PIPE in its context

Text version of informal comments by Cliff Hague at Turi: 30 January 2004

Preamble

I want to offer some preliminary comments about the PIPE project and then set it in a wider European context. When our meeting began yesterday, each group was asked to identify itself: "Where are the Latvians?" "Now who are those of you from Sweden?" and so on. In turn, each group cheered and waved to celebrate who they were and the fact that they were here. We should also ask, "Where are the Europeans?" and you should all put up your hands and cheer, because you are the first generation who will grow up as Europeans, as well as being from your own countries or regions.

In the short time we have been together here in Turi, I have been impressed by the enthusiasm and confidence of the young PIPErs, and by the commitment and leadership of the co-ordinators, teachers and others who are involved in the project. I get the feeling that PIPE is a family. In any family you have to respect the differences, so that each individual can develop to realise her or his own potential, but you also help and support each other in special ways. As a parent you try to help the younger members of the family to learn how to become independent, to foster the abilities that will allow them to leave the family home and to build their own life. But you also strive to create the attitudes and values that will hold you all together as a family long after the children are grown up. I am pleased to have become part of the PIPE family.

PIPE in Action

Hearing about what you are doing in your various projects, and seeing the teams working together here in Turi has given me a good understanding of the spirit and activity that PIPE has created. I am looking forward to the EXPO in Sweden in May, which will showcase what has been achieved. Creativity lies at the heart of all successful projects. You cannot produce creativity by an order or a formula. You can set inter-connected conditions in which creativity is more likely to happen. I see such conditions as underpinning PIPE. They are as follows.

¨      Confidence - to be creative you have to believe in yourself, but not be so self-absorbed that you fail to spot ways to improve or to learn from others.

¨      A willingness to confront new challenges, and not just settle for the routine or repetition of what you have already achieved.

¨      Openness to others - the ability to enjoy meeting new people who may be from very different backgrounds than your own. Experiencing difference is a rich form of learning. It may not be recognised in formal qualifications, but it is at the heart of education as a vital process.

¨      Risk-taking and the confidence to make mistakes and to learn from them.

So PIPE is part of a European culture that is open, tolerant, critical and experimental. That culture is essential for success in the twenty-first century. PIPE is problem-focused. It does not start with the knowledge packaged into boxes as happens so often in school, where some things are ‘history' others are ‘mathematics' or ‘biology' etc. PIPE starts with how things actually are and tries to get you to work together to unpick and reassemble the parts, so that you get new solutions to old problems. That is an exciting way of working.

PIPE and Europe

PIPE is about developing places that lie on the periphery of Europe. Indeed it is about the periphery of the periphery - the small towns in regions a long way from what has been called Europe's ‘Pentagon'. The pentagon ids the area between Paris, London, Hamburg, Munich and Milan in which the wealth and economic activity of European is heavily concentrated. The ratio between the 10% of the most prosperous regions and the 10% least prosperous ones in the 15-member EU in Gross Domestic Product (a measure of regional prosperity) is 2.6. After the accession countries join it will be 4.4. Thus key aims for the EU are to increase international competitiveness, territorial cohesion and sustainable development. Polycentric spatial development is seen as the way to achieve these aims. This means that instead of the gap between the Pentagon and the rest of Europe widening, we need to connect places and people on Europe's periphery, to increase their economic activity and to manage our regions and natural heritage in a wise manner. Projects like PIPE are very important - they put these ideas into practice.

To demonstrate this point, just think of how we are working together here for these few days in Turi. At present, I am standing in the centre, and talking, and you are all sitting round the periphery and listening. That is like a centre-periphery model of Europe. The EU and the big companies sit in Brussels or similar places in the Pentagon and do all the talking, and everyone else sits passively on the edge. That model can only work for so long: if I talk much longer you will get bored and start talking amongst yourselves and stop listening to me.

Another possibility is that you sit in your own national groups - the Finns over here, the Lithuanians over there, the Norwegians somewhere else etc. - and you talk in those groups. This is the old model of Europe, where the different nation states each went their own way, sometimes squabbled and at worst fought each other. So that model does not work very well either.

However, PIPE does things differently. You are working together in groups mixed from different countries, so there is exchange of ideas and experiences in the groups, and you learn from each other. Also there are points when the different groups come together to hear what everyone has been doing, like in the presentations on Saturday or at the EXPO in May. Then you go away again and carry new ideas and experiences with you back to your home towns. So what you have is a learning network, with many different centres and lots of connections. It is a network that can grow and change as new links are added. By being linked together you can meet new people and apply more minds to a problem than is possible by working in isolation. In this way small towns, such as those where you come from, can have lots of the advantages of big cities where there are lots of people and easy access to new ideas. This is what we mean by a polycentric pattern of development - by working together, the smaller and more peripheral places can get the advantages that previously were only in the big cities, and so create new economic opportunities and growth, by building on their own identities.

Through its emphasis on entrepreneurialism, PIPE is developing the skills and attitudes needed to make a polycentric Europe a reality. The EU has adopted a plan called ‘the Lisbon strategy'. It seeks to make the EU the world's leading knowledge economy over a ten-year period. But that will not happen unless there are projects like PIPE and young people like you who are putting ideas into practice. Territorial cohesion, another key EU aim, means that no parts of Europe should feel so poor or unfairly treated that they turn away from the project of bringing Europe together. For territorial cohesion to be achieved there has to be active engagement and support for those on the periphery - in the Accession Countries and in the small and remote towns. That is what PIPE is doing.

For the EU to thrive it has to be a Europe of Citizens, not just a bureaucracy in Brussels or a deal done by big politicians. A Europe of Citizens means a Europe where people are active in their local communities, but also are meeting and sharing with those from other communities and other countries. By being PIPErs, you are being the generation that becomes the new Europe of Citizens.  

Final report Report from prof. Cliff hague