Festival «Đà Nẵng - Thành Phố Học Tập» (Da Nang the Learning City)

   The organisers open this three-day festival without knowing its schedule, and that is the design rather than an oversight. The programme is brought by the people who come: anyone can put up a topic, a question or an activity, and everyone else chooses where to go. Learning is proposed not in a classroom but across the city, from people rather than teachers.

   The project is run by Vcil Community and Vcil Living Lab Da Nang, with the aim of turning the city into an open learning space where knowledge comes from neighbours as much as from schools. Three stated goals sit underneath it: build a community and connect it with local people and new spaces around town; reimagine education through intergenerational, peer-to-peer and self-directed learning; and nurture a gift culture in which members share knowledge, experience and even their own premises.

   There are two roles to choose from:

• — the flower, or Host — the one who creates a space for a conversation or an activity, choosing the topic themselves: a question long on their mind, a problem they want solved, a research theme, a project short of ideas, resources or teammates. No expertise is required, and no hosting experience either
• — the bee, or Participant — the one who moves between sessions and cross-pollinates them. You may sign up for several activities in a day and leave any of them halfway through

   That freedom to leave is written down as the «Law of Mobility», a founding principle of the festival. The organisers put it this way: the right to walk away makes presence deliberate, and participants are asked to keep checking whether they are contributing to the space they are in. Hosts are separately encouraged to harvest what a session produced — lessons, stories, new questions — in any form they like, from storytelling to singing or acting it out.

   It suits anyone who finds ordinary courses and webinars too narrow: people in the non-profit sector, teachers, parents, students, anyone carrying an idea with nobody to test it on. The example topics the organisers give are deliberately mixed, running from the meaning of life and how to get up early to exercise, through to finding the best local food and how to start a business.

   Registration is split: hosts apply through the organisers' form, while participants sign up for individual sessions in the schedule as it fills. Follow the Vcil Living Lab page to see it grow. Questions about resources, venues or supporting the festival go to [email protected].

   Three days of a city where anyone might turn out to be the teacher, you included.