During the Minerva Academy of Popular Culture’s annual iWeek, at which Graham and Martyn delivered a workshop, representatives from the participating Universities had a meeting to discuss a joint bid for a large scale multinational research project, ‘Connected Neighbourhoods’, and took the first steps in developing a potential EU Erasmus Strategic Partnership between the following institutions:

– Tampere University of Applied Sciences, TAMK (Finland)

– Liepaja University, MP-LAB (Latvia)

– Budapest University of Applied Sciences BKF (Hungary)

– UVic (Catalonia)

– Hanze (Academy of Pop Culture)

– University of Lincoln, co_LAB (UK)

The strategic partnership will be used to exchange best practices in teaching and learning, to design and implement international collaborative courses, and to research issues of pedagogy for future publications. The project will be linked by projects between  the partner Universities and through student/teaching exchanges, whilst information will be disseminated during existing iWeeks and conferences at these institutions.

The dialogue and shared values between this international network of universities appears to be very strong, and has been formed out of previous collaborations between the Universities and their representatives. We will  find out in November whether the funding bid has been successful.

(Fingers crossed!)