The PASCAL Learning Cities Networks (LCN) Faith-based Learning City Development network has been busy this past year, drawing on the tangible resources of a lens grounded in faith and spirituality to build community resilience and work towards renewal in our respective localities during these times of pandemic, protest and increasing climate change.

We recognize the potential for this approach to foster transformative learning and social change for individuals, groups and communities, and gather together - as scholars, educators and practitioners from the US, Europe, Middle East, Asia and Australia - regularly as a virtual community for discussion, creative interaction and reflection on a broad range of topics related to faith, spirituality and the implications on learning and the city.

The LCN’s objective is to explore the roles that faith and spirituality play in the work and transformative possibilities of learning cities - from the scale of the learning neighborhood to learning regions. Our work can be described in a range of ways - from exploring the role of the arts, faith, and lifelong learning in a community arts gallery partnering at the neighborhood level, and interfaith engagement and formation of chaplains serving organizations across the city, to the spiritual practice of Tai Chi as a martial art underpinning work in community building and harmony in a learning city context. These are only a few examples of the application of this multi-faceted approach.

Since the start of the pandemic in early 2020, our group has been working on an action research project involving synchronous Zoom meetings and a shared Google doc journal for asynchronous participation to respond to a key question: How can we cultivate / identify practices and resources from faith / spiritual communities as educators, scholars, leaders to help engage with the present complexity of COVID-19 and work toward recovery and restoration / renewal / justice / resilience in a post-COVID-19 world? We have engaged in personal and collective action and reflection cycles, and look forward to sharing our learning in an upcoming journal article and a report for the PASCAL community. We are also exploring a possible webinar in 2021 to welcome conversation more broadly on our respective work in this area, as well as articulating an argument for the relevance of faith and spirituality to the larger work of learning cities, not limited to but including attention to alternative metrics of quality of life and sustainable development.

In the months to follow, various members of our group will be sharing their work on topics that may be of interest as we demonstrate the value of attending to faith and spirituality as inherent to our humanity, lifelong learning, and engagement in cultivating a sustainable, just more-than-human world. There is much more to come...

If you are curious and are interested in joining our monthly conversations, please contact our LCN co-chairs, Dr. Maria Liu Wong ([email protected]) or Dr. Margaret Sutherland ([email protected]).