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The City of Pécs

The City of Pécs is a regional centre of economy, education and culture in the South-Western part of Hungary close tho the Croatian border with a population of approximately 150,000 inhabitants.

Please find more data at : http://uil.unesco.org/city/pecs

Since the 1989 regime change from Communism to liberal democracy, the economy of Pécs has been constantly changing from dominantly heavy industries, based on coal and uranium mining, into light industries such as electronic manufacturing, tobacco, leather, and food. Although the largest employer in the city is the University itself, there are some multinational firms and a growing number of SMEs in and around the city responding the changing economies, including innovation in the health sector, environmental sector and that of cultural industry in order to move towards economic developments based on technology-driven digitally-led, design-oriented, or tourism-focused start-ups and other ventures.

Being the part of the European Union, Pécs and its region are trying to develop its partnership with neighbouring regions in Croatia, Austria, Serbia, and Italy so as to share and develop through EU-funded, or co-funded projects to revitalize the larger region, making use of its physical and human resources.

As the fourth biggest city in Hungary, Pécs is basically a rich city in culture, history, education, arts andreligion, which were strong reasons to have been selected as one of the Cultural Capitals of Europe (ECoC) for 2010.  

    
Formal and Non-formal Learning Infra-structure

Pécs hosts the oldest university of Hungary to have been established in 1367 and, after some short period of early existence, was reorganised in 1923 to grow into its today's structure. (More data on the University of Pécs is found at this link).

Today, the University of Pécs has ten faculties; lifelong learning and learning cities are directly researched and developed at the Faculty of Humanities and its Institute for Human Development and Cultural Studies where the Lifelong Learning Research Centre is situated.

Beyond higher education, Pécs has a wide structure and network of public education with several primary, secondary and vocational schools for students of the city and its surrounding region. As for the development of education, most schools do participate in the Learning Festival of Pécs every year during the official days of the city in the second half of September. Also, there are many museums, galleries, and other cultural institutions; moreover, the Zsolnay Cultural Quarter, the Kodály Music Centre and the Regional Knowledge Centre and Library play significant roles in collecting and sharing good knowledge and skills across the community since they were opened in 2010.

Beyond those organisations mentioned, there are many NGOs and private enterprises who are engaged in the development of a learning community in Pécs through particular programmes that they either offer or the ones which they try to contribute to with learning programmes.

Learning City Developments

The Learning City orientation was started by the University of Pécs ten years ago, when it joined several projects having been co-ordinated by PASCAL International Observatory. Those projects, such as LILARA, PENR3L, R3L+, EUROlocal and PURE helped the University of Pécs to get the Municipality of Pécs engaged in some of those projects and, likewise, to establish good links with the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL) and its learning city programme after 2012. The City of Pécs joined the Global Initiative of Learning Cities of UNESCO in association with the University of Pécs. This experience and the collaborative work with PASCAL helped Pécs and its University to initiate its Learning City-Region Forum in 2015 and prepare for the UNESCO Global Learning City Award in 2017.

Although the Global Learning City Programme was initiated by the University of Pécs, the model was already supported by more than ten stakeholders in the City from the Chamber of Commerce to the County Council and the some companies, such as the local Water Company and the Forestry Company.

Some of the Key Activities in the Learning Cities field

The Learning City-Region Forum has one key activity: the Learning Festival of Pécs. The Learning City-Region Forum is organised by the University of Pécs; however, the annual Learning Festival is coordinated and organised by the House of Civic Communities in Pécs with the partnership of around seventy NGOs, schools, community organisations, foundations, art groups and environmental groups.

Pécs received the UNESCO Award of Global Learning City in September 2017 and already in the same month, the first learning festival was organised where those 70 partner organisations and institutions participated through more than 120 programmes for three days in down-town Pécs.

The Learning City Programme today has got three key areas of action which is also channelled into the Learning Festival of Pécs around environmental learning, cultural and community learning and inclusive education.

The Forum organised its first conference around learning cities in September 2018: “ Learning cities and culture working together”

Key Priority Areas for Future Development

For future development, the Global Learning City Programme in the city has several priority areas for action:

• establishing a national network of learning cities across Hungary, based on partnership with County-ranked cities;
• organising conferences and seminars on the topic of learning cities and learning communities;
• participating RDI regarding learning cities-regions in association with international partners;
• revision and development of the Learning Festival of Pécs – website of the Festival: http://ptf.ckh.hu
• collaborating with UNESCO’s GNLC programme and PASCAL International Observatory’s LCN;

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