Just how do you get to Australia without stepping foot on a plane?

We returned to the office from a snow-covered Easter to an exciting week of events.

We kicked off on Wednesday with Rt Hon Jack Straw MP who spoke to a heaving Great Room about building community confidence in the criminal justice system. The lecture was a great opportunity to launch the RSA's new Prison Learning Network and we had some excellent questions from the audience, you can listen again here.

Later that evening we screened No End in Sight. Nominated for an academy award for best documentary feature the film was the first of its kind to chronicle the reasons behind Iraq's descent into guerilla war, warlord rule and anarchy. Director Charles Ferguson spoke about making his first documentary film and what led him into the gritty world of documentaries from an earlier career in software technology.

Finally we wrapped up with this week's RSA Thursday, by welcoming slow-traveller Ed Gillespie to the RSA to prove that you don't have to get on a 747 to holiday in Australia you just need a lot of time....Read his blog about his 361 days of slow-travel global circumnavigation here.

We draw a quick breath before we launch into the Spring programme. No rest for us as we have just announced our April events, you can see the full list here but highlights include: Julian Barnes, Tim Harford, Jonathan Powell and Charlie Leadbeater.

Hope to see you all at JAS soon

• Steve Nimmons - 05 Jun 2008 1:48pm

  I attended the “Question Time on Sustainable Design and Development” on Wednesday evening and found the discussions very interesting. Griff Rhys Jones made an excellent chairman, combining effervescence, levity and intellectualism with enviable ease. There seemed to be ‘scant’ agreement about the impact of personal ‘pro-social’ activity in relation to carbon off-setting and although we might all have a little chuckle at personal wind turbines or solar panels as the latest self-righteous housing adornments, it is as little too easy to just reject social responsibility in relation to the environment as something of a fashion statement of the liberal middle class. I was subsequently very encouraged to hear that Atos Origin (my employer) has announced a project with the RSA “the first ever trial to enable real-time calculations of personal carbon emissions” and how this relates to the RSA’s CarbonDaq trading platform. I wonder if you could provide some additional insight into this and the overarching work of the RSA’s CarbonLimited project?

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