RSA celebrates UK-Japan ties at Expo 2025
From regional development to sustainable futures, the RSA’s final week at Expo 2025 Osaka brought together UK and Japanese leaders to tackle shared global challenges and strengthen bilateral partnerships.
Photo credit: UK Department for Business and Trade
The RSA’s events programme for Expo 2025 has concluded with a packed week of activities celebrating UK-Japan connections across policy, arts, sustainability and research.
Running from 3-10 October in Osaka and London, the week featured a panel discussion on regional growth, a three-day arts festival, a public talk on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the prestigious Edward Boyle Memorial Lecture on international research collaboration.
The finale capped six months of RSA programming supporting the UK’s World Expo campaign at the 2025 World Expo in Osaka, which ran from April to October under the theme Designing Future Society for Our Lives. Working with the UK’s Department for Business and Trade, and partners including the British Chamber of Commerce in Japan, the RSA hosted events spotlighting bold ideas shaping the future.
Devlyn Lalonde, the RSA’s Senior Global Manager, said that Expo 2025 had been a powerful platform for the RSA to share the “spirit of innovation and internationalism” that it has championed since initiating the first World Expo – the Great Exhibition – in 1851, and then organising the follow-up exhibition in 1862.
“We’ve brought together exceptional UK and Japanese leaders and thousands of people to explore critical themes – from sustainability, gender equity and the arts to regional growth and the importance of global research networks. We look forward to continuing to strengthen UK-Japan dialogue through our global Fellowship and valued partners.”
Regional growth: lessons from Japan
The final week opened in Osaka on 3 October with a panel discussion examining how Japan’s cities and prefectures can drive regional growth. Sponsored by the University of Birmingham and the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA), the session explored the governance and funding arrangements that enable effective local development.
Chaired by CIPFA Chief Economist Jeffrey Matsu, the event brought together representatives from METI Kansai, the Union of Kansai Governments, the United Nations University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability, and the British Consulate General Osaka.
Carolyn Davidson, UK Commissioner General for Expo 2025, emphasised the importance of regional leadership and cross-sector partnerships. “Regional growth matters. Cities and regions are where innovation, sustainability and community resilience take root,” she said.
Closing reflections were offered by Professor Anne Green and Dr Abigail Taylor from the University of Birmingham’s City-Region Economic Development Institute. According to Green: “There is a big appetite to learn from elsewhere because local areas face many common issues. International comparison helps us identify new approaches – and it helps us reflect on our own policies and practice at home.”
Breaking down barriers
Cultural ties were strengthened through a three-day festival from 3 to 6 October in Osaka examining how we can live harmoniously in a fractured world. RSA Fellows and other artists showcased their work across dance, music and photography, including 75 artworks curated by event sponsor Global 50/50 that challenge global gender inequality.
Featured artists in the Global 50/50 This is Gender exhibition included Hardeep Singh, whose work Fragmented Faces explores deaf and gender-fluid identity. “This exhibition helps break barriers and gives exposure to artists like me who see the world through a deaf lens,” Singh said. “This show is a refusal to be silenced, simplified, or seen only through someone else’s lens.”
The festival challenged participants to envision their changing world through new and hopeful perspectives. A standout moment came with an art exhibition from new media artist and creative technologist Akane Hiraoka FRSA, whose work demonstrates how AI can amplify artistic expression and unlock creative opportunities.
Rather than viewing AI as a threat, Hiraoka’s exhibition invited attendees to embrace technology as a catalyst for innovation and human creativity. “My art is not something to look at, it’s something that looks back,” she explained of her practice, capturing the interactive and reciprocal nature of the work.
But it wasn’t just about art. The programme explored interconnection across multiple disciplines and traditions. Presentations bridged cultural heritage with contemporary practice, from recovering forgotten design histories to honouring collective memory.
Performance and movement-based work celebrated the body as a vehicle for expression and human connection, while architectural perspectives examined how physical spaces shape our lived experience and relationships. Sound and visual art installations invited reflection on shared global experiences and our responsibility to one another.
Collectively, these contributions reinforced the central message: that hopeful transformation emerges when we welcome diverse creative practices, embrace technological innovation and recognise our connection to one another and the natural world.
Sizing the challenge ahead
On 6 October, the RSA hosted the fourth in its series of public talks simultaneously broadcast from the Great Room at RSA House and the UK Pavilion at Osaka. The session, entitled the SDGs and Beyond, examined progress on the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals and was chaired by both Ben Sheppard, Co-Founder of global charity Design for Good, in London, and Carolyn Davidson in Osaka.
In his introduction, Sheppard highlighted the analysis for the UN’s latest status report, which made for “uncomfortable reading”, he suggested. “Out of the 17 goals, six are in the most severe category of challenging/going backwards, 11 are in the second most severe category, including climate change, and at best stagnating. None is marked as being on track. And that’s why discussions like today’s are so important.”
The SDGs and Beyond event followed three previous dual-location public talks hosted this year: Come build the future in April, Gender Equity and Justice in August, and The Future of Sustainability in September. In total, the RSA’s Expo 2025 series attracted an audience of more than 5,000 people both in person in London and Osaka, and online.
UK-Japan research collaboration
The week concluded on 10 October with the Edward Boyle Memorial Lecture, co-hosted by the RSA and the University of Leeds at the Osaka campus of Ritsumeikan University. The lecture focused on UK-Japan cooperation, drawing on examples from REINKEI – a consortium of ten research-intensive universities committed to tackling global challenges through collaboration.
For more than 30 years, the Edward Boyle Memorial Lecture has covered music, learning and education in memory of the former UK Minister for Education, Minister for Science and Vice Chancellor of the University of Leeds. The 2025 lecture explored UK-Japan research across climate resilience and sustainable food systems, healthy ageing, digital innovation and knowledge diplomacy.
Professor Rob Sturman of the University of Leeds and immediate past UK Co-Chair of RENKEI, emphasised the urgency of global cooperation. “Many of today’s biggest problems – climate change, ageing societies, energy and food security – are too big and interconnected for any one researcher, any one university, or even one nation to solve alone,” he said.
Research and real-world impact
Other speakers highlighted how RENKEI supports early-career researchers, helps institutions translate research into action and strengthens cultural understanding between the UK and Japan.
Professor Moto Hiro Tsuchiya, Vice-President for Global Engagement at Keio University and Japan Co-Chair of RENKEI, underlined the transformative impact of in-person collaboration. “Spending time in a foreign country still changes your life – we learn from each other, and that is why we must do research together. In-person meeting and staying a little longer abroad remain a big engine for international research.”
Case studies highlighted during the event included joint work on AI-enabled healthy ageing, cross-cultural nutrition research, and pathways to a just transition to a net-zero world.
Closing the event, Professor Natalie Konomi, Vice President at Kyushu University, explained the benefits that develop from researchers collaborating with their counterparts in other parts of the world, including the impact of uncertainty.
“Experiencing uncertainty is what makes people grow as a student, as a researcher and as a human being,” she told attendees.
The RSA would like to thank our sponsors and partners for making this series a success. For over 270 years, the RSA has brought together people and ideas to solve the most pressing challenges of our time. As Expo 2025 closes, we look ahead to transforming our discussions into action and building the next chapter of innovation and collaboration that the world urgently needs.
You can watch replays of the four London/Osaka events plus other videos focusing on World Expo 2025 through the RSA’s YouTube channel.
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