Awero team

Collectively creating Lisbon City of Learning

21 Nov, 18:02

“If you really want to create a City of Learning, you don't have all the answers; you need to collectively create it. It’s a city, not a one man show.”
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Helder Touças is a Learning Specialist at Lisbon City Council which runs Lisbon City of Learning, and has been a key part of growing the ecosystem in Portugal’s coastal capital since it began.
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Having experimented with Open Badge technology since 2015, the city council aimed to level the playing field for learners and let people know about the opportunities on offer in the city. 
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“We wanted to democratise access to learning in Lisbon,” Helder explains. “[We saw that by using this tool] learners could really engage in creating a learning pathway throughout the city, define their goals and try and achieve them by choosing the learning experiences that would benefit them most.”
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“Our main goal was to create this inclusive environment in the city where everyone could have access - people from all walks of life and backgrounds - [we wanted to let people know] that [learning] experiences were there for them to use to develop their skills.”
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Co-creating to fulfil lives﻿
This desire to democratise learning doesn’t stop at learners, with Helder and the team at Lisbon City Council setting out to engage a broad range of stakeholders in the design and implementation of the platform.
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Initially, the team held discussions with the council’s leadership and other stakeholders to understand how Cities of Learning could fit into policy objectives around empowerment, learning, employment and entrepreneurship. 
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“What became very clear from the beginning, was that we wanted to give agency to the city itself, rather than imposing the way Cities of Learning would be,” Helder explains. “We wanted to know what would be most important to organisations, to really make it useful to them.”
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The team invited a diverse group of stakeholders to talk about the vision for the platform, underpinning the conversations with their own principles around accessibility, inclusivity, lifelong learning, Open Badges and making learning visible.
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Helder reflects that the invitation to organisations was an open one, putting stakeholders’ own goals and the goals of their learners at the centre.
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“We said ‘we want your help to turn this into something that is livable throughout the city in a way that fits your visions, because your organisations are involved with learners themselves - so if we fulfil your visions, we are fulfilling lives.”
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More than a platform: a network﻿
Through the co-creation process and the Lisbon City of Learning Network of organisations, over one hundred and thirty learning providers now contribute to the city’s ecosystem. 
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With such a large group of diverse organisations, this often means the team is bringing together organisations that rarely work with each other. This, Helder says, presents both challenges and opportunities.
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“We are putting schools and training centres, with museums, and also private companies and community organisations,” he explains. “They all somehow contribute to meaningful learning experiences for citizens, but they haven’t been in the same room before.”
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“When some of these organisations speak - from their own vocabulary, their own challenges, their own perspectives - sometimes others don’t relate, so we want to create a bridge to help everyone feel they are working towards the same goal together.”
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“It’s a challenge, but it's also very interesting to forge new and innovative partnerships.”
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“We don't think of ourselves as managers of a digital platform. We’ve created a network of partners with the help of the platform, and that’s our main focus.”
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The partnership factory﻿
Helder believes that membership of the network alone isn’t enough either, so the team at Lisbon City Council works closely with organisations to help be active participants rather than silent partners. 
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A relatively new part of this is the partnership factory: an organisational speed dating service which matchmakes organisations, enabling them to build new partnerships and create new learning pathways which meet learners’ needs. 
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“We put together partners that don't know each other, to talk and see if there's a possible partnership,” Helder explains. “And since we’re creating these partnerships, we can create learning pathways.”
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The result is learners who begin with an opportunity from one organisation can follow a pathway to another, developing their chosen skills along the way. And, Helder says, it's easy for organisations to start working in this way, ultimately to the benefit of learners.
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“It’s allowing learners to develop their skills in a more networked way. A learner can start with an interest in one organisation and then on the platform, move on to another. These resources already exist, so we just want to maximise them to create more results.” 
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Already the partnership factory is gaining momentum, with El Corte Inglés Portugal - a private company in the department store sector - Amnesty International Portugal, and professional schools CECOA and Magestil, all thinking about new collaborations.
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And now, with over 5,400 participants earning over 2,300 Open Badges across 900 activities, it's a time of celebration. Outdoor billboards, public transport and digital channels are all being used as part of the city-wide campaign, marking one year of Lisbon City of Learning and highlighting the city’s commitment to lifelong learning - something made possible by the collaborative approach taken by the municipality. 
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Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.
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