(19 October 2017) – In mid November the prospect of a European portal for transformative education will be discussed at a two-hour online colloquium hosted by IFIS, the Institute for Integral Studies. The idea for the portal emerged at the co-creative gathering ‘Education for Sustainable Communities’ that was held last month in the town of Šibenik, Croatia. This event was featured during the live link-up of voices from around Europe at the launch of the European Day of Sustainable Communities in Brussels, ECOLISE’s new flagship event.
“In Šibenik, more than 40 educators, coaches, facilitators, academics and activists from across Europe sat ‑ and walked ‑ together for three-and-a-half days to explore collaboration options. The level of resonance among them lead to launching a number of working groups and organising follow-up meetings. One of these groups is now developing a joint educational portal,” says Markus Molz, ECOLISE Knowledge & Learning coordinator and co-founder of IFIS, who organised the gathering.
“An increasing number of initiatives across Europe and worldwide develop and deliver transformative adult and higher education that is based on integral, holistic, or complexity frameworks and informed by transdisciplinary sustainability and transition research,” he says. “This is the kind of education that empowers people to drive forward citizen-led transitions. However, many of these transformative educational initiatives struggle with visibility, viability and recognition.”
“The idea of this European portal is to bundle the presentation of existing educational offerings across providers and countries, to strengthen each other’s educational initiatives, and to stimulate the development of joint projects and programmes,” says Markus.
The upcoming online colloquium, at which possible functions and services of the portal will be discussed, is being presented by Markus and two other members of the working group, Claudine Villemot-Kienzle, co-founder of the Centre of Human Emergence in German-speaking countries, and Boris Goldammer, coordinator of the International Partnership for Transformative Learning.
“We have an idea of how the portal could be proto-typed from next year but the suggested concept is not set in stone. There are most likely other potential users and co-creators of such a portal out there. We are eager to come in touch with them at the online colloquium,” says Markus.
The colloquium takes place on Zoom on Wednesday, November 15th, 2017, at 20.00-22.00 h CET, in English language. Participation is free of charge. If you wish to participate, please register before November 10th at . Registered participants will receive a Zoom invite. For further information please see www.integral-studies.org/node/50.