4.3 Above all, a vision of a learning culture will envisage learning as a normal, accessible, productive and enjoyable (if demanding) feature of everyday life for all people, throughout their lives. It will provide stimulus and opportunities for people to be able to make use of information, skills and knowledge to improve their own lives and those of their loved ones, fellow citizens and people in other countries. Lifelong learning can change people's lives, even transform them and that promise needs to be encapsulated in the Government's vision of a learning culture for all.

4.4 A learning culture will not confine learning to particular places, methods or forms of learning. However, those institutions such as schools, colleges and universities which are specially charged with responsibility for stimulating a love of learning and facilitating achievement amongst their members will be judged in part for their effectiveness in promoting and sustaining learning for all. In addition, however, the learning culture we envisage will extend to all kinds and varieties of homes and families, to places of paid employment, to voluntary and community settings and to the realms of leisure, culture, recreation and the arts. In making lifelong learning for all normal, the media of broadcasting and communications will also accept their own responsibilities for the promotion of accessible and engaging learning.

4.5 In the learning culture for all, the very architecture and structure of public spaces and buildings will also facilitate opportunities for lifelong learning. Taking advantage of the new communications and information technologies will require constructing publicly accessible places as inspirational for the twenty-first century as public libraries were in the nineteenth. This might even be appropriately reflected in planning and building guidelines and good practice notes, much as providing access for disabled people now is.

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