The 1st World Forum on Talent: AGORA TALENTIA, held in Pamplona, Navarra (Spain), on February, wast he chosen stage to launch this Declaration. Thought leaders such as Richard Florida (the author of “The Rise of the Creative Class”), Sir Ken Robinson (a recognised expert on creativity), international speakers from Europe, the United States, India, Latin America, and, representatives of the European Commission, and the OECD, among others, took part in the Forum. Florida and Robinson, who took part for the first time at the same event in Europe, are ambassadors of the Year of Creativity and Innovation.

The Declaration begins with a global call for the current crisis to be considered as a historic opportunity for “governments, businessmen, educational institutions, and private individuals to commit themselves to the developing and encouraging of talent”. The text mentions that “talent consists of a multitude of characteristics and personal and social experiences which determine success, adaptability, and satisfaction”. On the scenario which is now emerging, professional challenges require “technical talent, innovating talent, enterprising talent, civic and ethical talent, social talent, and emotional talent”. Likewise, in order to achieve a society based on talent, four types of action must be encouraged: “Creating and identifying talent, attracting it, retaining it, and activating it”.

You cand find the declaration at the Agora Talentia website; comments, opinions and feedbacks on the Declaration are welcomed.

The Learnovation Open Forum entitled “Removing the barriers to creativity and innovation? Listening to stakeholders voice“, was held on 27 May 2009 in Brussels, gathering the main European networks in the field of innovation and ICT for Education and Training. This event was organised by the Learnovation Roundtable with the support of the European Commission as a contribution to the European Year of Creativity and Innovation, and result in the launch of the “10 imperatives for change”  to make European education and lifelong learning a lever for innovation.

During the event, a list of priorities for action was discussed by more than 90 participants and “10 imperatives for changes” were produced, that will be proposed to relevant EU and national policiy makers and will represent the starting point of a broad societal consultation on the desired future of European education and lifelong learning.

The Learnovation ten imperatives for change, to face the challenge of relevance for European education beyond 2010:

1. Rescue research on education an lifelong learning from a marginal position.
2. Provide more evidence to policy making, but choose indicators that are able to push creativity and innovation, not only conformance.
3. Face openly the issue of relevance of current learning provision: change is urgent.
4. Establish more connections among the different areas of Lifelong Learning.
5. Celebrate and recognise learning achievements.
6. Bring informal learning into the policy spectrum.
7. Enhace the innovation capacity of teacher trainning systems.
8. Help teachers and trainers to recognise and respect the value of informal learning.
9. Encourage all forms of learning workplace.
10. Remember that not all workers are stererotypical knowlegde workers.

The conference counted with the participation of prestigious speakers, such as Ms. Odile Quintin, Director General for Education, Trainnig, Culture, Youth (European Comission), Mr. Roberto Carneiro, former Minister of Education of Portugal (Universidade Católica Portuguesa) and Mr. Karlheinz Brandenburg (Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology), ambassador of the European Year of Creativity and Innovation and one of the fathers of mp3 technology.