This is a new report from Anna Coote, the Head of Social Policy at the New Economics Foundation. People, Planet, Power – Towards a new social settlement is an attempt to re-define the shape of economy and community, and how these concepts are leveraged through socio-political and econo-social models onwards through the 21st Century.
This NEF report is an engaging, challenging and thoughtful piece of work. It chimes well with current RSA intellectual modelling of the same themes.
Download a copy of the report here…
The RSA thought leadership, and the recent strategic review at the Society, led to challenging aims for this year on focus, impact and joining up.
What has emerged has been a three-pronged change aim scenario for the work of RSA Fellows and the Society. This is neatly all encapsulated by the driving force of Matthew Taylor’s keenly edged concept of The Power to Create.
The thematic change aims for 2015 of the RSA are given below…
- Public services and communities
- Creative learning and development
- Economy, enterprise and manufacturing
Reading A New Social Settlement you will find long echoes and a contingency of similar RSA aims and concerns about inequality, elite power, creativity and community empowerment.
NEF‘s aims for their new settlement are stated thus…
This settlement has three main goals: social justice, environmental sustainability, and a more equal distribution of power. There is a dynamic relationship between these goals; each depends on the others for fulfilment. Addressing them together means aiming for sustainable social justice, which requires a fair and equitable distribution of social, environmental, economic, and political resources between people, places, and – where possible – between generations.
In summation, Anna Coote stresses that the NEF report lays out a new set of goals and objectives, and offers some illustrative effects that can achieve them.
It is though, perhaps more importantly, that the semiotic significance of strategic review at the RSA and the concentration by other leading thinkers on societal change and economic renewal of an equitable kind, all indicate that a sea-change may be under way.
The partiality of tax gatherers, the greed of bankers and the ‘socially neutral’ activities of global business may, at last, be under assault.
Be part of the debate, be part of a movement that puts equality of distribution, whether economic, social or intellectual, at the forefront of its aims. Be part of the RSA?
