RSA Events

Raj Chetty , professor of public economics at Harvard University will share the findings from research analysis of Meta data on the relationship between the social connections of individuals and economic mobility in the US. Research led by Harvard’s Opportunity Insights used large-scale privacy-protected social network datasets to study social capital in neighbourhoods, schools and colleges. Profe...

Our capacity to survive, adapt and flourish relies on designing a future that is concurrently sustainable and resilient. Whereas sustainability is accepted as a key tenet of good design, resilient design is still in its infancy seeking greater understanding and definition. Dame Jo da Silva RDI has earned global recognition as an engineer who has applied her knowledge and design expertise to improv...

The Grenfell Tower disaster was the worst residential fire in Britain since World War II and it didn’t have to happen. The fire climbed up cladding as flammable as solid petrol. Fire doors failed to self-close. There was no alarm to warn sleeping residents and no evacuation plan. As smoke seeped into their homes, all were told to ‘stay put’ and 72 people would lose their lives. Five years on, many...

Black African communities have had a seismic impact across British culture, sports, politics, and more. Immigration from countries like Nigeria, Ghana and Zimbabwe has created many vibrant communities across Britain, especially in London. Across food, faith, and culture, the nation's capital has become a melting pot of ideas of what it is to be Black, African, and British.  What can the eclectic n...

Small change can have a big impact on our lives. Through knock-on effects and cumulative action, little shifts have the potential for great harm and great good. And when it is easy to feel overwhelmed at the scale of change needed to solve big, structural problems, we need to recognise the value of practical change we can enact on a daily basis. In recent times, the twin plagues of Covid-19 and an...

When the economist Ha-Joon Chang arrived in Britain in the eighties, he was struck by how bland and homogeneous the British diet was. But it wasn’t just the food – in mainstream economic thinking too, there seemed to only be one item on the menu – the Neoclassical tradition.   Whilst our diet has expanded and diversified since then, our economic preference has remained stubbornly singular. Chang a...

Is there scope for the introduction of a universal basic income as a transformative public health intervention? As part of an academic partnership, funded by Wellcome, the RSA is exploring the potential for a UBI, how it could work in practice and what its impacts might be. The research brings together new analysis which shows that even a fiscally neutral UBI could have a significant effect in red...

Households, businesses and even essential services are feeling the pressure, with the poorest in our society most harshly affected. To add to the burden, wages and salaries have failed to rise in line with inflation. The past summer saw several sectors push back on this, as train operators, posties, barristers, dock workers and more went out on strike. Some success was achieved, but for many, thei...

Rejecting both New Labour’s embrace of free markets and the statism of Corbynism, Blue Labour thinking sought to reconnect Labour with its working-class base, and to bring assets, power and dignity back to local communities.   As workers' rights and futures - and the future of the places they live - take centre-stage in politics once more, Blue Labour’s founder, political scientist Maurice Glasman...

But, despite affording billions greater material wealth, health and freedom, the age of plenty has not delivered the utopia it initially seemed to promise.   Brad DeLong , one of the world’s leading economists, argues that instead of ushering in an era of prosperity, wellbeing and unlocked human potential, the gains of what he terms the ‘long twentieth century’ have not only been equivocal and dou...

Across the 19th and 20th centuries, the Huxley family reshaped how we think about humanity and our relationship with the natural world. Within a family of scientists, educators, novelists, mystics, and filmmakers, two men led the way: ‘Darwin’s Bulldog’, the zoologist T.H. Huxley and his grandson and intellectual inheritor, the ecologist and conservationist, Julian Huxley. From religion to genetic...

Estimates suggest that the planet’s average temperature could rise by up to four degrees Celsius. From heatwaves and hurricanes to flooding and droughts, the extreme weather this would bring could render certain parts of our planet unliveable. Changes on this scale may leave many people with no other option but to migrate to more liveable parts of the planet. Those who do migrate may have to navig...

There’s no scientific impediment - even with present knowledge - to achieving a sustainable world in this century. We live under the shadow of new hazards - but these can be minimized by reprioritizing the thrust of the world’s technological effort - and optimizing the educational system and the institutions where research is done.    Astronomer Royal Martin Rees has spent a lifetime exploring sci...

Society tells us that to be successful we must be tough, stubborn, and resilient. We can all achieve success if we just work hard enough. Across all corners of society, from sport to science and beyond, there are many examples of people who have overcome great hardship to achieve next-level success.  However, this view focuses on individual achievement and can easily ignore many of the external fa...

The ways we work have seen huge changes in recent years. Technology has reformed entire sectors, remote working has become commonplace and age demographics have shifted as more people retire early or rethink their chosen careers. Such huge change means that the ways we measure good work are now outdated, with familiar notions of productivity criticised as being unfair to women and having more rele...

The design industry’s relationship to the field of business has long been established and continues to become further entangled each year. But designers aren’t just satisfied with only disrupting the business sector—they’re keen to disrupt the social sector too. Unfortunately, the weaknesses baked into the discipline of design (that have been present from the start) are readily exposed when design...

Andrew Mawson and Sam Everington first pioneered social prescribing at the Bromley by Bow Centre in East London by offering services that go beyond what people typically receive at GP surgeries. Their approach recognises how patients often have more than one need and makes it easier for individuals to access different levels of practical and emotional support in their local area.  RSA Chief Execut...

In his lecture to the RSA, Professor Sir Michael Marmot will explain that in developing strategies for tackling health inequalities we need to confront the social gradient in health, not just the difference between the worst off and everybody else.  There is clear evidence when we look across countries that national policies make a difference and that much can be done in cities, towns and local ar...

Emotions shape the way we interact with the world and how we are perceived by others. Yet the ways that we interpret those emotions and act on them has been heavily gendered. Hidden patterns of bias sit beneath the language we use and reach across our lives and society, from politics and the media to the workplace and our personal relationships. But how did this come to be? What factors have influ...

Feminism has reached the mainstream: but it’s often commodified, exclusionary, or sidetracked from the goal of liberation. Feminist writer and organiser Lola Olufemi explores how feminism can be reclaimed as an emancipatory tool for fighting state violence, reproductive injustice, transmisogyny, gendered racism, and much more – and achieve justice for everybody. We can start by imagining that a be...

Professor David Wengrow is an archaeologist and professor at University College London, and in 2021 was ranked #10 on ArtReview’s Power 100 list of the most influential people in art. His work challenges long-held views about the origins and development of human society and tells new stories of how we came to be, drawing on groundbreaking archaeological and anthropological evidence. He shares on t...

Being misty-eyed about the past is nothing new; but what does romanticising our history mean for our present? Historian and star of University Challenge Hannah Rose Woods investigates why nostalgia has been such an enduring state in Britain over hundreds of years, revealing the vast influence that its backwards glance has had on British society, politics, and identity. Debunking pervasive myths ab...

For almost three centuries the RSA has played an important role in many of our major social reforms and innovations. It helped construct the public education system, encouraged the planting of more than sixty million trees, sought technological alternatives to child labour, and even once purchased and restored an entire village. And did plenty more in-between. Drawing on exclusive access to a weal...

We are increasingly reaching for cards, apps and even cryptocurrencies to make payments and manage our money. Though cash is still widely used, the narrative around it suggests it is outdated and presents cash dependency as a problem we need to solve. The shift to digital, ‘cloudmoney’ is presented as inevitable and defended by claims of consumer convenience. Developments in the global payments ar...

The West Midlands and Greater Manchester are leading the way on devolution with more control over transport, planning, housing, policing and skills. The combined authorities were both singled out in the Levelling Up White Paper for trailblazer devolution deals with Government, with negotiations beginning imminently.  The elected Mayors in these regions act as a single point of accountability – bot...