The RSA Blog

Suffolk against the state

Blog

15 Jul 2009

Matthew Taylor

Suffolk County Council worked me hard last night. I wasn’t sure whether to give my speech about the pro-social council or do my cultural theory experiment, so I asked the audience and they told me to do both! An hour and half later I made my exhausted way back to Ipswich station.

Schools without boundaries

Blog

10 Jul 2009

Matthew Taylor

I have made three education speeches this week. I am never quite sure what I believe until I try to articulate an idea and then see if it sounds interesting and convincing. In preparation for my lecture to the SSAT I wrote a post about the divisive nature of political debate about schooling; I was planning to make this the theme running through my speech.  But a couple of days later, when I tried it out, it fell flat so I had to rethink.

We've never had it so good - or have we?

Blog

16 Jun 2009

Matthew Taylor

I am on my way to speak at the Chartered Institute of Housing conference in Harrogate, but here is a piece I have in today's Times - would be really interested to hear readers' views.

Doing and thinking: the ethics of 'nudge'

Blog

16 Jun 2009

Nudge, nudge, think, think

Blog

08 May 2009

Matthew Taylor

Having started the day in Kettering talking to the trustees of Youth Music, I have just come back from the advisory board of an ESRC funded project called ‘Researching Civic Behaviour’.

Happy faces, happy places

Blog

20 Apr 2009

Matthew Taylor

I have Libby Purves in the Times today to thank for putting me on to the research of Dr Jason Rentfrow. Working initially in the US (with Dr Sam Gosling from Texas), and now in the UK, Dr Rentfrow claims to show that there is a geographical basis to personality type.

£5 if you read this blog...

Blog

17 Apr 2009

Matthew Taylor

I am speaking next week about communities and it is an area of growing significance to RSA research. Here are my musings. But given this post is five times as long as a blog should be and given that, despite my best endeavours, the prose is both complicated and constipated, I am personally promising £5 to the nominated charity of the first ten people  to leave intelligible (not necessarily positive) comments on my site. (PS For my more superficial readers, I am also going to return very briefly to the McBride affair later on today)

Why networks make people better

Blog

15 Apr 2009

Matthew Taylor

As I thought they might, the ‘why don’t you stop talking about politics and go back to running the RSA’ comments have started appearing. I’m happy to oblige by sharing some fascinating research – sent to me by Dan Jones (thanks, Dan!) on the relationship between altruism and social capital.

Ringo, Paul, my big toe and meta-cognition

Blog

09 Apr 2009

Matthew Taylor

Last weekend Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney were reunited in New York to launch an initiative from the Foundation of cult film director David Lynch.  The aim is to get a million American school children to take up transcendental meditation. Apart from seeing the two Beatles together, I found the event fascinating because I am myself half way through a mindfulness stress reduction course, based on meditation techniques.