Imagine a Calgary where citizens view disruption as a chance to reinvent themselves. Imagine a Calgary with a dynamic and evolving talent pool. Imagine a city that attracts investment and talent from across the globe because it’s known as a city that learns its way forward. To create this city, we need to transform how we learn.

Calgary’s Skills Development Framework was developed over three years, by engaging hundreds of learners. educators, and community partners where we explored emerging labour market demands and potential paths to meeting these demands. From this engagement emerged a vision for our learning system:

Calgary’s learning system develops exceptional, creative, and adaptable talent, ready to thrive in a fast-changing world.

Today, in Calgary, 3,063 organizations are delivering 30,870 programs and 3. 5 million learning experiences annually. In addition, Calgarians have access to an infinite array of learning opportunities from across the globe. Therefore, the challenge faced is less about capacity and more about how to optimize these isolated learning experiences into an open system that can support the unique goals of every Calgarian.

However, the world is very different today. Today most job skills need constant updating to keep their economic value. Moreover, with the rapid extension of life expectancy, careers now exceed 50 years. These changes demand a radical redefinition of when and how people will learn. This redefinition will transition learning from a closed model, in which a small group of institutions controls learning, to an open model of continuous learning, unlearning, and relearning.

Open learning is based on the principle of open innovation. Open innovation empowers collaboration and co-creation by inverting the business model from being centred around an organization to focusing on the user. For example, Lego shifted to an open innovation design model and immediately scaled from seven Lego engineers to over 20,000 Lego consumers engaged in design co-creation. Similarly, Apple and Google opened their platforms to tens of thousands of individual developers, creating millions of new apps and redefining the industry’s business model.

Confronting this talent challenge extends beyond the capacity of any single level of government, educational institution, sector, or employer. To meet this challenge, the LearningCITY Collective propose a community-level solution - the Calgary Skills Development Framework. The framework is anchored to four drivers: adaptable, accessible, empowered, and open. Click HERE to download the full framework. Below is an overview of each driver, their goals, priorities, and key performance indicators.

A Living Document

Calgary’s Skills Development Framework is Calgary's framework. It is a vision that is living and dynamic and owned by every learner, educator, employer, and policymaker in our city. It recognizes that the greatest barrier to delivering this vision is not external, but in the embedded rules, routines, practices, and cultures that influence our mindset and behaviour. Therefore, this framework is a call for collaboration and commitment to continue rethinking talent in Calgary and innovate our future together.

The LearningCITY Collective are thankful to our many community supporters.