From 8 to 10 April 2008, an international conference entitled ‘Promoting Innovation and Creativity – Schools’ Response to the Challenges of Future Societies’ will be held at Brdo pri Kranju. With this conference, the Slovenian EU Council Presidency aims to speed up the changes in schools and kindergartens necessary to promote creative and innovative potential from the very beginning of the learning process. The objective of the conference, which will be chaired by Mirko Zorman (President of the Education Committee), is to exchange views on the role of school and education in promoting creativity and innovation, as well as on the conditions to be met in order to trigger the necessary changes.
The Slovenian Minister for Sports and Education, Milan Zver, will open the conference, and the keynote speakers will be the renowned expert Jeremy Rifkin, president of the Foundation on Economic Trends, Esko Aho, President of Sitra – the Finnish Innovation Fund – and former Finnish Prime Minister, and David Istance, representing the OECD. The conference will be attended by many other distinguished experts, who will examine in detail the role of education in promoting creativity and innovativeness and the need for schools to be modernised to enable them to face new challenges, while also taking issues of justice and efficiency into consideration.
A major part of the conference will be dedicated to team work, with participants taking part in the following workshops:
