RSA Comment



Archive for October, 2010

A Big Society approach to low carbon

Wed 27th Oct 20104 Comments »

New energy saving community trusts could help us meet our carbon targets while strengthening neighbourhoods, argues John Swinney FRSA.

If the UK is to meet its energy efficiency targets, fundamental improvements will need to be made to existing homes in both the private and social housing sectors.

Many of us will need to make changes to how we live in and heat these homes.
Significant change does really rest firmly in the hands of every citizen.

Yet, the climate change agenda, energy security and renewable technologies are easy distractions from this fact; these big ticket issues may be more interesting and intellectually stimulating but do not hold all the answers. With housing set to be one of the great losers of the spending review, the risk is we continue to ignore the challenge of how to galvanise individuals and communities into action. (more…)

The twenty first century artists’ guild

Fri 22nd Oct 20104 Comments »

FRSA Pete Lawrence explains why a connected community is essential for the future of art in Britain.

In the wake of government proposals to cut arts funding and rely more on private initiatives, artists and art organisations up and down the country are focused on securing their next round of funding. I can just imagine thousands of emails winding their way to potential funders as people take stock of their situation and switch into survival mode.

Approaching such a fundamental challenge to funding from the perspective of individual artist or institutions ignores the wisdom, ideas, innovation and ultimately action, that can come from the crowd. Art provides real value to our society and economy: we need to how shared confidence in acknowledging this contribution and working together in tough times.

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Back to the drawing board

Wed 20th Oct 2010No Comments »

FRSA Jane Gosney argues that, as more people from the creative sectors choose or are forced to go it alone as entrepreneurs or freelancers, the need to access life long learning opportunities and embrace the latest digital technology remains equally important.

The start of a new academic year has raised questions about how university education meets the needs of employers at a time when graduate unemployment is at an all time high. That there are a large group of older workers who will need to re-enter the workforce is largely ignored. Yet, for the economy to grow all members of the workforce need to have access to training to upgrade their skills as new technologies emerge.

In particular, relevant training is needed for a new generation of entrepreneurs to help prepare them to start up new businesses. Few sectors now offer jobs for life. However, future economic growth and regeneration requires us to equip anyone starting a new business with the relevant skills and the confidence to compete in a world market.

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RSA Animate – Changing Education Paradigms

Thu 14th Oct 20102 Comments »

Another inspiring RSA Animate taken from a speech given at the RSA by Sir Ken Robinson, world-renowned education expert and recipient of the RSA Benjamin Franklin award. Download a transcript of this video (pdf).

Beyond the birth rate

Tue 12th Oct 20103 Comments »

Assumptions about migrants’ birth rates are protected by a façade of scientific objectivity but are inaccurate and poison public debate about immigration.  As protests by the far-right, islamophobic group, the English Defence League (EDL) continue unabated, Kamaljeet Gill argues for a better breed of debate.

While not all groups are as racially provocative or openly aggressive as the EDL, most ‘anti-Islamisation’  rhetoric displays worrying trends. One of the arguments used by those who advocate tight controls on immigration is that without them host nations would be swamped because arrivals from the developing world have such high birth rates. This argument is added to the mix about concern over coping with the pressures of inward migration and the impact on the nation’s culture.  One argument goes something like this: these new arrivals will outbreed the native population and the host culture and its norms will break down under the pressure of different codes, ethics and beliefs. Britain will come under Sharia law, Israel will cease to be Jewish and so on.

This kind of discourse is overwhelmingly deployed against Muslims. Such discourses serve to legitimate the kind of far-right sensationalism that forms the core message of groups such as the EDL and the British National Party. (more…)

A Big Society or a Great Society?

Fri 8th Oct 20104 Comments »

Could the government’s Big Society concept signal a big idea that cracks the challenging reconciliation of left and right, asks Nick Jankel FRSA?

The government’s Big Society idea is a conundrum. Is it a cynical way to avoid responsibility for our national welfare, punishing the excluded by replacing essential public services with the sweat of volunteers? Is it further marketisation of the public domain without anyone being fully accountable? Or could the coalition deliver a Middle Way; one that generates a sense of shared destiny whilst leapfrogging the cumbersome and costly statist solutions favoured by politicians who still believe that government is the best tool for distributing resources in an age of networks and collaboration?

I am a firm believer in some fundamental free-market values such as responsibility, resourcefulness and creativity. However, the trickle-down theory of social betterment espoused by the right for decades has been firmly cast as naive by the realities of the last twenty years. During this time poverty has actually increased considerably in countries such as Nigeria and stayed pretty constant in others such as India, despite huge increases in GDP, a rapidly growing middle-class and Western-oriented, capitalist economic policies.
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Beauty and the Big Society

Wed 6th Oct 20101 Comment »

How do you get people involved in shaping the look and feel of the places where they live? Tom Bolton follows up on Ben Rogers’s recent piece on beauty in the RSA Journal

The Government’s concept of a Big Society opens doors, but also begs questions about what it means for the way that places are planned, maintained, improved and changed.  Buildings and spaces have a profound effect on your life, but most people are not short of other things to worry about, and the decision-making process is complex and opaque. How do you get them to feel that being involved is worth the effort?

There’s no doubt that a new approach is needed. Recent Ipsos MORI research shows that around a third of us think that we can make a difference. The Citizenship Survey 2010 shows that only 37 per cent of people agree that they can influence decisions affecting their local area. What’s more, this figure is shrinking, from 44 per cent in 2001. This pessimism about the influence you can have locally is reflected in the numbers who actually do get involved.  Only 18 per cent had participated in ‘civic consultation’ during 2009/10, down from 20 per cent in 2005.  The proportion who regularly participate has remained at a tiny 3 per cent since 2001.

So it looks as though self-confidence is heading in the wrong direction, quite fast, and that the minority able or willing to communicate its views to civic representatives isn’t growing. Perhaps the rest don’t think their views will make any difference. Or they don’t speak the language of policy or planning. Or it could be that there’s another kind of mass resignation out there: the people running consultations have low expectations and civic leaders have come to accept that they will only ever hear from the same few people. (more…)

Help Yourself To Housing

Tue 5th Oct 20103 Comments »

For many people, “can’t rent, can’t buy” spells homelessness of one sort or another.  But are there no other routes into housing, asks Jon Fitzmaurice FRSA?

This is not a good time to be in housing need: housing benefit is about to be capped and the number of affordable houses being built reduced. While it won’t solve these problems, there is another route to housing which, although it’s little known, has been around for years and could well become more common in these austere times, especially against a backdrop of the Big Society agenda and emphasis on localism.

I’m referring to “self-help housing”, which involves people getting together and negotiating with owners to use their empty property, pending decisions as to its longer term use or its ultimate fate.

Self-help housing isn’t a new idea by any means. There were lots of community driven housing projects in the ‘70s and ‘80s, which very successfully used empty property as a way of accessing housing. However, over the last twenty years or so this has tailed off, as activists behind these initiatives have moved on (some into respectable and powerful jobs in mainstream housing) and as large housing providers have turned their attention away from street properties to larger new build schemes. (more…)