Dear Archipelago Member, Dear Thematic Network Coordinator,
As you know, the Humanistic Archipelago presented successfully a fourth Accompanying Measures Project, entitled “Structuring Intercultural Dialogue”.
The project foresees a Conference with preparation and follow-up, as have the preceding 3 projects.
This year we think the work to be done promises to be of the greatest interest and relevance. Among the various issues to be considered, there is the definition of guidelines and reference points – Tuning style – for intercultural competences, including linguistic skills and basic scientific and technological competences for humanities, social and creative arts and sciences students --- and vice versa, that is the basic humanistic – social and creative – competences for science and technology students.
We were unable to organise a brainstorming session with all of you because this year the Executive Agency did not organise the “traditional” TN Coordinators’ meeting.
Nonetheless, we are forging ahead, and intend to make this the best and most important HUMAN PLUS Conference ever. The Conference will take place on 4-5 July, in Brussels, at the Royal Flemish Academy of Sciences, which we all know as an excellent venue for our meetings.
As usual, the Conference will be organised around five working groups, which will each take up one important strand. We are sending you a brief description of the proposed work groups in attachment. The work of the groups will constitute the Archipelago report.
At this time, we ask you to please contact your Network members and invite five members -- plus yourself if possible -- to attend the Conference: either your existing Archipelago team or new people (or a mixture) to find interested and committed participants. Please tell us to which working group each person will adhere: this will make it possible for the chairs or facilitators to be in contact the people in their group in the preparatory stages of the Conference.
As to logistics, as usual we ask the participants to purchase their own tickets purchasing low cost or reasonably priced apex tickets (if needed the “Pisa team” can do this for them) and make arrangements for – modest but decent – accommodation in Brussels. Arrival is on 3 July, departure on 6 July. We will make arrangements for both meals on 4 July and for lunch on 5 July. Hotel and the other meals will be reimbursed after the meeting, up to the permitted maximum for Belgium, per person per day, including what we are arranging for directly. So a thrifty attitude will be essential.
We will send you further information about the programme as soon as we can.
We look forward to a great conference and to a further demonstration of the ability of our Archipelago to contribute to dealing with key European issues.
The Small Group
(Kathy Isaacs, Hanneke van Bruggen, Anne-Marie van den Dries, Victoria Thoresen, Alistair Ross, Constantin Spiridonides, Fernando Galindo)