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Cork

Cork (Irish: Corcaigh, pronounced [ˈkˠorkˠɪɟ], from corcach, meaning "swamp") is the second largest city in the Republic of Ireland and the island of Ireland's third most populous city. It is the principal city and administrative centre of County Cork and the largest city in the province of Munster. Cork has a population of 119,418, while the addition of the suburban areas contained in the county brings the total to 190,384. Metropolitan Cork has a population of approximately 274,000, while the Greater Cork area is about 380,000.

Cork has a long-standing commitment to learning, and was an early adopter of the EcCoWell within PASCAL's PIE network; this is an approach to building ‘sustainable opportunity cities’ by adopting holistic, integrated planning that crosses health and welfare, environment, economic and education profiles. Cork was an original member of the PIE network, and formally adopted the EcCoWell model, which it uses as the underpinning of its annual learning festival.

In 2014, Cork City Council formally adopted the Beijing Declaration on Learning Cities, and it received the UNESCO Learning City Award in 2015 for its early adoption/promotion of lifelong learning. In 2015, Cork brought the EcCoWell model into its lifelong learning framework as a way to address the city’s particular challenge of marked pockets of socio/economic disadvantage and lack of educational attainment (~50% in some neighbourhoods leaving formal education early^[1]).

The city developed the concept of ‘learning neighbourhoods’ in order to focus on bridging the gaps between residents in certain areas and HE and other institutions of the city, and as a way to build its ‘learning city’ from the bottom up. Cork City Council’s Action Plan for the City – Education and Learning in Cork City Local Economic and Community Plan 2016-2021 demonstrate the extent to which learning city principles and objectives are linked to the city’s overall economic development plans.

In §1.4 (‘Lifelong Learning as the fuel for City Growth’), the High Level Goal, underpinned by 18 objectives, is: ‘To support the culture of learning in Cork by promoting lifelong learning, access to education for all and skills development’. The ‘learning neighbourhoods’ model, trialled in 4 key neighbourhoods, has ‘brought together organisations and groups of people who may not otherwise have had the opportunity to connect’. The model has been studied by other countries such as Canada for potential replication. UNESCO held its 3^rd Global Learning Cities Network in Cork in 2017.

Cork continues to lead on Learning City development in Ireland. The Lord Mayor of Cork, Councillor Mick Finn joined counterparts from Limerick, Dublin and Derry on 13 May 2018 to jointly sign a Learning City charter to work together and to support each other through a programme of exchanges between their Learning Cities.