APPENDIX 41
Memorandum submitted by Domex
DOME LEGACY
I am responding to the Committee's invitation
to comment on issues related to the permanent use of the Millennium
Dome. I am the Director of the Domex project, a partnership of
the London Boroughs of Bexley, Greenwich, Lewisham, Newham, Tower
Hamlets, and Waltham Forest, together with Pearson the education
publisher and the Dome itself. Domex links six City Learning Centres
(CLC), one in each of the participating boroughs, and the Learning
Experience Centre at the Dome. The CLCs will be information and
communications technology centres, promoting access and innovation
for local schools and communities. Domex is funded through the
Government's Excellence in Cities Programme and aims to create
a national model for e-learning over the next three years.
Two of the criteria set for deciding on the
succession use of the Dome are directly relevant to the Domex
project:
— Innovation; eg imaginative and distinctive
use of new technology.
— Cultural Significance; eg raise standards
of education and training in any aspect of the creative and cultural
sector.
It would not be appropriate for the Domex partnership
to decide in favour of one or other of the two remaining bids.
We have neither the information nor the remit to do so.
However, on the basis of these criteria and
the experience of the Domex and City Learning Centre projects
so far, we would ask you to take the following points into account
in arriving at your view of the process and its ultimate outcome:
1. though this project's substantive link
with the Dome will last only for part of this calendar year, the
possibility of a working relationship with a large and exciting
operation such as the Dome is opening the way to engage schools
in new ideas and new ways of doing things.
2. schools and LEAs in the East of London
are successfully improving educational achievement, but recognise
that there is still much to do—an opportunity like a working
link with the Dome can make a real and important difference.
3. it is essential for the regeneration of
this area that not only do young people here leave school as aspirational
achievers, but they have a strong sense of opportunities being
open to them—those opportunities need to be local, at least
in part, otherwise we are educating young people to leave the
area rather than for some of them to apply their talents locally,
an outcome which will not assist regeneration.
4. therefore if the legacy use of the Dome
can directly and actively support school level education in the
creative and cultural sectors, inter alia, this will be
a clear and positive benefit in line with Government's criteria
both for the Dome and for the Excellence in Cities monies funding
the Domex project.
We would ask that you examine how far each of
the two bids now in the frame aim positively and practically to
open up opportunities for (a) partnership with education and (b)
the development of creative and cultural projects—commercial
and otherwise—which will in turn generate further opportunities.
I would be pleased to provide further information
if you require it.
June 2000
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