The RSA Blog

Keep taking the medicine

Blog

28 Nov 2012

Matthew Taylor

I am just off to the Moral Maze to take a position on whether, in some cases, NHS treatment should be conditional on people changing their life style. ‘Ah, but which position will you take?’ I hear my reader say.

Content is king ...

Blog

27 Nov 2012

Matthew Taylor

Tomorrow I am speaking at the International Content Marketing Summit, albeit for only ten minutes. These are the people who commission and write editorial content to support brands, for example the free magazines produced by supermarkets, airlines and – perhaps surprisingly – even digital providers like Google. As the final speaker of the day, and having absolutely no specialist knowledge, I guess my brief is to be provocative and big picture.

Take me to your (normative) leader

Blog

23 Nov 2012

Matthew Taylor

I am grateful – not for the first time – to Keith Grint for alerting me to a distinction made by Amitai Etzioni in 1964 in his book ‘Modern Organisations’:

The fair tax social impact bond

Blog

22 Nov 2012

Matthew Taylor

A bit nervous about this post.....Given the RSA's political independence and my own moderate beliefs I hesitate before what seem like more anti-capitalist sentiment. Also, I was until recently a happy customer of Starbucks and the company funded the RSA Coffeehouse Challenge a few years ago.

Licence to operate

Blog

21 Nov 2012

Matthew Taylor

Back in the 1980s and ‘90s, it was common for uncomplimentary comparisons to be made between the efficiency and customer care of the private sector and the waste and poor service offered by the public sector.  The retort from the left tended to focus on the inherent problems of the profit motive, which it said leads companies to privilege the interests of owners and managers over customers and the public.

Working in communities and the arts: being part of the group

Blog

20 Nov 2012

Georgina Chatfield

Every now and again I have a really inspiring meeting that draws together common threads from our work in Arts and Society with thinking from other people and the wider world.  Yesterday was one such day. I was meeting the artist Lucy Steggals about the Creative Intersections project we are doing with King’s College London and our recent event showcasing the journey of this work with participating artists and academics – and recent learning and reflection from Arts and Social Change in Citizen Power Peterborough came flooding into the frame whilst hearing about Lucy’s experiences in Gravesend and the Isle of Sheppey.

RSA Student Design Awards - visit to Yorkshire Water Treatment site

Blog

19 Nov 2012

Hilary Chittenden

On Monday 5th November, the RSA team spent a fascinating day at one of Yorkshire Water’s 83 treatment centres in Headingley, Leeds. Peter Thornes from Yorkshire Water’s education team provided 20 students working on this year’s ‘Valuing Water’ brief with a unique insight into the world of water treatment. Zoe Allis, R,D & I Project Manager at Yorkshire Water and the RSA Student Design Awards team also joined the visit.

From the ridiculous to the sublime - the extremes of policy making

Blog

16 Nov 2012

Matthew Taylor

Those of us who reside in policy wonk land generally look out on a world of ambiguity. Because society is complex and change often takes a long time, the evidence on whether a policy has worked or failed is usually ambiguous. This doesn't make for great headlines or memorable examples; indeed, recently I heard someone having to stretch all the way back to the Dangerous Dogs Act or the Millennium Dome to find unambiguous examples of failure. But today we have a new policy disaster that will just keep on giving

Opening Minds through Shakespeare

Blog

16 Nov 2012

This, believe it or not, is a photograph of a year seven pupil improvising Romeo and Juliet. Even more surprising is that this pupil was one of a group that started this Shakespeare workshop only a few hours earlier professing that they either knew nothing about Shakespeare or that what they did know of him was “boring”.