Building age and culture friendly learning communities and cities for inclusion: Report on the learning forum held in Townsville, Queensland in may 2015

In May 2015, the library hosted a Learning Forum in Townsville.  About 40 government, business and community sector participants attended the forum.  The theme of the forum was social inclusion and participants reflected on the topic Building age and culture friendly learning communities and cities for inclusion. The program moved from the global perspective with a keynote presentation by Peter Kearns OAM, known nationally and internationally for his thought-provoking research and writing on lifelong learning and learning communities, to the local with a presentation by Executive Manager Library Services, Susan Coker on the challenges faced by public libraries in becoming inclusive spaces that address social exclusion. 

After morning tea, forum participants had the opportunity to hear from panellists from the State Library of Queensland, local government and local community organisations on the how each addresses the issue of social exclusion in their field of service delivery. This was an insightful session which demonstrated the need to be agile and responsive to changes that occur in our community as rapid urbanisation and changing society fosters social exclusion.  Following lunch participants workshopped the challenges of building resilient citizens in a time of high unemployment.

Keynote presentations – From the global to the local. 

Peter Kearns OAM Learning Cities Global and Local

Peter Kearns provided an overview of the work of PASCAL (Place and Social Capital and Learning) a global alliance of lifelong learning practitioners who are working to extend the development of learning communities.  PASCAL helps decision makers design and implement regional development strategies that balance economic growth, social equity and environmental sustainability.  He spoke about the First International Conference on learning cities held in Beijing in October 2013 where discussions focussed on the stages of development necessary to turn cities into learning cities and communities that nurture active citizenship, promote economic and cultural prosperity and lay the foundation for sustainable development.  Some implications of international developments for the Townsville learning community were outlined including a current initiative in Taipei and Cork to localise learning city development to widen opportunities for all and enhance quality of life and well-being.

Peter identified the impact of rapid urbanisation as one of the challenges faced by local communities and provided examples of how this has been done in Australia and overseas by empowering and energising the community.  For example, Hume Global Learning Village and Sydney’s urban villages, the New York model.  He outlined the place of libraries as hubs for negotiating partnerships with local organisations and responding to community learning and addressing disadvantage and exclusion at a neighbourhood level.

Susan Coker Public Libraries: Gateways to an inclusive community or an exclusive club for members

Susan Coker began her presentation by with reference to Professor Gillian Triggs, President of the Australian Human Rights Commission definition of social inclusion and its corresponding impact of social exclusion.  Susan provided a statistical overview of CityLibraries Townsville.  She noted that library membership tended to be located within the catchment of the static branches and that an overlay of the 2011 Australian Bureau of Statistics census data suggested that CityLibraries has a largely middle class membership with lots of families.  There was an under-representation in the more remote areas, lower socio-economic areas and where older residents lived.  Thus that while the library considered itself socially inclusive its membership was low in those demographics who were disadvantaged and excluded.  Susan provided information on the library’s strategic direction which envisioned the library as a place where people could make connections for life; where the library was working with our community to connect people, information, learning and lifestyle.  She then outlined some of the challenges for public libraries.  These were:

• Community perception of public libraries – antiquated, quiet spaces?
• How to market public libraries to the community and others?
• How to build connections with the community?
• How to build sustainable partnerships that are mutually beneficial?
• What public libraries do dependent on funding?

Panel Discussion

The panel discussion that formed part of the day’s activities was centred on the theme of Building age and culture friendly learning communities and cities for inclusion.  Panellists included Colin Crosbie, Manager, Social Inclusion, State Library of Queensland; Meg Davis Program Manager, Townsville Multicultural Support Group; Kim Corrie, Director, Corporate Services, Townsville City Council; Fiona Sanders, Community Development Worker, Inclusion Works and Penelope Sullivan community member of the Learning Communities Leadership Group.

Each panellist talked about how social inclusion could be achieved in their sector.  Colin Crosbie gave an overview of how State Library works with public libraries in the state to provide access to programs and services.  He talked about the Indigenous Knowledge Centres, support for rural libraries and how they work with the independent libraries to identify and address barriers to access including print and digital literacy issues, cultural, language and social barriers and geographic and technological barriers.

Meg Davis provided insight into refugee resettlement in Townsville.  She provided statistics that showed the increase in the numbers of refugees resettled in Townsville in recent years and the inspiration and greater understanding we can develop from the personal stories of refugees.  Meg mentioned some of the practical responses that the community had taken to foster social inclusion for migrants and refugees.  These programs included those that the library had developed, for high school students from migrant and refugee backgrounds, multicultural storytime for pre-schoolers and English classes for adults.  

Kim Corrie talked about Townsville City Council’s Human Resources Strategy and strategic workforce planning that ensures council’s workforce has the skills and capability to meet the needs of the community and is aligned to community demographics. Of particular interest was council’s Diversity and Equity Strategy developed to build council’s relationship with the community, enhance the contribution of its employees and improve the quality of its services.  Kim stressed that council was committed to embedding the principles of diversity in the culture and management systems of the organisation and had established programs to make it meaningful.  Council was building a constructive, supportive culture where everyone is included and the contributions of people of difference backgrounds, experiences and perspectives were valued.  For example, council’s Reconciliation Strategy demonstrates council’s commitment to providing a supportive and culturally inclusive work environment for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employees, where all staff demonstrate cultural awareness and competencies and where racism and discriminatory behaviour is eliminated.  Kim mentioned that these principles had been incorporated into council’s recruitment processes by enhancing our ability to employ Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people through innovative attraction and recruitment processes and building individual capacity through mentoring, training and career development.  Through adopting these standards council can retain employees who can able to contribute and enhance service delivery. 

Fiona Sanders provided an on-the-ground perspective of someone working with people with disabilities and how Inclusion Works used asset-based community development to foster inclusion for people with disabilities. She mentioned the range of disabilities they worked with in particular she highlighted the increase in clients who had mental health disabilities including depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.  They were receiving an increased number of youth referrals from schools as youth perceived no future for themselves due to lack of funding or further education opportunities. Their program was based on planning, connecting and exiting; they worked with the schools and young people to identify the gifts, passions and talents of young people, then find opportunities for the young people to gain work experience.  The program was achieving some success.  Their work had foundations in building strong partnerships with other community based organisations and their programs were aimed at getting people out of their homes to make connects with others.  Fiona recognized that there were places in local Townsville neighbourhoods where people were connecting with each other including the Warrina Shopping Centre where people from all walks of life, different cultural and ability backgrounds were employed and engaging with each other. 

Penelope Sullivan talked from personal experience how she had developed her passion for lifelong learning.  She highlighted the role of public libraries as community hubs and her appreciation of diversity and the life experiences that engagement with diversity provided.   She outlined how ongoing lifelong learning had provided opportunities for her in her professional life.  Penelope talked about some of the challenges for making lifelong learning accessible to everyone.  This included how to keep pace with rapidly changing technology and that now we have five generations in our workforce.  She considers that communication is the key to engaging those who are excluded in lifelong learning and also the provision of tools and resources to support self-directed learning.  Penelope considers that a way to engage people in learning is through learning neighbourhoods, that is, building community capacity to learn in their local neighbourhoods.

Questions from the audience emphasised the role of residents in fostering social inclusion, in particular how local neighbourhoods could encourage social inclusion.  It was observed that society had moved from the community to the individualistic – people used to connect with their neighbours in their front yards, young people used to play in the street but now we have high fences and a lot of activities are undertaken inside or at the back of the house. One of the challenges was how to revive community.  

Peter Kearns summed up discussions by suggesting the establishment of learning neighbourhoods would foster a more community oriented neighbourhood and learning can be progressed.  He stressed the need to think establishing sustainable partnership to work together and address the barriers that block their establishment.

Workshop – How do we build a learning city that includes the long-term unemployed as active participants in the community?

After lunch participants moved into groups to discuss the challenging issue of unemployment in the Townsville region with the question:  How do we build a learning city that includes the long-term unemployed as active participants in the community?  Recurring themes were evident in the discussion that evolved. These included

• Systems and processes.  Understanding the Townsville context and the systems and processes currently in place locally, state and federal
• Attitude.  Consider the individual.  What are their barriers to employment?  What are their strengths?  How can we build those? The glass half full approach.
• Pathways to employment through mentoring, volunteering, role models.  But not just a pathway to employment but also to community cohesion.
• Connections. Building community collaborations with a common outcome, connecting with peer groups
• Enterprise. Consider innovative pathways to employment and responsible citizenship, create own job, build social enterprise
• Health and wellbeing build community resilience to cope with unemployment through support, information and understanding.

The workshop has provided ideas that will be used to develop a comprehensive program for the unemployed that will be held in Townsville later in 2015 and will also inform Townsville’s paper at the PASCAL International Conference to be held at the University of Glasgow on 3-5 June 2016.

Conclusion

From feedback and conversations with participants, the Learning Forum and workshop in Townsville was successful.  While delegates differed on which session they found the most useful, all participants appeared to gain something from the day.  Many offered suggestions for future topics.  The day was stimulating and there was great discussion commenced that could lead on to the next rolling social inclusion workshop.

Dr Judith Jensen
Coordinator, Lifelong Learning
City Libraries, Townsville
Townsville City Council