RSA Events

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Tuesday 4th July 2017 Access to a hands-on approach to learning – designing, creating, exploring, experimenting, ‘tinkering’ - can have transformational impact. So, how can we create more opportunities for more people to learn through making? To celebrate the long history of collaboration between the RSA and the Comino Foundation, a distinguished panel of...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Monday 3rd July 2017 The Rt Hon David Lammy MP’s pioneering review of racial disparity in the criminal justice system is exposing levels of potential bias that are cause for serious concerns. The review’s interim findings, published last November, came with in-depth analysis to help identify the stages of the system at which disproportionality is most pro...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Thursday 29th June 2017 We want to believe that there are some things we would never do. We want to believe that there are others we always would. But how can we be sure? Why do human beings hurt other human beings – and what can we do about it? The celebrated human rights barrister and researcher Dexter Dias QC has identified ten ‘types’ of human behavio...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Thursday 22nd June 2017 On the 23rd June 2016, the UK voted to leave the EU – arguably one of the most unexpected and momentous decisions ever taken by the electorate. The result sparked the resignation of a sitting Prime Minister, a renewed Scottish independence debate, a controversial legal challenge, a snap general election, the ‘regrexit’ phenomenon,...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Wednesday 21st June 2017 Join us in celebrating the 2017 Awards and the power of design to make a positive social impact – this is a chance to meet the 2017 RSA Student Design Awards winners, participants and collaborators and hear about their work. Keynote speech by David Constantine, past RSA Student Design Awards winner and Founder Director of Motivati...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Thursday 15th June 2017 How can we champion truth in a world of lies and ‘alternative facts’? The Brexit vote; Donald Trump’s victory; the rejection of climate change science; the vilification of immigrants; many of the huge political issues of recent years have been based on the power to evoke feelings and not facts. Renowned journalist Matthew d’Ancona...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Monday 12th June 2017 What does it take for an organisation to truly live its values, and crucially - to sustain them over the long-term? It’s a recognizable feature of modern-day working life to many of us: the company mission statement is brandished from the website to the office walls, but day-to-day behaviours fall far short of the stated ideals – so...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Thursday 8th June 2017 How can we effect real change in the world? Is there a tried and tested method we can rely on that harnesses the best of both academia and practical learnings from the field? Duncan Green is one of the world's experts on change and international development, and he brings together the best research from a range of academic disciplin...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Thursday 1st June 2017 Many of us believe our capacity to reason helps us to acquire knowledge and make better decisions - but what if it has an entirely different purpose? Cognitive scientist Hugo Mercier and his colleague Dan Sperber have made waves with the surprising results of years of research – that our power to reason has nothing to do with accura...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Thursday 25th May 2017 If the preliminary polling is accurate, Jeremy Corbyn will be leading Labour to its biggest defeat since 1935, and Theresa May’s gamble for a firmer handle in Brexit negotiations will have paid off. Whilst the left is riven by ideological crisis, the Conservatives have seen off the populist far-right challengers and absorbed the exc...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Thursday 11th May 2017 We've had 'Sharing Cities' and 'Smart Cities' - what's next for the evolution of the city? Modern cities are having to face up to a whole host of wicked problems like demographic change, inequality, housing shortages, homelessness, environmental degradation and access to public services. The RSA envisions Smart Cities evolving into...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Tuesday 16th May 2017. Under the right conditions, small simple actions can produce large complex effects. Pioneering lawyer and activist for women’s rights Catharine A. MacKinnon argues that seemingly minor interventions in the legal realm can have a butterfly effect that generates major social and cultural transformations. Catharine MacKinnon is a pione...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Thursday 11th May 2017 We’re living in troubled times. Many democratic societies are experiencing a crisis of faith. People are making clear their frustration with supposedly representative governments, and yet feel powerless to effect change. Populists are capitalising on this disconnection and discontent. What can we do to fix democracy, get our voices...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Tuesday 9th May 2017 The world of work is changing fast. Globalization, de-industrialisation, automation - all have had a disruptive effect on traditional jobs and working practices in the UK in recent decades. With this disruption comes opportunity, no doubt, but also insecurity and anxiety. The Brexit ‘leave’ vote was particularly high in areas of pover...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Thursday 4th May 2017 The traditional liberal democracies of the West are in decline, and divisive populist sentiment is on the rise. When faced with global instability and economic uncertainty, it is tempting for states to react by closing borders, hoarding wealth and solidifying power, and for citizens to look upon one another with suspicion, incomprehe...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Wednesday 26th April 2017 Over the last year, the RSA has been working in collaboration with ECIS, on a project looking at how the skills and expertise of different players within a city can be mobilised to best support the needs of refugee young people. In the context of uncertainty, budget cuts and limited resources, how can a city act pragmatically for...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Thursday 27th April 2017 With the failure of successive governments to tackle challenges ranging from climate change and terrorism, to growing inequality and far-right extremism, we have seen a sharp decline in trust and confidence in politics. The result? The rise of anti-politics, anti-expert, anti-system politicians, of which Donald Trump is just one e...

In the first episode of RSA Radio’s 'Work Shift' series on the changing nature of work Matthew Taylor is joined by: Michael A. Osborne of Oxford University, who’s estimated up to 47% of US jobs could be automated, Ryan Avent from The Economist and author of the recent book 'The Wealth of Humans: work and its absence in the 21st century' and Judy Wajcman, Professor of Sociology at the London School...

Can the cold logic of engineering be applied to the quest for happiness? Mo Gawdat is Chief Business Officer at [X], an elite team of engineers that comprise Google's futuristic dream factory. Applying his superior skills of logic and problem solving to the issue of happiness, in 2011 he proposed an algorithm based on an understanding of how the brain takes in and processes joy and sadness. He ess...

Even though women are half the workforce, they still represent only eighteen per cent of the highest level leaders. The reasons are obvious: just as women reach middle management they are also starting families. Mounting responsibilities at work and home leave them with no bandwidth to do what will most lead to their success. Chief Leadership Officer of Levo and one of Fast Company’s League of Ext...

Game theory was the popular model for international relations during the Cold War, but the 21st century sees us playing on a drastically different landscape. Anne-Marie Slaughter — one of Foreign Policy's Top 100 Global Thinkers from 2009 to 2012, and the first woman to serve as director of the State Department Office of Policy Planning— visits the RSA to reveal how network theory provides a new s...

Writer and academic Jeremy Myerson explores how social challenges can catalyse design-led innovation in industry. Rather than seeing such issues as ageing populations, growing healthcare needs or climate change as a problem or a crisis, designers can reframe social challenges as creative opportunities for change.

Jonathan F. P. Rose - the man who “repairs the fabric of cities” - suggests a five-pronged model for how to design and reshape our cities with the goal of equalising their landscape of opportunity. Drawing from the musical concept of “temperament” as a way to achieve harmony, Rose argues that well-tempered cities can be infused with systems that bend the arc of their development toward equality, r...

Acclaimed cognitive scientist Steven Sloman visits the RSA to argue that we survive and thrive despite our mental shortcomings because we live in a rich community of knowledge. The key to our intelligence lies in the people and things around us. We’re constantly drawing on information and expertise stored outside our heads: in our bodies, our environment, our possessions, and the community with wh...

What are the political and moral fault-lines that divide Brexit Britain — and how can we achieve a new settlement that works for everyone? Several decades of greater economic and cultural openness in the West have not benefited all our citizens. Founding editor of Prospect magazine, David Goodhart argues that among those who have been left behind, a populist politics of culture and identity has su...