ABSTRACT

A learning city releases the full potential of community resources, including human resources, by enabling mutually beneficial partnerships between public and private sectors. Resources will be released through such devices as integrated budgets, more efficient use of existing plant and equipment and sharing programmes. Making available the resources of each organization for the benefit of each other greatly enhances the learning and the active participation in each. Lifelong learning provides an approach to achieving the objectives set out in the Council’s City Strategy; its regeneration strategy and Edinburgh’s Economic Future. The learning facility lies at the heart of a renewed shipyard area, a set of former warehouses tastefully redesigned and equipped with the technology to provide both high-class teaching and world-class research. To initiate the lifelong learning process, great efforts need to be made to unlock the potential of its people, and make better use of buildings, equipment, expertise and open spaces, to mention but a few.