreneurial education short courses for educators together with the entrepreneurs’ organization. The city has founded the Me and My City as a mock city to practice entrepreneurship so that every student can participate in the operation once during primary and once during secondary education. One of the local Rotary Clubs is organizing together with the city of Espoo an annual competition for student enterprises. In addition, the city has helped with the interconnections between the different organizations that work on promoting entrepreneurship and brought them together with the educators.

Next Meeting topic: A vision for a new world of work

Date: Wednesday 10th February 2021 at 9 am UK time

Attendees:

Judith James and Chris Shepherd, co-leads for network; Mike Osborne, Director of Pascal; Rob Mark Networks Coordinator, Pascal;  Palmira Jucevicienne and Robertus Jucevicienne, Kaunas, Lithuania; Jean Preece and Annie Tubadji, Swansea, Wales UK; Diane Tabbagh, Wyndham, Australia; Leone Wheeler, Australian Learning Communities Network; Kristiina Erkkilä, Espoo, Finland; Bill Esmond, Derby University; Michelle Murphy, Derry and Strabane Learning City; Shilpi Roy and Nishat Tasnim Maria, SHLC, Khulna University, Bangladesh.