Blogs & articles

Notes on narrative: Sennett and the arts

Blog

09 Jun 2010

Benedict Dellot

Asking what binds human beings together, Richard Sennett recently offered two ingredients that act as cultural glue: ritual and narrative. Speaking at a great lecture with Dr Rowan Williams just a couple of weeks ago, Sennett argued that, “without shared rituals and narratives society has no purpose. The everyday relations between human beings risks falling apart. And yet modern society courts just that risk. The cultural glue of ritual and narrative is weakening.” Williams seemed to strike the same chord - referring to his latest book on Dostoevsky he pointed out that storytelling as ritual allows us to bond with one another as well as with a “realm beyond ourselves” yet it too is being washed away.

Can political parties be community organisers?

Blog

07 Jun 2010

Matthew Taylor

Having failed for years to persuade Labour’s bosses that the traditional hierarchical model of party organisation was bust I wrote positively last year about the attempt by the Conservative Party to turn its grass roots organisation outwards with the development of local social projects. Sadly, I later had to admit that the practice didn’t quite live up to the expectations.

The value of talking to strangers

Blog

27 May 2010

“ I have always relied on the kindness of strangers.”

What rights and responsibilities could you get behind?

Blog

13 May 2010

The hard reality of the spending cuts our new government will make in the next few years will force us to re-think what public services are and should be. The looming "age of austerity" will also demand that we ask more searching questions about the type of society we want to live in and the type of citizens we need to be. It certainly has me.

Big Society(2): What's Blue and Yellow and Red all over?

Blog

29 Apr 2010

Jonathan Rowson

If you still don't know who you are going to vote for, you could do worse than read the manifestos of the three main political parties. I recently read the three tomes for the first time in my life and was impressed by their scope and level of detail.

In-house or out: embedding design

Blog

26 Apr 2010

As little as a year ago it seemed that in-house design teams, in both the public and private sector, had practically vanished. So had senior civic roles in design: Leeds City Council was often named as the last remaining local authority to employ a Civic Architect. With a handful of notable exceptions – Apple and The Guardian, for example – it seemed to have become conventional for organisations to buy design services in from outside consultancies.

Art, Ecology and Citizen Power

Blog

09 Apr 2010

Tomorrow, the Dutch artist Marjolijn Dijkman arrives in the UK to begin her residency at Clare Cottage in Helpston, near Peterborough. Her stay marks a shift in focus for Arts & Ecology, towards exploring how the arts may engage people locally with environmental change and sustainability. As part of this, Marjolijn has been invited to stay at the home of the local romantic poet John Clare who died in 1864, so is no longer living there. The cottage was refurbished last year and Marjolijn intends to explore contemporary ideas about ‘place’ with people in the surrounding villages and the city of Peterborough, which is where the RSA Citizen Power project is located.

Soliphilia and Citizen Power

Comment

08 Mar 2010

The strength of attachment to what Indigenous Australians call their ‘country’ is difficult for many people from contemporary ‘European’ cultures to fathom. A translation of a song from the Oenpelli region in the Top End of the Northern Territory captures the emotional power of this connection:

Is Rigorous Advocacy an Oxymoron?

Blog

04 Mar 2010

Jonathan Rowson

I gave a talk on the social and educational value of chess in Dallas, Texas recently. The person driving me to the event, John Jacobs, read on the blurb that I worked at the RSA, "a think tank in London", and asked, in a melodious southern drawl:  "I see that you work in a think tank. So what do you think about?"