Reinventing Learning Cities

The Reinventing Learning Cities research project explores the multiple ways in which cities learn through social, material and digital processes. Based at the Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol, it constitutes part of the AHRC Connected Communities Programme.

Research questions

How do people learn to be in and change the city? What are the social, material, technological and human resources to support that learning? How are  these resources organised in a learning urban infrastructure?   How do we make visible the existing learning infrastructure in the city? And how might it be visualised differently to wider groups?  What happens when we see the learning city differently?

Overarching aims

• To produce an account of multiple aspects of learning in the city
• To make visible the limits of the accounts of the value of learning as oriented only toward the formal economy – by demonstrating the way in which learning is embedded in civic, personal, domestic and public life and essential to adaptation to change
• To provide useful conceptual resources for city leaders and researchers wishing to understand and support the learning practices in the city
• To test out and demonstrate the utility of different research methods for documenting and understanding the learning lives of a city
• To rethink the learning city in theory and practice and outline a long term agenda for future research in this area