Building Partnerships to Promote Economic and Social Well-Being and Learning

Wilson B¹*, Osbourne M²* and Sankey K²*

1. University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
2. University of Stirling, Stirling, Scotland

The PASCAL Observatory has been established jointly by RMIT and Stirling Universities and related regional governments in Victoria and the United Kingdom, following an OECD Conference on Learning Regions conducted in Melbourne in October 2002. The Observatory is focused on sharing research and related evidence on the development and implementation of policies that improve the quality of living and working circumstances at local and regional levels, recognising the importance of social capital and the necessity of partnership for the successful implementation of policy. It focuses on regional initiatives, particularly those which explicitly embrace learning, as a framework for developing a systematic planning framework that may encompass administrative, cultural, geographical, physical and/or political perspectives. It involves looking at life from the perspective of people and places, rather than separate programs delivered for them. Other partners from Europe and North America are in the process of joining PASCAL and extending the collaboration between researchers and policy-makers to a wider international environment.

While the Observatory is itself an example of an innovative partnership supporting community engagement, it has supported and generated a number of research initiatives which address various aspects of partnerships designed to foster community building, social capital and citizenship. These projects have encompassed issues related to measurement of social capital, schooling and social capital, informal and formal networks and community strengthening, and the implications of different kinds of public/private partnerships.

This paper will outline some of the emerging findings from the research program with which PASCAL is associated. Furthermore, it will draw from that research a framework for conceptualising different approaches to partnership formation, and for identifying the conditions under which different kinds of partnerships can be expected to contribute positively to community building and to promoting economic and social well-being and learning.

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