Social Connections
Social Connections oversees a step-change in encouraging approaches and practices that value and commit to stewarding social capital.
Connected Places
Strengthening communities for social mobility and wellbeing
Connected Places is an approach to boosting economic mobility and social cohesion by fostering social connections.
Our Connected Places intervention builds on research from the RSA and its partners. These studies demonstrate that connections between individuals from different socioeconomic backgrounds are a key indicator of increased economic mobility.
The initiative is a partnership between the RSA and places to combine this cutting-edge research with deep community engagement. We support communities to increase the opportunities to mix across lines of difference and decrease the biases that prevent us from connecting by:
- deploying data and mapping to show where social capital is substantial and where it is under strain.
- convening regional stakeholders across every level of the system, to promote social connection in the places that need them most.
- developing the backbone supports, impact measures and shared resources to build a ‘Chamber of Connection’ for your region and sustain action at a neighbourhood level.
What is social capital, and why does it matter?
Social capital refers to the trust, networks, and shared values that bind communities together, fostering a sense of unity and cohesion. It includes:
Bonding capital
Close ties within families, neighbourhoods or peer groups.
Bridging capital
Connections between different groups, communities or backgrounds.
The decline of social capital over recent decades has been linked with increased inequality, reduced civic participation and a lack of social trust (leading to increased polarisation). However, social capital has traditionally been hard to measure, making its economic and social impacts difficult to quantify.
Our groundbreaking Revealing Social Capital research project, developed in partnership with leading researchers and Meta, lets us map ‘social capital’ at a very local level. We can see where connections are strong, where they’re under strain, and what this means for people’s life chances, wellbeing, and local cohesion.
The most striking result, which holds in both the UK and the US, is that connections between people from high- and low-income households (a bridging capital called economic connectedness) are one of the strongest predictors of upward economic mobility, as well as wellbeing metrics such as trust, life satisfaction, and social support.
In the UK, children from low-income households who grow up in areas with many friendships between income groups earn more as adults, approximately £5,000 per year, compared to those growing up in areas with less social mixing.
What makes a connected place?
Our research indicates that two factors influence the level of bridging capital and economic connectedness in place: exposure to people across lines of difference and bias (or homophily), which reduces the desire to connect outside of one’s closest communities. Exposure alone is not enough to build connections.
We have found that bias is often lowest in ‘third spaces,’ where a shared interest or goal enables connection, often through identity (such as faith), activity (sports, arts), or purpose (volunteering, civic engagement).
Our Connected Places work at a neighbourhood level to answer two questions:
- In situations where there is high social exposure, how can we reduce bias?
- Where there are deep bonds and low bias, how do we increase exposure?
Connected Places pilot programme
We are developing an international cohort of pilot ‘Connected Places’ programmes in areas around the UK and the US. We currently have projects in Ealing, Essex, Baltimore and Boston.
The Connected Places approach can be adapted to the unique character, ambitions, and priorities of each place. This set-up phase of work develops the data, organisational relationships and strategies for sustainable collective impact at a regional and neighbourhood level.
Mapping the opportunity
Use novel data to map social capital, connectedness and mobility to a hyper-local level, and qualitative work to map local assets and needs.
Convene the coalition
Bring together residents, institutions, businesses, and policymakers with shared goals to increase the breadth, depth, and quality of connections and shared measures of success.
Demonstrate collective impact
Provide strategic direction based on national/international comparators, organisational delivery support, and accountability/evaluation metrics for success.
Outputs from the pilot
For the neighbourhood
Hyper-local change led by residents, supported by the system
More community-led spaces and activities with low levels of bias by design.
Improved ‘pro-social’ design of services, businesses and institutions to encourage connection in locations of high exposure.
For the system
Foundations of a sustainable ‘connections lab’ for the borough or district
New cutting-edge research undertaken by a coalition of partners points to a strong link between social connections within and between communities, and improved social mobility, wellbeing and trust.
We work with places to co-create bespoke programmes and interventions which help strengthen ties within and between groups and communities.
Our work is designed to catalyse social mobility among those from low-income backgrounds. And our unique approach draws on robust, cutting-edge data, and ensures collaboration with places to set out a shared vision, common goals, and metrics for impact.
We help places set out strategies and interventions that respond to their unique assets, characteristics and needs while reflecting the ambitions of the people who live, work and study there.
We have already partnered with Ealing Council, Essex County Council and Baltimore-based community group Thread to unleash the power of social capital in their communities.
In Ealing, the RSA is working with the borough’s seven towns to strengthen community ties, improve wellbeing, and support local-led change. In Essex, the RSA is supporting the county’s Caring Communities Commission- helping people feel more connected and better able to influence local decisions on health and social care. In Baltimore, RSA US has partnered with community group Thread and local leaders to weave social connections into the fabric of daily life.
Over time, will continue to grow the cohort of places we work with to gather evidence, identify best practices for replenishing social capital, and improve the lives of people who live, work and study there.
Get involved
Partner your place with the RSA and be part of a cohort of pilot locations at the cutting edge of developing practical and scalable approaches to building social capital.
Work with the RSA and help fund a cohort of pilot places exploring how to best map and replenish social capital to improve health and social mobility outcomes for residents. Contact our strategic partnerships team to find out more.
Explore our Social Connection work
Revealing Social Capital
We want to better understand how social connections between people affect the opportunities they have in their lives. We call this ‘social capital’.
Mapping Social Capital
Our Mapping Social Capital work looked at six billion UK Facebook friendships to see how connected people are across income levels.
