Nordic Bildung is, of course, the name of our think tank. However, our global network has started using the term Nordic bildung (capital N, lower case b) as a term for what we have normally referred to in the Nordics as folk-bildung.
So, here is the new definition of Nordic bildung along with relating concepts, as they are also presented in the 2024 edition of The Nordic Secret:
Bildung: A process taking place in the individual; a combination of acquiring and making sense of horizontal and vertical knowledge, i.e. transferable knowledge and non-transferable knowledge; life experience and emotional maturation.
Education: May be both transferable knowledge and non-transferable knowledge, i.e. bildung. Most often, it is not bildung, though.
Adult education: Education for adults, mainly transferring horizontal knowledge, typically to upgrade professional skills. It could be bildung, but most often not.
Folk-bildung: Education for adults that one pursues out of sheer personal interest, often with a strong emancipatory aspect. Very often there is a bildung aspect, but there may not be.
Nordic bildung: A bildung-, adult education-, and folk-bildung-agenda with the deliberate intention of individual emancipation while lifting society collectively from the bottom. This entails creating informed disagreement at a higher level of complexity by unfolding individual potential and promoting development of personal character around a shared topic. Embedded in Nordic bildung is also that every individual contains something unique that should be explored and unfolded.