March 2008
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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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28 March 2008
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
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28 March 2008
thursday night fever
This week in Fellowship...
We didn't have John Travolta in white flares, but we did have an eardrum busting samba band. What am I talking about..? The Young Achievers Trust awards ceremony of course! Yours truly was presenting the community category and it was fantastic to be able to give these young people the congratulations and recognition they deserve for all their hard work.
Projects included a football club to engage hard to reach youngsters, an anti-bullying competition, a music event for homeless artists, and an ecology education programme for primary school children. All initiated and led by young people, who have often overcome their own difficult circumstances to achieve such fantastic results. But I don't want to give too much away yet, because there'll be more in our next Journal.
I am hoping that all of these young people will take up our offer to join the RSA, and we'll be looking for advisors and mentors for them amongst the Fellowship. Do email me laura.billings@rsa.org.uk if you'd like to know more about this.
In other news, we've been re-carpeted and re-painted on the 3rd floor. So apologies if you found it hard to contact us either side of the Easter break, but we were all either roaming the building like lost lambs searching for a spare workstation, or like me, working from home and consuming double the normal amount of tea. Everything is back in its proper place now.
Until next time...
Information on how to join the RSA Fellowship, and how to nominate others here.
(Photographs by me - this one taken at the awards ceremony at The Bridge SE1)
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25 March 2008
'The centre cannot hold'?
I know, I know, everyone tells me to write shorter blogs†maybe next time
Looking forward to Jack Straw’s speech here tomorrow. The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (as is his title) will be officially launching our Prison Learning Network. I understand that Jack plans to say some very interesting things about how to embed the criminal justice system more concretely in local communities.
I’m sure there will be a couple of new announcements in Jack’s speech. These will add to the seemingly unstoppable tide of policy ideas, proposals and commitments emerging every day from Government. Although I find myself agreeing with a lot of what I hear, I can’t help wondering about the sheer scale of the Government’s objectives.
The scope of central Government is subject to continuous and sometimes substantial change. In the 1980s the privatisation of utilities meant Government went from running industries to providing a framework of regulation. More recently, Labour’s alleged ‘control freak’ tendencies have been somewhat belied by two massive transfers of power away from Whitehall: the independence of the Bank of England and devolution to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
But the extra items coming onto the Cabinet agenda dwarf even these shifts away from the centre. As well as all the responsibilities Labour inherited in 1997 has been added the whole slew of law and order, security and identity management issues, responding to climate change, and a growing set of complex ‘behaviour change’ challenges like obesity, poor parenting and binge drinking. Gordon Brown is also seen to be prioritising international development and national values and identity. Yesterday it was briefed that the Government plans major reforms on Party funding, the House of Lords, a Bill of Rights and the voting system.
I am all for constitutional modernisation and – recalling how difficult it was to get senior Cabinet ministers to sign up to this kind of thing when I worked for Tony Blair – I envy the political authority Number Ten has to drive radical change. The question is whether any corporate centre, even one as full of clever people as Downing Street and the Cabinet Office, can manage this scale of external challenge and internally generated initiatives.
There are libraries of research and recommendation about modernising public services and the civil service but in a brief internet search ahead of writing this piece I couldn’t find anything that spoke directly to the sheer scale of central Government’s task. Among some of the more thoughtful newspaper columnists there is a growing critique of Labour’s competence in governing, but while some ministers may be overactive, terrorism, climate change and binge drinking weren’t problems made up by Whitehall.
The obvious strategy to deal with central overload is devolution, and as I have said before, the Government really does seem to be trying to hand more power to local authorities. But is this enough, especially when central Government will still be held accountable for overall public service performance and if things go badly wrong? I have spoken about the need to move from a ‘government centric’ to a ’citizen centric’ way of thinking about social change but can Government itself facilitate this?
This is a very broad brush attempt to open a debate. Another way of kick starting it is a proposal of my own. How about Government transferring responsibility for major areas of constitutional and democratic reform (like voting system, Lords and party funding) to Parliament? Parties would still have their own policies to which they would be accountable at election time, but the task of policy development, consensus building, as well as the detailed drafting of legislation would move from Downing Street, the Cabinet and Whitehall to MPs backed by a beefed up Parliamentary secretariat. This would arguably be in line with Gordon Brown’s commitment to enhance the status and powers of Parliament. It would certainly take some tricky items off the Cabinet table.
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19 March 2008
Double vision
Another good week of speakers here at RSA. Clay Shirky spoke about organising without organisations to a packed Great Room yesterday. It was a brilliant talk – available now as a downloadable audio file, and in a few weeks as an edited video!
Clay’s view about on-line and off line networks were better thought through and more balanced than the utopianism heard from some quarters. But there was plenty here to encourage us in our vision for the RSA.
Equally encouraging, from another perspective, was reading Sir Ronald Cohen's The Second Bounce of the Ball, which he spoke to here last night. In the book Cohen tells the reader how his idea of venture capital was a decade ahead of its time in Europe. Indeed he launched his first fund in the unpropitious economic times of the 1970s. But eventually perseverance – which ranks pretty high up Cohen list of key requirements for an entrepreneur – won through.
We are learning a lot as we develop the ideas behind RSA Networks. Scaling up the numbers who can access the platform, dedicating more resources to moderation and developing a more user friendly and engaging platform are all parts of this learning process. We are also getting more interest from regional and local RSA chapters that want to use the platform as the basis for developing area based activities. We will need many virtues as we seek to enable the Fellowship to become a network for civic innovation – including perseverance.
We are saying ‘goodbye’ today to Liz Winder, head of our lectures team. Anyone working in an organisation, especially as old as RSA, knows they are part of a story that begins before them and carries on afterwards. Yesterday, we started filming lectures for our new website. An innovation like this is possible because we can build on the strong foundations built by Liz and her team in her nearly two decades at the RSA.
My first visit to JAS was for an event with Al Gore which was one of the many great events overseen by Liz. We will all miss her but, hopefully, as well as coming in to see us at John Adam Street she can visit our website and see some of the fruits of her years of brilliant service for the RSA.
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19 March 2008
New Horizons
This week we explored new horizons by filming our speakers for the first time. Clay Shirky fulfilled the title of his talk, “Here Comes Everybody” by packing out the Great Room and leaving the chair of GDAC to fend off a huge number of calls from disappointed people who couldn’t get in. Clay told us it was the best audience he’d had recently – it’s nice to know we have the best audiences as well as the best speakers.
We also filmed the eminent Sir Ronald Cohen who shared his thoughts on entrepreneurship. After finishing the talk early to accommodate his busy schedule, he found that his popularity had beaten his diary - and signed books for a very long queue of people in the lobby. Many thanks to him for giving up this extra time as well as sharing some valuable insights.And speaking of new horizons, Liz Winder, our Head of Lectures and member of the RSA family for eighteen years, is leaving to explore some of her own. (The Chair of GDAC has been so distraught she could barely concentrate on Monday night’s “Damages”). Matthew has paid formal tribute, but the Lectures team would like to add that Lectures life will never be the same again. To say that Liz has been the mastermind of many Lectures triumphs, and the best manager any of us could hope for, simply wouldn’t be enough – and there also aren’t sufficient words to express how much we will miss her.
Liz’s best moments include an event with Ronald Reagan which was followed up by tea with him and Nancy; the BBC “Any Questions?” event with Lord Tebbit and Peter Tatchell together, and more recently events with Al Gore, Kofi Annan, David Cameron and Alistair Darling. Her worst moments include finding out that the office of a top international speaker had neglected to put his speaking engagement in the diary†but all ended well as the person in question ultimately honoured their commitment!
So long Liz – it’s been wonderful working with you and we envy whoever bags you next!
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18 March 2008
The Big Debate - Academies
Tune in to Teacher's TV tomorrow at 19:00 to see the Jonathan Dimbleby Big Debate on Academies - featuring Our Matthew in the red corner. It's a subject close to our heart...Isabella (Website Editor)
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17 March 2008
take your seats
This week in Fellowship...
We had a fantastic 'New Fellows Evening' to welcome a group of eager new recruits. We've been hosting them for a while, but following recent input from Fellows we've been having a real think about the Fellow's journey into the RSA and how we can welcome you and introduce ourselves a lot better. It's work in progress but this week we showcased the new format welcome evening.
Tour highlights include: the Networks team demonstrating the Networks platform; Wayne doing his presentation on the history of the RSA (did you know that the Durham Street Auditorium is curved because it was originally a tunnel from the Strand to the Thames; a public right of way until the 1920's, people herded dairy cows through it before we installed the purple seats and started herding Fellows); Sophie and Rob showcasing the library and archive; and a show round of the newly refurbished Gerard Bar that now boasts late opening til 22.00 so you can pop past and have a glass of wine in the evening. It's so new I don't have a photo to show you, but it's really rather smart.
So now it's back to the recruitment research for me and, as always, I have plenty to be getting on with.
Until next time...
Information on how to join the RSA Fellowship, and how to nominate others here.
(Photographs by me - this one taken in the RSA's Great Room)
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14 March 2008
Two innovation powerhouses
Fantastic night at Lewisham College on Wednesday. The Principal, Ruth Silver (FRSA) had invited me to be the pre-dinner speaker for the College’s annual fund raising banquet. I managed just to deliver on my promise to cover the birth of human rights, brain science, and the need for a new collectivism, to tell some jokes and to land my speech back at Lewisham College all in ten minutes. The fantastic food was cooked and served by College students, for whom it was part of their course assessment.
Sitting next to Ruth – without doubt one of the UK’s great public service pioneers – it occurred to me how two of the less ‘sexy’ of the public services – social care and further education have both become power houses of innovation. In social care the driver was client and carer dissatisfaction with the services on offer which, combined with a rights based approach, led to the work of In Control and then on to the rolling out of direct payments.
Further education will be a crucial partner in the new Diplomas, which look increasingly certain to become the framework for all 14-19 education (including ‘A’ levels). I suspect colleges will find it much easier than most schools to work collaboratively with other education providers and with employers.
FE is also at the forefront of two key Government priorities – tackling worklessness and improving skills. We are used to debates about the private sector selling its services to the public sector but in adult FE the direction is reversed. Lewisham’s team have become expert at selling to employers the business case for publicly funded and provided training to employers. As they were telling me on Wednesday their opening line to employers isn’t ‘why aren’t you training your staff’ but rather ‘would you like to improve customer satisfaction by a third?’
Social care because its services were failing, and FE because it has had to constantly renew its mission, have become sites of major innovation. Chatting this morning to Fran Sainsbury, who is heading our project on offender learning and skills, we wondered whether prisons could themselves one day been seen as testing ground for new ideas and practices.
There is lots of interesting work on education going on in our prisons and continuing into the community. Yet for various reasons little of this innovation gets noticed or debated outside the prison and probation fields.. This is something our own project will aim to change.
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14 March 2008
A fond farewell
This week lecture-goers braved wild weather to enjoy two events. First we enjoyed a range of views on Future Radio. A lively debate, the only point on which everyone agreed was that digital radio needs an optional “crackle” button. Manufacturers, take note!
Our Thursday lunchtime debate was no less contentious, as we featured Counterknowledge, Damian Thompson’s fiery polemic against all forms of modern quackery. A packed audience witnessed Damian defying death by aconite (in a practical demonstration of the dubious claims of homeopathic medicine) and were exhorted to sharpen their critical faculties, vigorously defend free speech and renew the public sphere – entertainment and enlightenment in equal measure!
This week’s GDAC (Glossy Drama Appreciation Club) examined the film “The Other Boleyn Girl” – with initially surprising but ultimately satisfying casting of the Boleyn sisters, it’s well worth a look. But can there be a hotter Henry than Jonathan Rhys-Myers of “Tudors” fame? The club is split on this burning issue – but the Chair is definitely voting for Rhys-Myers – sorry Eric!
Also under discussion was BBC4’s “Mad Men” – perhaps too early for judgement but good to be reminded of a time when smokers weren’t confined to shivering outside pubs!
But all this jollity is but a feeble attempt to lighten heavy hearts†. Next week, we are losing our highly respected and much loved head of department. We’ll be looking back at her finest and favourite moments next week, and wishing her well after her dedicated eighteen year service with the RSA.
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11 March 2008
Why are children unhappy?
‘Why are children so unhappy’ trumpets the Independent front page today. The question and the accompanying article creates the impression of a younger generation more disturbed, dysfunctional and depressed than ever before.
The concerns are real enough and the main point in this post is about what we should do. But a word of caution first. When making sweeping and alarming statements it is important to be clear what is being claimed. In particular we need to separate the existence of issues that are worrying from the implication that they are getting worse. To take one example it is, of course, true that we have a big problem with childhood obesity. However, to recognise this is not the same as saying that children are becoming less healthy. Indeed as the RSA Report on Risk and Childhood pointed out last year, on most indicators today’s children are healthier and safer than ever.
The reason we encourage the media to turn specific and important set of problems into a more pervasive message of social pessimism may be twofold.
Firstly, it is disturbing to realise that unhappiness co-exists with plenty. Although the poorest children are the least healthy (in mind and body) it is clear that even those laden with consumer gadgets and treats can be one or more of sad, unhealthy, anxious, aggressive.
Second, and related, we no longer see childhood problems as the unfinished business of progress (as it felt when people were abolishing child chimney sweeps, eradicating polio, providing free school meals etc). We see today’s childhood discontents and traumas as the flip side of progress.
But, anyway, on to solutions. There are many and as I said we need to get behind the hype to develop specific solutions to specific problems. However, for the RSA a high priority is enabling schools to be intelligent communities. The great work of schools like Wellington College (headed by Anthony Seldon) or schools using the Opening Minds curriculum demonstrate the benefit of working directly with these issues. Still, overall, too many feel like exam factories, in which hearing the pupils' voices or addressing issues like individual and collective well-being are seen as low priorities. Schools are a public institution unlike any other. Young people have a long term relationship with a single institution from which they will emerge with many of their life choices and life chances clearer and more circumscribed (a key paradox of schooling is that it is both about opening up and narrowing down possibilities for students).
Making schools the kind of places where youngsters can individually and collectively overcome the kinds of problems modern life throws at them is vital. It is something I talk about in speeches - such as the one I gave last week to the Association of School and College Lecturers – and I’m sure it will be an important theme in the work of our emerging RSA Future Schools Network.
Thanks for the comments on the last blog. I agree with Bob and Susie. There are still challenges to be addressed to have more user public services. I think, Bob, the Government remains signed up to user empowerment and contestability in service provision. That is certainly the direction of travel, for example, in employment, and there was an interesting reference to a more radical user driven approach in the recent drugs strategy. And thanks Matt for a very interesting article.
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07 March 2008
Brain Food
RSA Screens is going from strength from strength as we started this week with acclaimed British director, Nick Broomfield’s controversial new film, Battle for Haditha. This is a war film about ordinary people in an impossible situation, chronicling a series of of still disputed events which led to a number of tragic killings in Iraq in November 2005. A packed Great Room came to see this special screening and pose a series of challenging questions to the great man himself.
From matters of life and death to yet more questions about the very fundamentals of human existence. Leading experts in the practice and philosophy of medical science, Adam Zeman and Ray Tallis continued our popular RSA Thursday series with a revealing exploration of the brain, from atom to pysche. Despite ever more astonishing scientific advances, Zeman and Tallis agreed that we still struggle to bridge the explanatory gap between the physical brain and the mind. Food for thought of the very highest order...
Now to highlight two very exciting events coming up in our Spring programme:
We will be welcoming one of culture’s wisest observers and a regular writer on all things to do with the internet Clay Shirky. Clay will be exploring the impact of online social networks on the fast-changing world around us.
Finally to coincide with the launch of the RSA’s new Prison Learning Network, Rt Hon Jack Straw MP will be examining the major issues in prisons policy today.
A lighter blog next week as the Chair of the GDAC (glossy drama appreciation club) returns to fill you in on all the gossip!
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04 March 2008
Oligarchs, the fall of communism and the RSA
For reformers history has a hard lesson. Those who offer the prospect of change can unleash desires and expectations which not only sweep away the old order but make the citizenry impatient with the attempts of those same reformers to manage transition.
This thought was provoked by seeing a full-page advertisement for Louis Vuitton luggage in the FT featuring former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. A man who history will no doubt judge as a great leader and reformer who was rejected by his own people in favour, first of the excesses of Yeltsin, and now the authoritarian nationalism of Putin and Medvedev.
It is, I know, risible to draw comparisons between the fall of Communism and the reform of the RSA. One involves overthrowing decades of central power and exposing an ageing oligarchy to openness and accountability, the other happened in Russia.
But seriously† The RSA has benefited from great leadership in the past. In recent years the decision to develop the vaults showed great vision, making John Adam Street an exceptional venue and helping to put the House on a sound financial footing. Among other achievements, my predecessor Penny Egan oversaw the development of our research programme and worked with the Trustees to get agreement to our Academy (on which front things are going well). Now, the over-riding reforming goal is to enable the Fellowship to work as a powerful network of civic innovation.
Progress has been impressive. The open space day on November 22nd was a powerful launch pad for phase one of the project. We now have getting on for 400 Fellows and invited guests participating on the RSA Networks platform. Last week we had a very positive meeting of regional officers, who are clearly committed to greater Fellow engagement and real world impact.
But I also sense some impatience that the process of change is not even faster. 2008 will be a watershed year for the RSA Fellowship with momentum building as the year goes on. As I never cease to remind people, the 2007-8 budget contained virtually no money for Fellow engagement and organisation, in the year ahead we intend to spend upwards of £250k on Network organisers at JAS and fieldworkers to support Fellows' initiatives outside London. In a few months we will see the regional websites integrated in the new national website. And as the year proceeds, first new Fellows, then all Fellows in selected localities will be invited on to the RSA Networks platform.
The Fellows' recruitment journey will be re-designed to stress the scope for networking and civic engagement. And I hope that on the Networks platform we will move from a fascinating discussion on how to make RSA Networks work to the development of projects about change in the outside world.
How far and how fast we go ultimately depends on Fellows themselves. Our role is to support the change. But creating the right infrastructure can't happen overnight. It requires a step by step increase in investment and for us to learn and adapt as the change develops. I have a Trustees' away day next week and will be working with them to agree ambitions goals for the next three years.
Transformation is possible as long as we all - Trustees, Fellows, regional officers - are part of the change, enjoying its highs but also working together through the challenges it is bound to present.
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