Learning Cities

Home Page

Welcome to the home pages of the Learning Towns and Cities site. Learning towns, cities or communities promote learning widely; develop effective local partnerships between all sectors of the community; and support and motivate individuals and employers to participate in learning.

They have two purposes:

to support widening participation in lifelong learning; and
to use learning to promote social and economic regeneration.

In recent years, there has been much interest in, and development of, learning towns and cities. DfES has supported this with relatively small amounts of funding, but on the whole, these developments have been local.

Sheffield, Norwich, Darlington, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Stockton, Hull, Derby, Greenwich, Southampton are among those which have declared themselves Learning Cities or Towns in recent years.

Conference
'Learning Partnerships for Regeneration', the Learning City Network Conference, took place on the 8th March 2000. This Conference Report features contributions by Baroness Blackstone, Malcolm Wicks, Sue Cara, Charlie Leadbeater and many more.

Pathfinder
The Learning City Network's "Pathfinder" project was set up to field test the Toolkit and Guide Practice, Progress and Value. The Final Report is now available. Several good practice guides have been published covering the following areas:

Developing and Sustaining Partnerships

Marketing Learning and Developing Guidance

Information and Communications Technologies

"Hints and Tips" to Evaluation

Learning Communities Network
(formerly Learning City Network)
Many Learning Cities and Towns are members of the national Learning Communities Network (LCN), with which DfES works to support and promote lifelong learning and learning partnerships.

Toolkit
In 1998 DfES published (in partnership with LCN) a toolkit Practice Progress and Value - Learning Communities: Assessing the Value They Add to help communities assess the value added by learning city/town initiatives.

The toolkit was developed by NIACE and the University of Birmingham.

Survey
A Survey of Learning Communities details a wide range of good practice models combined with a practical approach to partnership building. Providing an overview of the recent development of Learning Communities and explores some of the surrounding issues.

On this site, you will also find the latest news about Learning Cities and Towns, you can download both the Survey and the Toolkit, and contact us on-line.

Click here to go to Lifelong Learning or
the DfES World Wide Web site.
This page was last updated on the 16th July 2003.

	Toolkit In 1998 DfES published (in partnership with LCN) a toolkit Practice Progress and Value - Learning Communities: Assessing the Value They Add to help communities assess the value added by learning city/town initiatives.
The toolkit was developed by NIACE and the University of Birmingham.