Blogs & articles

The art of sharing ideas, or, how I learned to stop worrying and love crowdsourcing

Blog

25 Apr 2013

Joanna Massie

I've recently been playing a lot of The Great Brain Experiment: an app created by UCL and the Wellcome Trust. It's a crowdsourcing game in which users (or players, or participants, or bored commuters - take your pick) do a series of brain games, which then get fed back into a research project. It’s a great game - it justifies my timewasting by feeding into research and allows me to develop my response and memory skills (by which I mean feeds into my competitive side by seeing how I do versus the average user). [pullquote]Whereas previously you’d identify an issue, try to solve it in the lab or officespace with people who also work in the same building, now you can use the power of the internet, for information, communication and interaction.[/pullquote]

The spirit of volunteerism is alive and well… It just needs recognising

Blog

23 Apr 2013

Mark Hall

During the 2012 London Olympics around 70,000 Games Makers volunteered to help to make the 2012 Games a huge success. Their purple and red shirts seemed to be everywhere, and they were heaped with praise as the games came to a close. And rightly so! To put together a sporting event on the scale of the London Olympics to such a high standard would have been impossible without the thousands of budding volunteers. This spirit of volunteerism didn't just appear overnight. Over 250,000 people applied, nearly half of whom had never volunteered before. Committed volunteers are out there, but often they are not given the recognition or publicity that their commitment deserves.

Social change through Fellowship: Four ways to engage

Blog

08 Apr 2013

Most of the RSA’s work can be traced back one basic thought: that the best way to change society for the better is to help people change it for themselves. That’s why so much of our work is about how people can understand their own behaviour, see how they relate to others, and develop the skills and capabilities they need to make the best use of that knowledge.

Challenging issues around health and well-being in Bristol

Blog

18 Mar 2013

Kate Monkhouse

Health and well-being is very much on the agenda in Bristol right now with several RSA activities happening in the city. 

All Aboard the Connected Communities Bus!

Blog

20 Feb 2013

Matthew Parsfield

As a new member of the RSA’s Connected Communities team, I have been eager to hit the ground running and learn about the potential partner organisations in our various sites across the country. As such I was delighted to be able to attend a meeting in a cosy Lewisham pub on Monday evening, attended by a number of representatives from community organisations in New Cross Gate who are interested in developing new ways of cooperating and helping to build the social capital of isolated elderly people in the area.

If Marx Had the Internet

Blog

10 Jan 2013

This is a guest post from the Library Team.

Social Mirror: now very much a new thing!

Blog

02 Jan 2013

Gaia Marcus

Happy New Year from the RSA Action and Research HQ everyone, and please join me in wishing a slightly belated Happy First Birthday to the Social Mirror project! It's just over a year ago that Nathan Matias and I brainstormed the idea of Social Mirror in the RSA's London offices. Last year focused on ideas and prototypes. This year, we will be testing our ideas and sharing the software more broadly.

Talking religion, faith and local action projects

Blog

30 Nov 2012

Kate Monkhouse

I have always been keen to stay connected to previous projects that I have worked on, and was pleased to be able to attend a recent conference on New Forms of Public Religion.  The conference was an outcome of a 6 year research programme, Religion and Society, funded by the Arts and Humanities and Economic and Social Research Councils.  Professor Linda Woodhead, Director of the programme says “The Religion and Society Programme has produced a huge body of new research on religion, and some of the new findings were presented at our Cambridge conference.  There is so much still to learn from the research that we be will be presenting findings over the coming years in events like the Westminster Faith Debates, and on our website”

RSA Fellows (and RDIs) responsible for all 29 of Team GB’s gold medals

Blog

23 Aug 2012

(…as well as all of the silvers, bronzes, the Olympic torches, the Velodrome and the cauldron).