CAE 2013 Reflection Paper on Culture and Lifelong Learning

February 25, 2013, 10:42 am

In 2007, the EU decided on a strategy for collaboration between member states on cultural policy. One of the first actions has been the work of the Access to Culture Civil Society Dialogue Platform within which a work group has been dedicated to education and learning. With the communication from the European Commission on a European Agenda for Culture in a globalizing World (EU COM, 2007) the European Union took a decisive step towards collaboration within the policy field of arts and culture. The communication was seen as a statement of similar importance to the arts sector as had been the one from 2001 on making a European Area of Lifelong Learning a Reality to the world of education (EU COM, 2001).

Three civil society dialogue platforms were established by the Commission in the spring 2008 on Intercultural Dialogue, Culture and Creative Industries and on Access to Culture. The Access to Culture platform (ACP) originally included 36 organisations of arts and culture on European level. The ACP organised its work in three work groups of which one was dedicated to the role of access to culture in education and learning (see picture above). During the mandate and function period of the platforms in 2008­2013 the experience of the work group on education and learning has been going through three different phases: The production of policy recommendations, conducting studies and the struggle for recognition. The three phases are briefly presented in the following reflection paper.

CAE Reflection Paper on the contribution of culture to lifelong learning, written in 2013 by Henrik Zipsane (CAE Board).