KEYNOTE-LECTURE What is Lifelong Learning? Drafting Blueprints for Designers’ Lifelong Learning Investigating Competences, Credentials, Actions as Components of Learning Experiences Cihangir İstek (Cİ): Good morning. I would like to welcome you all to the Istanbul Bilgi University. Thank you for joining us in this workshop “Blueprints of Designers’ Lifelong Learning”. We are happy to see you all. This workshop is organised in coordination and collaboration with Istanbul Bilgi University’s Faculty of Communication, ico-D: International Council of Design, and IIDj: Institute for Information Design Japan. I would like to introduce my long-time colleague Andreas Schneider, who is along with me responsible for the organisation or curation of this workshop. He is based in Tokyo, but has been also a visiting faculty of our Visual Communication Design Program. Andreas Schneider (AS): Good morning. Cİ: This event was originally meant to be more international as a preparatory meeting on the way to the first World Design Summit, in 2017, and where we would want to advance the discussions of vocational learning models, what we call ‘lifelong learning’. However, the recent events in Turkey also showed us why lifelong learning and becoming lifelong learners are so important. We still follow our commitments on the way to the Summit and we invited several guest and experts from different fields, including design-related and non-design-related ones. Cİ: Let’s look at what ‘lifelong learning’ is. It is also related to lifelong learners, us. All of us are indeed lifelong-learners. In our view, lifelong learning is to do with gaining competences across all ages and disciplines in formalised and informal training. Lifelong learning is also about sharing knowledge, recognition, and practice in learning. Therefore, we wish to deal with these three strongly interrelated and foundational concepts. Obviously, we want to get engaged with what is happening outside the classroom: think and do outside the box. We want to consider the possible ways such as in our neighbourhoods and communities as our classrooms. How could or should our city, region and even the whole world become our classroom? AS: Because, the term ‘lifelong learning’ has become a quite popular catch for everything about that happens not in institutionalised learning. So, we collected a range of references in order to understand ourselves, but also to make accessible to you. Like what type of projects we could or for us represent lifelong learning. The examples we collected here are partly integrated within universities or educational institutions, but many of them are also local initiatives by NGO/NPOs. We grouped these by different type of educational contexts. The green would be like schools, the yellow universities, the blue corporate efforts, and the pink individual initiatives. For example, I think you all know about the Kahn Academy which is one good example for lifelong learning. It was taken on by an individual. As a very personal experience, he thought that learning in school was either not accessible or available, or he thought that people would be very keen to learn. So, it was started and developed own teaching material and became a big success. We will share with you a reference link (CCA References: http://cca.istanbul-a-z.info/#references) where we have still few examples. We would like to build up on that in a near future. We also provide a way for you to contribute your own ideas or the projects you know by this simple web form (http://url.istanbul-a-z.info/google_89HR). That’s something during the workshop to keep in mind that it’s not only about one or two days. We are really looking into a longer perspective. Istek already mentioned about the World Design Summit in Montreal, which is a concrete target for us or the workshop that we can put together something and present there. Hopefully, it is again in the interest of the organisers who are making this summit to make it one of the core issues there. From our own experience as Learners/Mentors/Facilitators we recognize not only an urgent need for new paradigms in Education - we also see tremendous opportunities for change. Here are some selected statistics that strengthen our motivation: In The Holy Grail of Future Work, Kelli Wells quotes that Less than 25% of German students are satisfied with the skills received in their formal education (Kelli Wells, The Holy Grail of Future Work, 2016, url.istanbul-a-z.info/project-syndicate_61er). In reverse this means that more than 75% of the students feel they did not learn anything meaningful. The McKinsey Global Institute foresees that 20 to 23 million workers in advanced economies do not have the skills that employers will need in 2020 (McKinsey Global Institute, The World at Work: Jobs, Pay, and Skills for 3.5 billion People, 2012, url.iidj.net/google_GZ46). A projection in 2010 by Anthony P. Carnevale from Georgetown University states that by 2018, 63 percent of job openings will require workers with at least some college education (Anthony P. Carnevale, Nicole Smith, Jeff Strohl, Projections of Jobs and Education Requirements through 2018, Georgetown University, 2010, url. iidj.net/georgetown_KXJZ).