Latest thinking

A Community Response to Climate Change?

Blog

16 Oct 2009

Jonathan Rowson

RSA thursdays fill a gap in our popular imagination of the working week, sharing the honour with manic mondays, pancake tuesdays, ash wednesdays and crunchy -be-thankful fridays. One of the best things about working here is ambling into an RSA Thursday event at lunchtime and having your mind informed, amused and expanded.

Localism is more than a set of principles

Blog

15 Oct 2009

In the last couple of years all the major political parties in the UK have been falling over themselves to talk up their radical credentials. Much of this is filtered through the ‘localism debate’ and ideas surrounding the decentralisation of power and influence away from Whitehall into the hands of frontline staff and local people. As my old boss, Ben Page, said at a recent local government event I attended, “we are all localists now”.

Justice: What's the right thing to do?

Video

13 Oct 2009

Michael Sandel is Harvard Professor of Government and 2009 Reith Lecturer.

Responsibility and Response-Ability

Blog

09 Oct 2009

Jonathan Rowson

David Cameron's speech at the conservative party conference indicated that the conservative party might be interested in the work of our connected communities project, so I decided to take a closer look.

The future of special needs education

Blog

06 Oct 2009

Do we need a debate on the future of special needs education?

Towards Human Species Consciousness

Blog

01 Oct 2009

Guest blog by Josie Appleton: The discussion about climate change is full of sweeping rhetoric – references to "consciousness", "future generations", doing "something that matters". Yet somehow, in practice, climate politics ends up being so banal: it is about targets, carbon calculations, energy bills.

Potato Propaganda

Blog

30 Sep 2009

"There is nothing new under the sun", said a depressed Solomon. That's certainly true of government using psychology to influence their people, notwithstanding the excitement among policy makers around behavioural economics. An example is the good story about Frederick the Great's attempts to introduce the potato into Prussia in the 18th century, or the shift in public health during the 50s and 60s from "a culture of secrecy to a culture of communication".

Is the idea of community nostalgic?

Blog

30 Sep 2009

Jonathan Rowson

"Now you're telling me, you're not nostalgic. Well give me another word for it, you who are so good with words"

Robert MacFarlane on literature that inspired action

Blog

28 Sep 2009

There was a great article on Edward Abbey by Robert MacFarlane in the weekend's Guardian.  [I'm inclined to superlatives here, as MacFarlane generously bigged up the RSA Arts & Ecology Centre and our fellow organisations TippingPoint, The Ashden Directory and Cape Farewell in the article].