Rsa Events

On 26 March 2020, a new law appeared that confined us to our homes. Passed under a state of emergency that was meant to be short but lasted 763 days, this law was one of over 100 lockdown laws that were never debated in parliament. Though certainly justified by the rapid spread of Covid-19, these laws increasingly confused the public and restricted our freedoms more than ever before.New laws like the Public Order Bill are bringing in limitations to free speech and our right to protest. Just like laws made during the state of emergency, this Bill has been criticised as a threat to our freedoms, human rights and democracy.Here at the RSA, one of the UK’s leading human rights barristers, Adam Wagner, will reflect on these laws and their impact on our human rights. Adam will explore how these laws are passed in parliament, understood by the public, enforced by the police, and why we should never take our rights for granted.#RSAfreedomsBecome an RSA Events sponsor: https://utm.guru/udI9xDonate to The RSA: https://

From Roe v Wade and Black Lives Matter to gun control and immigration, US politics in 2022 looks as partisan as ever, with debates framed in moralistic terms and parties focusing on mobilising the faithful rather than wooing the sceptical. People increasingly write one another off instead of seeking to win one another over. In this age of continued polarisation, democracy looks close to breaking point.But while it’s easy to fall into despair, there are grounds for hope, if we look close enough. Across America, there are those working round the clock to heal wounds, bridge divisions, change minds and create new political possibilities. Best-selling author Anand Giridharadas takes us to the frontline of this new battle, introducing us to the activists, politicians, educators and citizens striving to build more inclusive movements, and answer the urgent question: how can democracy be saved, and who is going to save it?#RSApersuadersBecome an RSA Events sponsor: https://utm.guru/udI9xDonate to The RSA: https://ut

Raj Chetty, professor of public economics at Harvard University will share the findings from research analysis of Meta data on the relationship between the social connections of individuals and economic mobility in the US. Research led by Harvard’s Opportunity Insights used large-scale privacy-protected social network datasets to study social capital in neighbourhoods, schools and colleges.Professor Chetty is joined by Lucy Makinson, head of policy at the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) to explore the findings in more detail.What are the key implications in this US data for other countries and regions? How can these findings be further developed, and policy recommendations suggested to help improve social connectivity and economic mobility? What interventions could be made to enable these actions – and do they extend to the services themselves?The UK leg of this work is being taken forward by a coalition of partners including the RSA, BIT and Neighbourly Lab.#RSAconnectBecome an RSA Events sponsor: https://ut

Our capacity to survive, adapt and flourish relies on designing a future that is concurrently sustainable and resilient. Whereas sustainability is accepted as a key tenet of good design, resilient design is still in its infancy seeking greater understanding and definition.Dame Jo da Silva RDI has earned global recognition as an engineer who has applied her knowledge and design expertise to improve safety, promote inclusivity, and enhance resilience of communities, cities, and infrastructure globally. Her talk will focus on her personal journey and growing understanding of what resilience means in practice based on her experiences working with vulnerable communities, ‘building back better’ following crises and exploring what makes cities resilient.Prior to the Address, 5 new Royal Designers for Industry (RDI) and 4 new Honorary Royal Designers for Industry will be welcomed to the Faculty.The title ‘Royal Designer for Industry’ is awarded annually by the RSA to designers of all disciplines who have achieved sus

The Grenfell Tower disaster was the worst residential fire in Britain since World War II and it didn’t have to happen. The fire climbed up cladding as flammable as solid petrol. Fire doors failed to self-close. There was no alarm to warn sleeping residents and no evacuation plan. As smoke seeped into their homes, all were told to ‘stay put’ and 72 people would lose their lives.Five years on, many of the resulting public inquiry’s recommendations remain unmet. Many high-rise buildings have yet to have the same dangerous cladding removed. Peter Apps is deputy editor of Inside Housing and the only journalist to have followed the story of Grenfell from the start. At the RSA, he looks at how such a disaster could take place in the wealthiest borough in the wealthiest city in one of the wealthiest countries in the world and asks: what needs to be done to prevent a tragedy like Grenfell from ever happening again?#RSAhousingBecome an RSA Events sponsor: https://utm.guru/udI9xDonate to The RSA: https://utm.guru/udNNBF

Black African communities have had a seismic impact across British culture, sports, politics, and more. Immigration from countries like Nigeria, Ghana and Zimbabwe has created many vibrant communities across Britain, especially in London. Across food, faith, and culture, the nation's capital has become a melting pot of ideas of what it is to be Black, African, and British. What can the eclectic nature of African London teach us about ties that bind immigrant communities together and to their home countries? How are these communities shaped by ongoing racial discrimination between White and Black communities and between Black Africans and Afro-Caribbeans?  At the RSA, writer, editor and restaurant critic, Jimi Famurewa shares stories of time spent immersed in the culture, tradition, food, and politics of Black African London and explores what this can teach us about the nature of modern London, modern Britain, and modern diaspora life.#RSAjourneysBecome an RSA Events sponsor: https://utm.guru/udI9xDonate to Th

Small change can have a big impact on our lives. Through knock-on effects and cumulative action, little shifts have the potential for great harm and great good. And when it is easy to feel overwhelmed at the scale of change needed to solve big, structural problems, we need to recognise the value of practical change we can enact on a daily basis.In recent times, the twin plagues of Covid-19 and anti-Black police violence have caused Ruha Benjamin to rethink the importance of these every day, individual actions across our lives and societies - from the impact of the chronic stress of racism and inequities in our health care system to the power of community organisers who are fostering mutual aid and collective healing.Here at the RSA, Ruha Benjamin will demonstrate the impact of these micro-changes, drawing on her personal experience and professional research on race, technology, and justice. Alongside the chair of the discussion, Mandu Reid, leader of the Women’s Equality Party, Ruha will offer an inspiring an

When the economist Ha-Joon Chang arrived in Britain in the eighties, he was struck by how bland and homogeneous the British diet was. But it wasn’t just the food – in mainstream economic thinking too, there seemed to only be one item on the menu – the Neoclassical tradition.  Whilst our diet has expanded and diversified since then, our economic preference has remained stubbornly singular. Chang argues that just as a nourishing and appetising diet needs a variety of flavours and nutrients, our economics also needs to borrow from different traditions and ways of thinking in order to produce the best results for the greatest number of people.   Discover more about how economics affects every dimension of our lives - check out Ha-Joon Chang's RSA Animate here.#RSAeconomicsBecome an RSA Events sponsor: https://utm.guru/udI9xDonate to The RSA: https://utm.guru/udNNBFollow RSA Events on Instagram: https://instagram.com/rsa_events/Follow the RSA on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RSAEventsLike RSA Events on Facebook: ht

Is there scope for the introduction of a universal basic income as a transformative public health intervention?As part of an academic partnership, funded by Wellcome, the RSA is exploring the potential for a UBI, how it could work in practice and what its impacts might be. The research brings together new analysis which shows that even a fiscally neutral UBI could have a significant effect in reducing poverty and insecurity and bring health benefits to those benefiting from the scheme. Speakers to include report authors Matthew Johnson, Northumbria University and Hannah Webster, RSA; and guest speakers Ruth Lister CBEand Professor Guy Standing.The event marks the launch of a new RSA report exploring the health and wellbeing impacts of a universal basic income.Read our interim report on a UBI and mental health#RSAUBIBecome an RSA Events sponsor: https://utm.guru/udI9xDonate to The RSA: https://utm.guru/udNNBFollow RSA Events on Instagram: https://instagram.com/rsa_events/Follow the RSA on Twitter: https://twit

Households, businesses and even essential services are feeling the pressure, with the poorest in our society most harshly affected.To add to the burden, wages and salaries have failed to rise in line with inflation. The past summer saw several sectors push back on this, as train operators, posties, barristers, dock workers and more went out on strike. Some success was achieved, but for many, their battle is ongoing. With cost of living pressures expected to worsen over the winter, what kind of support is needed now from employers and from the government? And what can the ‘summer of discontent’ teach us about the power of collective action and how people can best make their voice heard in the workplace and wider society?Hear representatives from Citizens Advice, the Living Wage Foundation and the Trades Union Congress as they explore these urgent questions and their potential solutions.  #RSAdiscontentBecome an RSA Events sponsor: https://utm.guru/udI9xDonate to The RSA: https://utm.guru/udNNBFollow RSA Events

Rejecting both New Labour’s embrace of free markets and the statism of Corbynism, Blue Labour thinking sought to reconnect Labour with its working-class base, and to bring assets, power and dignity back to local communities. As workers' rights and futures - and the future of the places they live - take centre-stage in politics once more, Blue Labour’s founder, political scientist Maurice Glasman, is joined by Shadow Levelling-Up Secretary Lisa Nandy MP to explore what left-conservatism has to offer the Labour Party, and the country, in the post-Brexit, post-Covid era.#RSAcommongoodBecome an RSA Events sponsor: https://utm.guru/udI9xDonate to The RSA: https://utm.guru/udNNBFollow RSA Events on Instagram: https://instagram.com/rsa_events/Follow the RSA on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RSAEventsLike RSA Events on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rsaeventsofficialListen to RSA Events podcasts: https://bit.ly/35EyQYU 

But, despite affording billions greater material wealth, health and freedom, the age of plenty has not delivered the utopia it initially seemed to promise.  Brad DeLong, one of the world’s leading economists, argues that instead of ushering in an era of prosperity, wellbeing and unlocked human potential, the gains of what he terms the ‘long twentieth century’ have not only been equivocal and double-edged, but also unfairly distributed.   DeLong’s magnum opus, Slouching Towards Utopia was an instant NYT bestseller, and has been universally lauded as the must-read account of 20th century economics.  Join us as we explore why true economic and human progress is a complicated game of snakes and ladders, and what we need to do to create a better world.#RSAutopia Become an RSA Events sponsor: https://utm.guru/udI9xDonate to The RSA: https://utm.guru/udNNBFollow RSA Events on Instagram: https://instagram.com/rsa_events/Follow the RSA on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RSAEventsLike RSA Events on Facebook: https://www.f

Across the 19th and 20th centuries, the Huxley family reshaped how we think about humanity and our relationship with the natural world. Within a family of scientists, educators, novelists, mystics, and filmmakers, two men led the way: ‘Darwin’s Bulldog’, the zoologist T.H. Huxley and his grandson and intellectual inheritor, the ecologist and conservationist, Julian Huxley.From religion to genetics, to human psychology, the Huxleys’ impact was felt across some of the most controversial and significant topics of their day. In studies of the natural world, they contributed to the foundation of the new sciences of ecology and animal conservation.Adept at writing about themselves in painfully revealing, honest and unprecedented ways, the family’s lives, marriages, successes and failures were also subject to their fascination with emotional, sexual, and psychological experience.At the RSA, leading historian of science Alison Bashford is joined by historian Thomas Dixon and writer Stuart Jeffries to discuss the impa

Estimates suggest that the planet’s average temperature could rise by up to four degrees Celsius. From heatwaves and hurricanes to flooding and droughts, the extreme weather this would bring could render certain parts of our planet unliveable. Changes on this scale may leave many people with no other option but to migrate to more liveable parts of the planet. Those who do migrate may have to navigate national borders and a public image that paints migration as a problem that needs to be solved. If mass migration is to be an inevitable part of our future, how can we more proactively approach the scale of the challenge and view it as a key solution to climate-related threats? How can we ensure people driven to migration have agency over their experience and ensure that we build a future that does not exaggerate existing social inequalities?Here, Gaia Vince will set out her manifesto for this era of planetary change. After outlining likely futures for our planet and the changes this will require from countries,

There’s no scientific impediment - even with present knowledge - to achieving a sustainable world in this century. We live under the shadow of new hazards - but these can be minimized by reprioritizing the thrust of the world’s technological effort - and optimizing the educational system and the institutions where research is done.   Astronomer Royal Martin Rees has spent a lifetime exploring science’s most profound questions, and advocating for its place in our common culture, at the heart of our democracy and decision-making.At the RSA, he insists that we can be technological optimists, despite the pessimism engendered by intractable politics and sociology.  Environmental degradation, unchecked climate change, and unintended consequences of advanced technology could trigger serious, even catastrophic, setbacks to our society, he warns – and our world is so interconnected that a collapse - societal or ecological - would be a truly global catastrophe. So it’s ever more crucial to ensure that science is deploy

Society tells us that to be successful we must be tough, stubborn, and resilient. We can all achieve success if we just work hard enough. Across all corners of society, from sport to science and beyond, there are many examples of people who have overcome great hardship to achieve next-level success. However, this view focuses on individual achievement and can easily ignore many of the external factors that can undermine our confidence, take away our agency and stack the odds against us. When we look closely at the context around achievement and resilience, the road to extraordinary success is far more complex than it first appears.Join Bruce Daisley as he explores how success is achievable today and re-examines what it means to be resilient. In conversation with the RSA’s Andrea Siodmok, Bruce will put forward an empowering new programme for building self-confidence and tenacity that can benefit us all, not just the elite few. #RSASuccessBecome an RSA Events sponsor: https://utm.guru/ueembDonate to The RSA: h

The ways we work have seen huge changes in recent years. Technology has reformed entire sectors, remote working has become commonplace and age demographics have shifted as more people retire early or rethink their chosen careers. Such huge change means that the ways we measure good work are now outdated, with familiar notions of productivity criticised as being unfair to women and having more relevance to the industrial economy than to the knowledge economy. There is much to reflect on and much we need to understand about this new world of work. Over the past 12 months, the RSA’s Good Work Guild has brought together a global community of practitioners to share experiences, expertise and ideas and explore some of the most pressing issues related to the future of work, economic security, and labour market transformation. This event brings together three experts on what makes good and meaningful work. Join Laetitia Vitaud and Hilary Cottam in conversation with, Sharmi Surianarain as they reflect on their researc

The design industry’s relationship to the field of business has long been established and continues to become further entangled each year. But designers aren’t just satisfied with only disrupting the business sector—they’re keen to disrupt the social sector too. Unfortunately, the weaknesses baked into the discipline of design (that have been present from the start) are readily exposed when designers enter complex social issues and treat them like any other human-centred innovation challenge. The lack of a moral framework, let alone a set of ethical guidelines, put designers at great risk of doing more harm than good. What needs to change to protect communities and participants?Join designer George Aye for this special digital event in partnership with the London Design Festival to explore what happens when design and ethics collide, and how design practitioners can become better prepared to recognise and navigate situations of complexity, compromise and ethical risk.www.thersa.org/fellowship/festival/design-

Andrew Mawson and Sam Everington first pioneered social prescribing at the Bromley by Bow Centre in East London by offering services that go beyond what people typically receive at GP surgeries. Their approach recognises how patients often have more than one need and makes it easier for individuals to access different levels of practical and emotional support in their local area. RSA Chief Executive Andy Haldane will present Sam Everington and Andrew Mawson with the 2022 RSA Albert Medal for their pioneering work in integrated healthcare, and in their award address they will describe their ongoing efforts to put social prescribing at the heart of building healthier communities.The RSA Albert Medal is awarded annually to recognise the creativity and innovation of individuals and organisations working to resolve the challenges of our times. The Medal was instituted in 1864 as a memorial to Prince Albert, former President of the Society.The RSA has been at the forefront of significant social impact for over 260

In his lecture to the RSA, Professor Sir Michael Marmot will explain that in developing strategies for tackling health inequalities we need to confront the social gradient in health, not just the difference between the worst off and everybody else. There is clear evidence when we look across countries that national policies make a difference and that much can be done in cities, towns and local areas. But policies and interventions must not be confined to the health care system; they need to address the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age. The evidence shows that economic circumstances are important but are not the only drivers of health inequalities. Tackling the health gap will take action, based on sound evidence, across the whole of society.#RSAhealthBecome an RSA Events sponsor: https://utm.guru/ueembDonate to The RSA: https://utm.guru/udNNBFollow RSA Events on Instagram: https://instagram.com/rsa_events/Follow the RSA on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RSAEventsLike RSA Events on F