Learning Communities Catalyst

Learning Communities are groups of people - in towns, around centres, or in interest groups - who work toward making lifelong learning possible for everyone. People and organisations in Learning Communities use 'learning for all' as a principle and goal and work collaboratively to provide access to and encourage participation in learning in order:

To develop skills in people of all ages - lifelong and life-wide. This ranges from basic literacy and numeracy to skills for adjusting to new employment opportunities (e.g. IT skills) and social, life and coping skills. By developing people's skills, the learning community can assist in building the community's capacity address challenges facing the community.

To grow business by increasing the community's skills base and its capacity to contribute to expanding commercial opportunities (e.g. greater diversity of service providers in the knowledge economy, a greater capacity to win tenders for community services) and to more efficient business alliances.

To foster collaboration between people and organisations in the community, which may result in better sharing of resources (e.g. the use of school infrastructure after hours), greater access to opportunity for people (e.g. joint advertising of adult learning classes), or in the development of local solutions for local problems through collaboration within government.

To help people grow, by providing access to knowledge and skills to increase their confidence and competence to participate actively in their communities. Wanting and being able to learn are great antidotes to poor self esteem and despair and, for example, good health management outcomes are achieved when a person understands the problem and is able to learn to change their behaviour in order to implement the solution.

To strengthen community, by enhancing the capacity of the individuals that make it up, and of the groups and organisations to which they belong. Individuals who engage with their communities to learn and help others learn, and organisations collaborating to facilitate learning contribute to stronger, more capable, more aware and more sustainable communities.

To continuously improve the practices and outcomes of the community, by learning from its experiences and the experiences of other communities to be more efficient, effective and sustainable.

Learning Cities include learning communities of all sizes based around a geographic area - be it a neighbourhood, a town, a local government area, or an entire region. Learning Cities focus on 'learning for all' who live, work, study or play in the area.

Learning Centres are learning communities of all sizes based around a particular hub or centre, such as a community centre or school. Learning Centres work to encourage and enable the immediate community- participants, their families, local residents - to engage in learning.

Learning Groups are similarly concerned with creating a climate and culture that support learning, but amongst a group of people who share a common interest, rather than necessarily a geographic area. This may be a learning community of practice (e.g. a professional group) or a learning community of interest (e.g. a hobby society).