The RSA Blog

Social entrepreneurs: why we do it [videos]

Blog

24 Oct 2011

‘I would like to see a Social Entrepreneurs Network in every region of the RSA and in every country of the world’, said RSA Chief Executive Matthew Taylor, at the latest RSA Social Entrepreneurs Network event.

PBR - high hopes, big questions

Blog

22 Oct 2011

Matthew Taylor

Along with localism, payment by results (PBR) is one of the Coalition's big ideas for public service reform. It is the main form of commissioning in employment services, and will become a very significant part of the way other services are procured and delivered including probation, prison rehabilitation and drug treatment and recovery. There has also been talk of using PBR to commission services for problem families, although Whitehall insiders admit the are hugely complex issues to address about measuring and attributing outcomes. 

Flying the flag for Animate

Blog

21 Oct 2011

Matthew Taylor

The new RSA Animate is up. It is Iain McGilchrist talking about the divided brain, the subject of his masterwork ‘The Master and his Emissary’. My bet is that it will have had a million views in just a few weeks so you can be real trend setter and be among the first 10,000. You will immediately want your friends to watch it too so you can discuss it with them.

From goodwill to doing good

Blog

19 Oct 2011

Matthew Taylor

Stoke, Leicester, London, Belfast: great people are meeting and committing to action but how do we get to the next stage?

Who regulates the regulators' regulators?

Blog

18 Oct 2011

Matthew Taylor

'It was a good week for the CQC'. This comment received general assent at a small seminar on regulation which I chaired this morning at the RSA. It was the spur for a fascinating discussion with implications for public services, democratic accountability and the distribution of power and authority. 

Stoking the flames of renewal

Blog

17 Oct 2011

Matthew Taylor

I hate Stoke on Trent. It is a place of pain, rain and misery. Before Fellows and friends from the Potteries denounce me, I should admit that my feelings are totally unreasonable and entirely based on having watched my beloved West Bromwich Albion get repeatedly beaten – usually in the bleak mid-winter - by their bogey team Stoke City.

Transforming Behaviour Change

Blog

17 Oct 2011

Jonathan Rowson

An Astrologer once told me that I have an exalted sun in my house of enemies. This positive feature of my chart meant that bad feelings towards me are 'burnt up' by the heat of the sun, for which I am grateful. I have never really understood the basis on which astrology might conceivably make sense on even the most charitable interpretation, so I had to take his word for the rationale, but I appreciated the thought, which resonated with my experience.

tales of the strangely successful

Blog

14 Oct 2011

Julian Thompson

So in a further bid to overcome my blogophobia, today I am going to take a different tack. Yesterday I got some ribbing from Matthew "blogatron" Taylor, saying that he was surprised my "day in the life"  blog on Wednesday didn't detail my bowel movements alongside everything else. No time you see, Matthew.

Think big, think human capability

Blog

14 Oct 2011

Matthew Taylor

It has been fascinating to read open letters from two former Number Ten advisers to Jeremy Heywood who is the new Cabinet Secretary and - as both Phil Collins and James Purnell suggest - effectively the head of the civil service.