April 2008
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30 April 2008
piping up
This week in Fellowship...
I suspect it's been rather calm, because I wasn't there. I'm currently catching up with everything, so it feels like a week of bits and pieces.
On the recommendation of Val, the longest-standing member of the Fellowship office, we went for lunch in the newly renovated cafe in the crypt at St Martins in the Fields. She is a source of grounded advice on most things in life, and in return we eat all the pecans from variety nut packets, because she doesn't like them.
We're off to Newcastle tomorrow for a new Fellows evening in Gateshead, which I'm looking forward to. It's the first regional event I've attended, and following the buzz on the Networks platform, I'm keen to find out about what's been going on.
And as part of the revamp of internal communications, we're getting a new intranet, which is due to go live in a few weeks time. We got to see the test site last week, and it's going to be an enormous help enabling us to pull together and share the huge amount of diverse information that is floating around in this building.
Until next time...
Information on how to join the RSA Fellowship, and how to nominate others here.
(Photographs by me - this one of the organ in St Martin in the Fields, Trafalgar Square)
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30 April 2008
Cutting Up
The JAS team is divided up into the hospitality team and us upstairs doing things like research, fellowship recruitment, fund raising etc. Partly to overcome this divide and partly just so I can have a bit of fun from time to time, I have encouraged the desk-bound staff to volunteer in the House. Today was my turn and I had a great time in the kitchens. The team were very patient with me and I learned a couple of top tips.
The whole experience convinced me that everyone should spend half a working day a week on routine manual labour - something you can safely do while listening to music -helping out in the kitchen, the garden, cleaning etc. After all, these were the kind of tasks that occupied most of our time for the vast majority of our evolution as humans so it’s not surprising that doing them soothes our stressed-out brains.
Speaking of brains I was fascinated by this piece in the Guardian. There are clearly mixed opinions as to the efficacy of brain training. Advocates say it has wide and long lasting effects while critics say the reverse.
The issues here are big, going well beyond a particular product or method to the much wider question of the plasticity of our brains in later life. This is clearly a debate we should host in our forthcoming cognition project.
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29 April 2008
Fantastic goings on in the North East
Saturday saw me heading to Stockton-on-Tees to speak to a joint Durham University/RSA conference entitled ‘There is such a thing as society’. I heard some fantastic presentations from inspiring people doing great things in the community.
Iain Caldwell was fascinating about the transformative work of Hartlepool Mind and his reference to the 'human givens' approach to therapy has opened up a new literature to me.
Reverend John Elliston told the story of the 700 Club in Darlington; from its humble origins asking 700 citizens to give or loan £50 to buy a terraced house for emergency accommodation for the homeless to its current dilemmas about how to retain its radicalism and responsiveness while also relying on public grants.
I also listened to RSA activist Patricia (‘Paddy’) Deans who had worked with other Fellows to first persuade and then support her local health practice to build a state of the art, fully sustainable, health centre. Paddy is modest about her contribution but it is clear the RSA was the catalyst, even if the work was then done by the health practice, architects and the North East eco-centre.
I suggested to Paddy that we might develop an RSA Network dedicated to giving Fellows advice and support in seeking to make local new buildings fully sustainable. I’ve put this to our networks team here so watch this space.
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29 April 2008
Last night's RSA Networks Exchange
Now, thanks to the miracles of modern technology I’m able to continue posting my blog while out of the office. But I wanted to publicly thank Laura Bunt in particular from the Networks team, who did such a stunning job of organizing last night’s event.
Andy Gibson FRSA also made an excellent job of facilitating and I was gratified to see so many staff members turn out to support the RSA Networks Exchange initiative.
There were many ideas buzzing around and the event reinvigorated a lot of Fellows following on from the event we had in November.
This is a perfect example of what Networks is about – it’s about bringing Fellows together, both virtually and in ‘real life’ to develop effective networks for delivering (and dealing with) positive social change.
There were a number of excellent projects proposed, and people were asked to make commitments as to how they would take these ideas forward. So here’s one from me. I think that we should commit to holding a similar event (around the country) at least once a month.
I’d love to hear from more of you who would like to be involved in an exchange event, or for those who attended, ways in which you think this event could be more effective.
What would be great is if, together, we could create a culture of collaboration, in which people with similar ideas could develop one fantastic project, taking the best elements of what each person has to offer. A sort of open source project for social change, which takes as it’s premise that no one person has all the answers or bright ideas, and that we all have something to share and learn.
Again, well done to the team who made this event happen and in particular to the Fellows who showed such commitment and enthusiasm last night!
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28 April 2008
Come on(line) everybody!
In a world that is increasingly digitally enhanced, how do we ensure that people can be included in the conversations that are happening on the internet – or even at a more basic level can take advantage of cheaper car insurance (which seem to be available through internet only deals)?
This is true not only for society as a whole, but closer to home, as part of this society.
Roughly a third of Britons are considered ‘digitally excluded’. I’m chairing a conference on this tomorrow which will be looking at how we can reach this final third. No doubt I’ll be sharing my thoughts on this later in the week. But it made me think about what we’re trying to do here with the RSA Networks.
Tonight there will be an RSA Networks Exchange event here at JAS. The event is designed to mirror the experience Fellows have at our growing (and under construction) online platform. They can propose, discuss and support innovative projects. In essence it’s the physical manifestation of the virtual experience.
The idea is that not all the projects discussed tonight will be taken forward, indeed, not all the projects should be taken forward.
In our society we have an aversion to failure. This makes a lot of sense, failing makes us feel bad. But one of the capacities we need to be promoting is that of resilience. The ability to say ‘ok, this idea wasn’t so great, but I’m glad I put it out there, now I can move on and do something else.’
The other point of putting your ideas out there is that you can link to other people who are interested in similar things, and then together you can have even better ideas.
The beauty of the internet is that it creates a place for iterative project development. To borrow from recent speaker, Jonathan Zittrain, it’s a generative process. Together we can create something that is better than any of our individual ideas.
As I’ve said many times, our Networks project is about bringing together Fellows, so that they can work together on projects which will support social change. But it occurs to me that not all our fellows are part of the ‘digitally included’. Of course with this blog I’m preaching to the converted, but it’s worth thinking about. How do we engage more Fellows in the online debate?
Have a look at this from Clay Shirky, who seeks to answer the question non-digital people always ask which is ‘Where do you find the time’.
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25 April 2008
Mohamed, Osama and Steve
It has been a mammoth week of lectures with some super-stellar names. We continued our partnership with booksellers Blackwell's on Tuesday as we welcomed poet Simon Armitage to the house all the way from the hills in Yorkshire. Simon treated attendees to a reading from his new book, Gig: the life and times of a rock star fantasist as he regaled us with tales of a life intertwined with music, gig-going and poetry.
On Wednesday we saw a totally different crowd of lecture-goers stream into the Great Room as Charlie Leadbeater and Matthew Taylor discussed the ever-changing and collaborative nature of world of the web. This coversation was continued by Jonathan Zittrain on Thursday evening as he pondered the future of the internet. Lucky lecture-goers received a free copy of his new book with the generous support of AOL.
For our weekly RSA Thursday we were delighted to have Steve Coll over from America as he lifted the lid on the Bin Laden family and gave some interesting insights into a family whose power and money have been used to frighteningly varied ends.
We are pleased to also announce a few new additions to our May events programme;
On Tuesday 6 May, at 1pm Ray Tallis will be speaking about the most complicated part of our anatomy, the head.
RSA Screens continue at a gallop as we welcome director, Joshua Dugdale for a screening of his carefully crafted documentary, The Unwinking Gaze in which he followed the Dalai Lama for 3 years chronicling the many challenges that he faces.
And to continue our partnerhsip with Channel 4 we will be screening film-maker and journalist, Jon Ronson's Reverend Death.
We hope to see you all soon at some of the fantastic events that we have coming up over the next few weeks. As always, our events are all available as podcasts so if you missed any of this week's four remarkable and varied speakers you can listen again.
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25 April 2008
Money, money, money
Investment and the sub-prime crisis aren’t normally topics for my blog – but recently two pieces, one in the Times and the other in the FT caught my eye.
On the one hand you have the always entertaining Jonathan Guthrie in the FT. He points out that the sub prime crisis is leading to an inevitable bonanza for litigators. In the US this has already begun in earnest, and Guthrie suggests it will soon start in the UK.
As he memorably puts it ‘Rating agencies must feel as vulnerable as a nude gymnast performing squat jumps in a porcupine farm’. If the US model is anything to go by they have reason to be nervous, as pension firms sue ratings agencies for diminution of share value.
In the Times Jamie Whyte, author of Bad Thoughts: A Guide to Clear Thinking, says that the idea that, in the light of the sub-prime experience, we should regulate to protect investors from bad advice and bad investment is tantamount to arguing that because we should regulate romantic relationships to reduce the possibility of people being jilted.
For Whyte the very idea of regulation in an area of free choice is problematic; ‘Once risks are known, regulating them is worse than useless. It can only move the price of risk away from, and usually above, the market price. It encourages financiers and investors to seek profit in areas where the regulators are not imposing their burdens – namely those where the risk are poorly understood’
Now, Guthrie is not advocating litigation merely predicting it, and litigation is not exactly the same as regulation (although if successful litigation establishes case law it will tend to have a similar impact to liability imposed by regulation). But these articles point to two different views of the rights of the consumer or investor.
Whyte relies on the principle of caveat emptor, while Guthrie suggests that people who have taken bad advice will naturally seek redress against those who gave them the advice.
The RSA’s Tomorrow’s Investor will be exploring just this dilemma. We will expose a selected group of small and ‘indirect’ investors to a comprehensive picture of how decisions are made about ‘their’ money. We will explore how sound are these decisions and also their ethical dimension.
At the end of the forum the question is whether, when the investors have these insights, it makes them want be more active, to have better protecting or more effective intermediaries. I’ll make sure we send Jonathan and Jamie our findings.
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24 April 2008
We do
Last night we had a great lecture from Charlie Leadbeater discussing his new book We Think. The book has got interest and praise, not just for its content but also how it was written – collaboratively, via Charlie’s website. It may well be the first wiki-book
One connection I made was between Charlie’s thesis and Brooke Harrington who spoke here last week on her book Pop Finance. I asked Brooke whether Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone and the foremost exponent of the breakdown in social capital, was interested in the 20 million Americans taking part in investment clubs.
Brooke surmised that Putman didn’t investigate this on the grounds that investment clubs aim to make money. But, as she points out in her book, there’s no correlation between the financial success of the club and its long term future. There are clubs which make no money but are still meeting and investing, just as there are some clubs which are financially successful, but break-up due to personality clashes. In the final analysis, it’s all about people voluntarily doing stuff together.
I similarly asked Charlie what he thought about Putnam’s thesis. Does the rise of forms of on-line collaboration like Wikipedia and Linux disprove social capital theory.
The answer in part is Putnam was looking at distinct forms of social capital, arguing that the capital communities most need is the type that is declining fastest. So for instance, in deprived communities, what’s needed is ‘bridging capital’; people who are not in work having contact with those who are and thus creating opportunities through networks and connections.
The problem with the simplistic social capital thesis is that it seems to imply that after 150,000 years of human evolution in which we have been hard wired as a social species we have suddenly decided to retreat from the public sphere.
What I take from both Charlie and Brooke is that Putnam was mapping less a fundamental shift in human nature and more was the decline of old collectivist institutions. These institutions – think political parties, think trade unions, think established churches - are characteristically bureaucratic, rigidly hierarchical, and culturally self-denying (‘you have boring meetings to make the world a better place’).
What Putnam didn’t see was that alongside the decline of these institutions what would occur is the emergence of ‘new collectivist’ institutions – like investment clubs and on-line social networks - which are less bureaucratic, more dispersed, more subtly hierarchical, and more self-actualising (or what ordinary people tend to call ‘fun’).
Human beings do still want to do good stuff together, but because our lives and our expectations have changed we want to work together differently. This is what we’re trying to do here at the Society. RSA Networks is one way of doing that, but there will no doubt be others – such as this blog. One way of defining my mission for the RSA is to build on the great traditions of this old collectivist institution, but work with Fellows to turn it into an exemplar of a new collectivist spirit.
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23 April 2008
Food fight
We are facing a ‘silent tsunami’, according to the head of the World Food Programme, the Economist, and many of the broadsheets this morning. Indeed, our most recent RSA Journal featured an article on food security which argued that we need a new politics of food in Britain. One which ‘integrates individual behaviour within the planet’s needs and capacities.’
The debate on food security strikes me as emblematic of our agenda at the RSA in terms of promoting sustainable, pro-social behaviour, and local solutions for a globalised world. This is because food cuts to the very core of our society at every level.
The newspapers today have been preoccupied with the rising costs of staple foods, a situation caused by a confluence of global issues ranging from bio-fuel production to draughts in Australia to Westernising diets in Asia. But food occupies a much deeper psychological space in our life; we are defined by what we eat. To a certain extent this has always been true, but the issue is ever more acute as we see the impact of our food choices on the environment, and vice versa.
So for example, the environmental lobby, were (and are) particularly concerned about the introduction of GM crops. The media responded with a flurry of headlines about ‘franken-food’ and ‘jumping genes’ and as a result most people would now refuse to eat ‘GM’ products. However, with a basic understanding of science, and a rational response to risk analysis, most people would come to the conclusion that the benefits of increased supply, not to mention draught and pest resistance, outweigh the concerns. Obviously there are larger issues around patents for seeds etc but this can’t be properly discussed until we re-open the GM debate.
A debate is currently emerging on the RSA Networks Platform on sustainable food supplies – should we be returning to increased self sufficiency (yesterday there were reports that people are buying more vegetable seeds in a time of economic crisis and Jamie Oliver induced gardening)?
In an increasingly urbanised world, how do we reconcile where our food comes from, and how can we as individuals make choices which are best for us (in terms of health) and sustainable for the world? What is clear is that we need an open and rational debate which puts reason and sustainable development at the centre of our food policies, and I’m sure many of the Fellows will have important contributions to make on this issue.
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22 April 2008
Global citizens
Are we, as humans, capable of coping with the complex problems created by human progress? Population ageing and global warming are both challenges resulting from success. Globalisation too is hastened by man-made advances in technology and trade. But globalisation also brings great problems in its wake. Scanning this morning’s papers provides a fascinating insight into the dilemmas we face.
On the national finance scale Geoff Mulgan and Will Hutton’s piece in the Guardian calls for better regulation of banks to avoid further credit crunch fiascos. Individuals are just as vulnerable to the blows dealt by changes in the economic cycle, but thus far the benefits conferred to the banks have not been passed on to the individual – this is particularly important in terms of engendering public trust in national institutions.
In the FT, David Sproul and Bill Dodwell argue that the major companies are leaving the UK because they not only face relatively high corporate taxes, but are concerned that the treasury will tax certain kinds of overseas profit as well.
Reading these in conjunction reminded me of the debate around Joseph Stiglitz’s new book Making Globalization Work, which was recently reviewed by Robert Skidelsky in the New York Review of Books. For globalisation to benefit the whole world, and for developed countries to be willing to make the adjustments necessary for global fairness, we will need to have better global regulatory organisations.
The question is – where is the political will to make this happen? If one country were to act on its own it would inevitably lose out in the global market.
A lot of this is about complex policy issues and institutional reform at a global level. But underlying this are questions as to whether we, as citizens of this new world, are able to understand its realities and able to give our leaders the scope to show leadership. The choices we as citizens make are just as important as those of our leaders.
As David Aaronovich points out in the Times this tension is playing out in the Clinton / Obama race. Interestingly both candidates are keen to be seen as progressives on the world stage, while at the same time offering protectionist policies to their electorate.
So while the main victims of globalisation are the poorest people, mainly living in Sub-Saharan Africa, the most vociferous opponents are the formerly skilled manual workers of the developed world.
Skidelsky argues that the problem with Stiglitz’s book is that it doesn’t recognise that you need to co-opt those people in the developed world that feel they’re losing out, and show how they too can gain from globalization. Otherwise we have a globalised world governed by national imaginations.
Returning to a well worn theme the answers here must combine citizen-centric and government-centric solutions.
For example, we need new collective institutions (both in the real and virtual world) that help constitute a global civil society. Two examples of this are the fair trade movement, and, importantly, the Make Poverty History Campaign. Both are focussed in their scope but have had an impact on changing the way people think about their money and their ‘stuff’. Globalisation will only work for humans if appropriately regulated. Regulation has to happen on a global scale. But leaders will not rise to this challenge unless we as citizens are more able to think globally ourselves.
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18 April 2008
Peace, love, money and denial†..
..not necessarily in that order.
This week the Events team welcomed Stan Cohen to investigate why human beings cocoon themselves in denial. From the personal to the political, Cohen provided an insight into the nature of denial and how it creates problems such as “passive bystanders” and “compassion fatigue”. The original text, States of Denial, is due to be updated in the autumn and will include Cohen’s views on climate change denial, which helped to set the stage for a lively and controversial debate, ably chaired by Laurie Taylor.
And speaking of keeping your eyes shut, this particular member of the Events team normally spends her Tube journey in just such a fashion, but today she woke up for long enough to notice that several people in the carriage were reading publications that were recently lecture subjects. Feeling the love, she smiled benignly at them, but in denial of the crazy woman beaming on the Tube, they buried their heads in said books and ignored her.
Against a background of City gloom, this week’s Thursday featured Brooke Harrington examining "pop finance" and the massive rise in popular engagement in the US stock market in the 90s through the spread of investment clubs. We were particularly pleased to hear from Brooke, as her work has a range of implications for accepted thinking on social capital, and has real relevance for RSA Networks and our new Tomorrow’s Investor project, which aims to change the way we think about share ownership and encourage civic involvement in socially responsible investing.
We ended the week with Jonathan Powell giving us invaluable insights, personal and professional, into the Northern Ireland peace process. It was a gripping and touching account which fully illustrated the reasons why he sees it as the most worthwhile thing he’s ever done. As well as exploring the process of conflict resolution, Jonathan shared the emotional aspects of dealing with such a role. This was not without humour, as shown by the tale of a mobile phone having an unexpected swim at a key moment, and politicians enjoying spontaneous boogie nights together! You can find out more in his new book, Great Hatred, Little Room.
There’s a bumper week coming up for the team next, with four events covering tales of gig-going, communal creativity, the Bin Ladens and the future of the world wide web. Variety is certainly the spice of events life!
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18 April 2008
RSA Networks Exchange
A few RSA colleagues went to the Social Innovation Camp a couple of weekends ago. This brought together technologists and innovators to develop new ways to meet social need.
Next month, the Innovation Exchange for the third sector is holding two 'festivals of ideas' that aim to bring together social innovators with commissioners of services in the hope that fresh approaches to old problems will emerge.
In a similar vein, as part of the RSA Networks project, we're now building up to our next big Fellows' event on the evening of 28 April - the RSA Networks Exchange.
This will be a bit like the ideas equivalent of a 'bring and buy' sale. You bring a project; you offer help in developing other people's projects.
We've already had a great response, with people saying they want to talk about subjects ranging from reducing the loneliness of freelancing, to initiatives designed to help people dealing with alcohol and drug abuse get back on track.
There is more about the event on the Networks platform, and you can get involved by registering your interest.
In reflecting on the buzz around these kinds of events currently, two things strike me.
First, the power of new technology to make visible a form of 'gift economy' that has until recently remained fairly hidden. If participating is easy, and feedback is quick and positive, people are willing to give their time and expertise to others and the greater good (a theme that will no doubt be taken up by Charles Leadbeater in his talk here next week).
And second, perhaps an important reminder for us here, that the fuel of any gift economy is passion. Without passion, people have little reason to give up precious time. So part of what we need to do here is unlock people's passion for social progress, and help them to find others who share that passion.
With those reflections in mind, we've been busy inviting people via the OpenRSA Facebook group and the Networks platform. We'll see how it works, and feed any lessons into our plans for regular events of this kind in London and around the country.
Hope to see you there!
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18 April 2008
Rowland's Links
Above is the progress report on Viewfinder, a project to "flickerise" GoogleMaps. Thanks to Ewan for the tip.
Bit of an absence recently. Here a few short links to keep you going:
- Motionbox, a video editing suite type thing. Also Animoto.
- Information Architects, who do future trends better than anyone and have a nice map to prove it.
- Visuwords, which turns the thesaurus into a diagram.
- An article by Robert Kagan in TNR about the end of history: why the twenty-first century will look like the nineteenth.
- And a link-fest, in Conde Nast Portfolio's Brilliant Issue. A pretty bullish title, but one they might actually have lived up to.
R
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17 April 2008
push the button
This week in Fellowship...
Wayne came back from a couple of weeks away in Grenada and brought in guava jelly, peanut crunch, and coconut fudge for us all. The resulting sugar rush tripled production in the Fellowship office until the crash at about 3pm when we could barely talk to each other. We have learnt the lesson of moderation.
In other news: as we are working towards a more networked Fellowship and revising our communications strategy to provide more relevant information we've come to realise that the data we hold on Fellows, and the way we can access it isn't always the most efficient. So we're changing the questions on the application form, and the search fields on the Fellowship directory, and our data inputting processes, and how information links into the profiles held on the Networks page, and how the website and the database talk to each other.
But the good news is that, after some blood, sweat and tears, and plenty more guava jelly, we'll have better quality data held in such a way that makes it much easier for staff and Fellows alike to search the database so we can better link people to each other, to Networks projects, to calls for expertise, and to lectures and events.
Then we'll tackle the database roll out across the organisation. (Where's that button gone?)
Until next time...
Information on how to join the RSA Fellowship, and how to nominate others here.
(Photographs by me - this one sat at my desk very early one morning)
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14 April 2008
You might think I don't have anything to do
I'm having one of those days where everything seems to connect to everything else.
We have another great week of events here with Brooke Harrington on Pop Finance and my old line manager Jonathan Powell on making peace in Northern Ireland.
But the event I am looking forward to most of all is Stan Cohen on Wednesday. Stan's book States of Denial is a scholarly and compelling exploration of how it is people deny their responsibility for terrible things happening in the society around them.
Stan's analysis is based on a library of sociological and psychological research but also his own experiences as someone who was brought up in apartheid South Africa and lived for many years in Israel.
Stan sees denial as a necessary human capacity to enable us to cope with suffering in the world. The question is less why deny, but what shakes us out of this state: 'Why people don't shut out is more interesting than why they shut out' he says.
Re my earlier posting, Stan described four ways in which we deny responsibility; obedience to superiors, conformity with society, necessity and - here's the link to Rita Carter - splitting of the personality.
Stan's session has a brilliant chair - yes, alright it is my father - so I'm hoping we can explore what light his concept of denial sheds on the challenge of persuading people and nations to tackle climate change.
There are some still some places left for the event (which you can book on the web site) so do join us here on Wednesday.
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14 April 2008
Another Monday so More Monday Mentions.
Thanks to Graham Rawlinson, one of the Fellows who organised the successful open space event in Chichester last week. On hearing the RSA is planning a major project on the policy implications of new insights into the workings of the brain, Graham recommended to me Multiplicity by Rita Carter.
It is an interesting combination of a science and self-help book based on the argument that we are made up not of one unified personality with many facets but of many different personalities.
This does not mean we are all suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), but that external stimuli affect which of our personalities is in the driving seat at any time and that in turn our ways of thinking and reacting depend on which personality is in charge.
Unlike those who suffer from MPD, our personalities are in touch with each other and draw on the same bank of memories but they are distinct entities with different characteristics.
Carter - who we hope to get to the RSA as a speaker - cites evidence of multiple and hidden personalities from several sources; those who are unusually aware of their different personalities, psychotherapy case studies and hypnotism.
Among her more compelling points is the comparison of personality switching with 'ambiguous illusions' such as the Necker cube (the line drawing in which one face of the cube can either appear to be at the front left or at the back right but never both at once). Carter also argues convincingly that a key aspect of socialisation is our capacity to believe, and project, the illusion that we possess a unified single personality despite the evidence to the contrary.
Also fascinating is her argument that a key characteristic of modern culture is the greater freedom we have to indulge and experiment with different personalities. Less clear are the implications of the distinction between one personality with many facets and many personalities, connected to each other and with common memories.
Carter's argument is that we can live more effective and contented lives if instead of bemoaning the weaknesses of our single 'I' we learn to manage the 'household' of different personalities that inhabit our minds.
If we can persuade Rita to speak at the RSA I hope we get a chance to explore both the science and practical implications of her fascinating thesis.
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11 April 2008
Speed dating, parking tickets and English pubs
This week Tim Harford entertained and informed a packed Great Room audience by showing how economics form an important part of many of our daily decisions, whether we realise it or not. With some revealing anecdotes from his new book, The Logic of Life, Tim explained the powerful rationalities that affect our choices - whether we're on a speed-date or trying to decide if it's worth risking that parking ticket. Those of you in the audience would have noticed that this event was being filmed; this is for our new exciting events strand, Vision. Along with our new website, we will be launching RSA Vision soon which will give you all the opportunity to watch some of your favourite events again and again. On Wednesday Polly Toynbee chaired an excellent panel discussion on how we can reverse the worringly persistent correlation between how well-off a family is and the quality of the place they live in. And we rounded off our week with Paul Kingsnorth in conversation with Martin Wright, debating whether the proliferation of chain cafes and the demise of the humble English pub signals a deeper loss of national identity and character. A spirited DSA audience probed and prompted Paul with some great questions as he introduced some of the challenging themes that he writes about in his new book, Real England: Battle against the Bland.
We were delighted to get back some stats from our web team today who not only told us that over 60 people listened online live to Jeremy Deller's recent event but that it has been downloaded as an mp3 file over 1000 times. To listen again to any of our events from this week or before visit the audio pages of our website.
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09 April 2008
Purchases before principles?
There was a great cartoon in yesterday’s FT. A middle aged couple are speaking to another couple visiting them at home. They are in a totally empty room with bare floorboards and a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling. The caption is one of the hosts saying ‘we’re boycotting Chinese goods’.
This time last year in my speech on pro-social behaviour I made the point about how people tend to fall into a model of social change that is Government centric (‘what are they going to do for us?’) when instead we should start from a position that is more citizen centric (‘what are we going to do for each other?’). The cartoon captures this. Many of us support the protests of supporters of Tibetan rights and freedoms, which are aimed at those who govern the Olympic Movement and at governments themselves. Yet, we quite happily continue to go to the computer, electronics or clothes store and splash out on goods made in China.
I am not sure I have the strength of conviction to stop buying Chinese goods myself but it is worth noticing that we find it much easier to attack the ‘condoning’ of China by those in authority than we do to question our own retail collaboration.
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08 April 2008
Fail better
In Chichester last night for an open space event with South East Region committee members, Fellows and guests. It was great to see so many people taking time out on a Monday evening to discuss how the RSA could make a greater impact and be a stronger network. The evening came up with some good ideas and a real desire to grow RSA networks and activities.
I emphasised two points in my opening comments. The first was that while we need to get continual feedback from Fellows as we take forward our ambitions for Fellowship, we need to give as much time to the change we want to achieve in the world outside as to the changes we need internally. There has been lots of debate in the OpenRSA facebook group and our RSA Networks platform about the change process, and we are learning some valuable lessons, many of which will soon be seen in a series of adaptations leading up to a re-launch of RSA Networks platform. But I sense that Fellows are now impatient to focus more on the real world projects that might emerge from our new forms of engagement.
This takes me to my second point. If we are to turn more outwards we need to make sure that the ideas we have are robust and add value to what is out there already. A networking approach, whether delivered online through the Networks platform, or locally in events and emerging relationships like those being fostered in the South East and North West, offers a fast track to testing and developing ideas.
Being an RSA Fellow offers an invaluable opportunity to test out an idea with a group of well-connected, intelligent and diversely talented colleagues. These ideas can come from many different sources. Just today I have been asked to join RSA Network discussions about education reform (instigated by the authors of a fascinating letter in the Journal) and the growing debate about failure (again building on a Journal article). When our new all-singing-all-dancing website goes live soon, it will provide lots of new sources for ideas and debate. For example, our videos of RSA lectures will offer links through to discussion forums about the lecture and from that, possibly, to network initiatives seeking to turn ideas in actions.
The ideas that past muster will then have access to insight, support and participation from Fellows as well as various forms of support from RSA HQ (and our soon-to-be-appointed field work team). But, speaking as someone who has a new idea every week and a good one roughly every three months, it is just as valuable to find out quickly that one’s idea doesn’t quite make the grade. There is nothing worse than putting lots of time and commitment into a brainwave only to find out it has a fatal flaw, that someone is doing it already, or that no one shares your enthusiasm.
When ideas are floated in the RSA Fellowship (whether on or off-line, whether in national local forums) they should get feedback not just from Fellows but from other people and organisations we invite because they have expertise and experience in the area under discussion. A strength of the RSA brand is that busy important people usually respond with enthusiasm to requests from us to offer advice. This way we avoid re-inventing the wheel or, worse, re-inventing the Sinclair C5.
If one in thirty of the ideas floated in emerging Fellowship networks - whether on-line or in off-line sessions like Chichester last night - gets through to the stage of becoming a developed proposal it will be a good hit rate. As Mitchell Sava points out in the Journal, failure can be as creative as success.
Getting these new ways of working right is about resources, systems, participation but also vitally about culture. We need working methods and norms that encapsulate the right combination of challenge and support. RSA Fellows should be seen as the kind of people who have commitment and ideas but also the kind who thrive on constructive criticism.
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07 April 2008
flying the colours
Last week in Fellowship...
We all trooped down to the Thames to watch the RAF fly past and I gave Ann the willies by sitting on the edge of the wall to get a better shot.
We've also started work on developing and improving our recruitment materials. And it's much more complicated than it seemed at first. We want to have better data on our Fellows, so that we can contact you with relevant information and help fulfill your networking requests. So we need to change some of the information on the application form, which means a redesign, and a reprint, and that impacts on the database capacity and search functions, and the data entry protocols, and the links between the new website and the database, and the deadlines for other design work....
These are the sorts of internal grindings going on in just one department, to support and develop the vision of a networked Fellowship, which isn't always obvious on the outside. There's been some frustration recently, both internally and from Fellows, with the progress of the Networks platform and organisational change within the RSA - particularly from the point of view of staff participation in the online section. But, without getting too mushy, I just wanted to 'fly the colours' for the project. This place has undergone a sea change since I joined 18 months ago, and there is an awful lot of work going on internally to enable us to really collaborate with the Fellowship, and we're still moving forward (slowly but surely).
Until next time...
Information on how to join the RSA Fellowship, and how to nominate others here.
(Photographs by me - this one of the RAF flypast over the Thames on the 1st April)
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04 April 2008
Faith - the New Labour way
I was asked on to the Today programme this morning to discuss my former boss’ speech on faith. It’s a well-argued and passionate speech, worth reading whether you are religious and not. I try to think of something original to say on these occasions, but this morning sitting in the Millbank studio I couldn’t get far beyond summarising the speech’s main points.
It was then I was struck by something very familiar about Blair’s analysis. The speech is a New Labour approach to faith. When he became leader of the Labour Party, Blair had two messages for his Party: ‘reform or die’ and, ‘if we do reform we can prove to a sceptical public that our values are more relevant than ever before’.
This is exactly what he argued last night in Westminster Cathedral, but this time it was a speech on behalf of the faith party. Blair’s case was that if moderate people of faith can win out over the extremists and the sectarians they can show faith to have a new relevance in meeting the challenges of globalisation.
I don’t personally share Blair’s belief that religious faith is the most powerful inspiration for altruism. However, as Roberto Unger said in his recent lecture here, globalisation will always feel threatening unless we explicitly allow it to take different forms in different places. Sensitivity to the tensions between globalisation and faith based values is crucial if globalisation is not to be experienced by people as a wrecking ball. Indeed, much of the background to recent uprising in Tibet is about indigenous people objecting to the pervasiveness in their country of the Chinese form of global consumer capitalism.
I find myself more convinced by some aspects of Blair’s inter-faith strategy. In particularly his attempt to get different faiths to put aside their differences to tackle the millennium development goals seems to me more credible than his hope that faith difference can be overcome by focussing on the common features of faiths themselves. To use a trivial example, as a West Brom fan (wish me luck at Wembley tomorrow!) if I wanted to work with a Wolves fan I probably wouldn’t suggest we start off talking about our views on football!
The RSA is an enlightenment organisation. We won’t find common ground with forms of religion which are reactionary, sectarian or anti-scientific. But many of our Fellows are people of faith (as indeed were many of the fathers of the enlightenment) and it is faith that is often the driver of the kind of ‘pro-social’ altruism we argue is a necessity in the modern world. My reservations aside, Blair’s speech is an important contribution to the debate and I hope Fellows agree that it would be interesting to ask him to write a piece along these lines for our new, improved Journal.
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04 April 2008
Memoirs of life, love, death and art
We shot into April at the speed of light with a busy week in the lectures team. First up on Monday evening we continued our education series with Edge on developing the potential of every pupil. Geoff Mulgan of the Young Foundation opened the discussion about diversity of provision in the education system, an area of special interest to the RSA as we look ahead to the opening of the RSA Tipton Academy in September. We were delighted to welcome Anders Hultin to the event to speak to us about the Kunskapsskolan in Sweden, an innovative system of preparatory schools which he co-founded. On Tuesday evening, the novelist Julian Barnes spoke to a packed and attentive Great Room about his memoir of life, love, death and art - Nothing to be Frightened of. This was the first in a new series of collaborations with bookseller Blackwell and we are very much looking forward to welcoming poet, Simon Armitage as our next speaker.
MT has already blogged on our great event on Wednesday with Michael Landy, Neil Boorman and Daniel Miller so I won't elaborate any further than to say that the audio podcast will be available soon for any that missed out on that fascinating discussion.
And to wrap up the week, we welcomed veteran foreign correspondent Robert Fisk to our RSA Thursday stage. After shoe-horning as many people as possible into the Tavern Room, Robert shared memorable moments from his incredible reporting career and caused a great queue of people after the lecture who were eager to question the great man himself.
We slow from a fast gallop to a steady canter next week, and we kick off our week with Tim Harford revealing the hidden logic of life... prepare to be enlightened!
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03 April 2008
The power of things
We had a fantastic event here at JAS last night as part of our Arts and Ecology dialogues. The audience was lively, up for some impromptu and planned participation, and as inspiring as the speakers themselves – I’d really recommend that you have a listen to the podcast, available on the RSA site soon.
First up was Neil Boorman, critic, author, music promoter and all around cool guy, who famously burned all his branded possessions in an effort to rid himself of the tyranny of ‘the brand’. His argument is that we have been conditioned, much like Pavlovian dogs, to desire specific brands because their marketing is specifically designed to appeal to your emotional responses causing us to consume ever more, even if we claim to be brand neutral. Arguably this is mass consumption is unsustainable both economically (re: the credit crunch) and environmentally (climate change).
Daniel Miller, an anthropologist researching material culture at UCL, followed hot on his heels. His forthcoming book The Comfort of Things explores the complex relationship that we have with our stuff, branded or not. He cautions against hope that consumer choices can be a major lever in tackling climate change. This is because our relationship to things is complex. People have to play off the public ethics of buying fair trade and environmentally and the private ethic of saving money for their family or eating healthily. And people are confused: bottled water which largely began from an environmentalist critique of the ‘polluted’ water in our taps has now emerged as a environmental culprit.
Miller believes that we need to allow scientists to work out what the most harmful activities are to the environmental, and for the government to make the tough decisions and legislate against them. This prompted another bit of audience participation – I asked the audience to raise their hands for either a Government Centric or Citizen Centric model for combating climate change, and the results were split about 50/50.
Finally, Michael Landy, the artist who gained notoriety when he catalogued and deconstructed all of his possessions for the piece Breakdown showed his film about the work, and discussed his feelings of elation, and loss. This sparked a debate about whether we should value our ‘things’ more or less – again, the audience voted, and the overwhelming majority believed that we should value our things more.
This reminded me of the famous William Morris quote: ‘have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”. By following this maxim I think that we both value things more and less – our possessions are linked to our memory and to our understanding of ourselves and the world. Maybe we keep them precious to us because we have a desire to feel connected to the material world, because our lives feel so ephemeral in comparison to the world around us.
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03 April 2008
Some RSA news from India
The RSA in India is delighted to report that the Chief Minister of Delhi, Smt Sheila Dikshit has become an Honorary Fellow of the RSA. The President of the Society in India, Lady Stagg, will be celebrating this milestone in the Delhi chapter’s short history on 12th April.
Sheila Dikshit’s devotion to the Union State of Delhi has earned her the respect of the people whom she has tirelessly served for nearly a decade. Ms Dikshit has proven to be a champion of environmental issues, women’s rights and the needs of the poor.
On the same evening the RSA in India will announce the winner of the RSA in India / University of the Arts scholarship and the RSA in India grant award scheme. As India continues its rapid growth the demand for internationally trained designers ever increases. These award schemes reflect our commitment to design development in India.
The RSA in India
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