Issue 85 (2018) of the international journal Adult Education and Development (AED) looks at the role and impact of adult education from a global perspective: What role does adult education play in society and in the lives of individuals? What contribution can it make to meeting challenges such as poverty, globalisation or digitisation? How can adult educators ensure that their programmes and offers achieve the desired impact? And how can we measure impact?

As Catherine Lido was presenting in New York, I was very pleased to be presenting, in parallel, similar material based on the work that our Urban Big Data Centre has been undertaking at a conference in Sofia entitled, Non-formal Education - Meeting the Challenges of the 21st Century.