conversationsEAST – Page 8 – conversationsEast

The Self Employment Summit!

The RSA, in partnership with Google and craft marketplace Etsy, recently held a Self Employment summit. Stimulating debate and reflection about the changing landscape of employment and the rise and condition of those ‘going it alone’.

The short film below offers insights into the various debates on the day and some of the original ideas and thoughts emerging from the discussion…

See the original film on YouTube here…

The debate ranges across some interesting data, movements in the economy and is awash with definitions. Data seems to show that since the year 2000, the self -employed as a recognisable economic cohort, have increased by 30%. With the self-employed now representing some 15% of the total active work force in the UK.

Between 2008 and 2013, we are told, the self-employed made up a staggering 90% of all jobs created. Even more seismic, in terms of paradigm shift, is the suggestion that by 2017/2018, the self employed numerically, may exceed the total number of individuals currently working in the Public Sector.

For those of us who work across the Public Sector/Charitable Sector divide, this is perhaps not so surprising. As Local Authorities continue to divest themselves of employed core professional expertise in a number of community support, education and housing sectors, the expertise is re-hired as consultants or contractors.

What does set this change in context, however, is not the numeric rise in self-employment, whatever the sector, professional or otherwise. It is the dramatic increase in diminution of turnover.

Steven Toft, who is the author of Flip Chart Fairy Tales, speaking at the one day RSA event, opines that between 2008 and 2013 aggregate income by the self-employed has fallen by a staggering 8 billion pounds.

However you define being self-employed, and there are multiple definitions, in the RSA research, by HMRC and in the national Labour Market Survey – it is clear that there is a re-structuring of the nature of employment wholly under way.

What this movement is not, however, is an attempt to create quality of life, sustainability of earnings or the increase in cultural and fiscal capital that this change might, given the right business environment, look to build over time.

Not all self-employed people strive to be the next Richard Branson, but that for the individual, given this data, the drive might be led by a belief, actual or not, in the achievement of a better work/life balance, access to culture and the arts and an exercise of choice regardless of cost, that corporatism or global capital does not offer. We do not know.

Finally, we would have liked the debate to have extended fully across social enterprise/social business as a new model for the self employed and entrepreneurially minded. New financial markets and new business models are emerging in these two sectors. Perhaps that is where the real dynamism in the economy is, for those who go it alone?

Towards a new social settlement?

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.

newsocialmodelNEFImage-m — A new social settlement?

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?

Posted by : The Team at conversationsEAST
Feb 17, 2015
conversationsEAST, Economic Models, Society

Coffee with my Fellowship Councillor?

View image | gettyimages.com

On Saturday 7th February, 2015 conversationsEAST are sponsoring an informal Open House drop-in event at their offices in Cambridge. Tim Smith FRSA will be holding a Fellowship Counsellor surgery, in his role as Fellowship Counsellor for the East of England. (Tim’s sponsored programme covers the region at monthly intervals or so. See more here...)

He’ll also be wearing his hat as Editor of this on-line publication, so a well as his Fellowship Council agenda, if you have a Fellow led project you would like support for, or to talk with another Fellow around funding, governance, communications or operational development…Tim will be on hand from 10.00am.

If you are intending to bring a charabanc of a dozen Fellows or so, do let Tim know, as our loft space will quickly fill up. See more details of Tim’s agenda and contact details for the day, including the creation of a women’s group to advance the interests of female Fellows in the region, here…

RSA Engage

‘The Power to Create is the theme of much RSA work this year and this Connect event will bring local Fellows (an interested others) together to discuss both local issues and exciting work coming out of the RSA’.

The RSA are currently about to deliver a suite of RSA Engage events in the Eastern Region. There are forthcoming events in Ipswich, Cambridge and other Fellow population centres. See details below.

RSA Connect Ipswich on 9 Feb
RSA Engage Cambridge on 21 April
RSA Connect Bedford on 12 May
RSA Connect Peterborough on 8 Sept

You can find an EventBrite booking page for the forthcoming Ipswich event here.

These Engage events are a great opportunity to meet the team from The House and to develop contacts and share ideas with other Fellows, or yet to be Fellows too. See you there?

Posted by : The Team at conversationsEAST
Feb 4, 2015
conversationsEAST, news, RSA, Society

Spirituality and Spiritualise

The RSA has recently published a report, called Spiritualise – Revitalising Spirituality to address 21st Century Challenges, compiled by Dr Jonathan Rowson, Director of the Social Brain Centre, RSA.

(You can discover the action research pages of the Centre here at the RSA. ‘The RSA’s Social Brain Centre seeks to improve public awareness of how prevailing understandings of human nature, need and aspiration shape practice and policy’).

View, print or download a copy of this RSA report here…

Below the Reverend Sue Martin, FRSA briefly reflects upon the theme…

“…this is an interesting report of some depth and brings spirituality into the open for all groups of people; faith and non faith, intellectual and pragmatic. Encompassing a multitude of dimensions the report draws on cultural psychology, embodied cognition, the divided brain and neural plasticity. If you venture into these chapters of the report you will find profound research and questioning.

(Jonathan Rowson gives due credit to The RSA for provision of the important institutional framework to allow the research to proceed, and provides details of the contributions of the many philosophers, psychologists and cultural specialists et al whose workshop activities informed the research conversation).

Before you get too deeply into the exacting mental science behind ‘spirtualising’, take a moment to dwell on what is spirituality, how do we know if we have it, and what should we do with it, if and when we get it?

And the following questions, seemingly simple, pose thoughts for us even if there are, annoyingly, no immediate direct answers;

Is there something more than just this time and place?
What happens to us when we see or hear something that makes us have ‘goosebumps’?
When was the last time you found yourself thinking about those you love?
If we spend all our time in gaining material goods and wealth, how do we know when to stop, and when is enough, enough?

Dr Rawson tackles many areas of spiritualising and in section three of the report addresses belonging or being, from love and death, from self and soul. “ Love, death, self and soul were selected, not as an exhaustive or exclusive map, but to illustrate why the spiritual is not fringe or niche but right at the heart of our lives.” (Spiritualise – Revitalising Spirituality p.56). This is followed by a number of illuminated pathways to personal, social and political transformation, including a section from happiness to meaning and back again.

In a Christian dimension, happiness and blessing are much the same thing and we look here in the report beyond the straightforward aspect of being happy, which can be rendered over simply, to see it can be a constituent of a deep and fulfilling spirituality.

The Dalai Lama in his book The Art of Happiness, links happiness to a quest for learning;
“ We don’t need more money, we don’t need greater success or fame, we don’t need the perfect body or even the the perfect mate… at this very moment, we have a mind, which is all the basic equipment we need to achieve complete happiness.”

Spirituality is like the tip of an iceberg, or rather a view from the top of a mountain. We think we know it all because we believe what we see is all that there is. Yet beneath lies a volume of intellectual matter and reflection that deeply conditions our existence.

Dr Rawson has produced an excellent research report and I wonder if this is something that RSA Fellows in the East can pursue in further discussion and reflection; not seeking the ‘answers’ but in seeking meaning and understanding”.

Reverend Sue Martin FRSA, Diocese of Norwich

(Is there potential for a regional group to combine, reflect and look to create a project that can carry forward the theme of spirituality, social change and the human condition? Respond to Sue Martin’s rallying call using our ‘contact us’ service above and we’ll post a project proposal on these web pages to help the idea coalesce…Ed.)

Photo credit: Nepal and the mountains – courtesy of Sue Martin.

Posted by : The Team at conversationsEAST
Jan 20, 2015
conversationsEAST, Philosophy, Research, RSA

Chelmsford Remembers
– Mental Health and the Armed Forces

As part of the Fellow led Chelmsford Remembers Project there is an upcoming joint meeting of RSA Chelmsford and The Civic Society at Anglia Ruskin University , Chelmsford.

Date: Monday 9th February, 2015 – 5.45pm for 6.00pm start

Venue: Room 001, The Sawyer Building, Anglia Ruskin University.

We are very pleased to announce that our guest speakers for the event will be Air Vice Marshall Ray Lock CBE, who is Chief Executive of the Forces in Mind Trust (FiMT) and Professor Jamie Hacker Hughes from the Veterans and Families Institute at Anglia Ruskin University.

This event, as part of Chelmsford Remembers, links the centenary commemorations of the First World War to the effects of deployment to war zones today. Other items include…

Final report on the Ideas Festival 2014 (IF2014) and the initial consultations on 2015. IF2015 will run from the 18th October 2015 to 1st November inclusive.
Update on negotiations on future uses for the Hall Street Marconi Factory.
Notifications on upcoming Chelmsford Remembers event with Dr. Paul Rusiecki author of The Impact of Catastrophe – The First World War.

If you are able to attend, do please confirm with Malcolm Noble – (mnoble3211 at yahoo.com), or use our ‘contact us’ panel above and send Malcolm a message directly from this web page.

Posted by : The Team at conversationsEAST
Jan 17, 2015
Cities, History, news, Research, RSA, Society

Sainsbury Centre – a diary date

medium_3611396822 — Visit The Sainsbury Centre on-line here…

RSA East of England Visit to the Sainsbury Centre, University of East Anglia

Friday 20 February 10.30 am to 2pm

You can book on-line here…

Fellows are invited to a guided tour of the outstanding collection at the Sainsbury Centre, UEA including the major REALITY exhibition of Modern British painting, Matisse sculptures (‘The Backs’), as well as the permanent collection (http://scva.ac.uk/art-and-artists/highlights)

REALITY brings together over 50 works celebrating the strength of British painting with some of the best and most influential artists of the last sixty years, testifying to the survival of painting as a medium and the impact of British painting today. Major 20th Century artists are represented such as Walter Sickert, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and David Hockney, alongside contemporary painters including Ken Currie, George Shaw and Caroline Walker.

The tour will be followed by lunch in the restaurant. Lunch is self service but we have reserved a table, so Fellows can eat together and review the morning.

See more details on our events page here…

Sainsbury Centre image credit: lucyrfisher via photopin cc

Posted by : The Team at conversationsEAST
Jan 13, 2015
Art, conversationsEAST, Culture, news, RSA, The Arts

Abbey People? A great volunteering opportunity

The Fellow led RSA Cambridge Network are offering their support to the Abbey People community project.

This is a call to action for new volunteers from the Fellowship in the East of England and beyond.

Abbey People is a community group working to support residents in the Abbey Ward , located in the east of Cambridge City. This is a dynamic, energetic and committed community that are responding to a need for change in community resources, the environment and in their economic landscape too. Can you help?

This great short film, made by Hilary Cox for Abbey People, conveys the energy and enthusiasm of the community. (…and some stirring and engaging piano playing too…Ed.)

You can see the original film on YouTube here.

The group are currently looking for Trustees and other support for their governance and project development…

trusteecallAbbey — View, print or download this information and contacts here…pdf version

“…Trustee roles
We have bi-monthly Trustee meetings, usually on a Monday evening. In addition to meetings Trustees contribute their skills to different aspects of our work e.g. events, projects, consultation.

You can download a pdf copy of the original call for Trustees document here…

Treasurer – We are looking for someone with the financial skill and experience to become our Treasurer. We anticipate this role will take approx. 5 hours per month, including meetings.

Trustee – Someone who is keen to support our aims in the Abbey ward and who has skills, time and experience to contribute. We would be interested to hear from anyone with an interest in developing a particular area of work e.g. supporting Older People, Improving our Environment

Supporting roles
We are a young community group with ambition. To help us fulfil our potential we would appreciate support from people with expertise and time to offer in these areas

• Administrative support – including taking minutes, collating information

• Book-keeper ideally a volunteer, but will consider small remuneration. To maintain the accounts using Quick Books (training can be provided) ensuring payments are made, correct recording, running payroll monthly, dealing with HMRC, liaising with the Treasurer. Approx 8 hours pcm

• Marketing and Communications – including developing our communications strategy and use of social media

• Volunteer Coordination – including recruitment, development and retention…”

We support Abbey People too! Go volunteers!

You can discover Abbey People, their projects, ambitions and enthusiasm on-line here.

As a Fellow, wherever you are in the world, the power of your imagination and the internet can help you to help the people of Abbey with their project aims.

To get connected you can download the Abbey People notice above. Or you can securely send your contact details, immediately below, to conversationsEAST and we’ll speedily forward them to Stuart, Wendy or Sam.

Posted by : The Team at conversationsEAST
Jan 7, 2015
Cities, conversationsEAST, Volunteering

Thinking about the Fellowship, 2014

During the summer of 2014 the Society sent out a survey to the Fellowship, seeking their responses on a number of issues and asking for their views and comments.

Below is a copy that analysis, garnered from the 29% of Fellows who responded, along with some thoughts from the conversationsEAST team as to how our contribution to the work of the Fellowship might be flexed, in response to the findings.

The summary findings from The House indicated the following…

“Overall responses to the survey were positive. Over two-thirds of Fellows join–at least partially–to support our mission, the quality of almost all of our outputs is seen as very high and by far the majority of Fellows are intending to renew their Fellowship. The Survey also generated a large amount of information that can be used to guide ongoing Fellowship development”.

Key findings included…

There is less satisfaction with local events compared to other areas of our work.
There are a large number of Fellows wanting to self- organise but are frustrated at being unable to do so.
There are a large number of Fellows wanting to self- organise but are frustrated at being unable to do so.
Some Fellows want to be more involved in the work we do.
There is a lack of knowledge about what we do. Across the seven RSA Projects included in the survey, `have not heard of it at all’ accounted for between a quarter and a half of all responses.
Younger people and females are less likely to recommend the Fellowship to suitable people than others
There are strong regional variations in how Fellows perceive the RSA.

(Key findings drawn from the RSA Fellowship summary report – Ed.)

Looking forward into 2015 we have recently published our ‘road-map’ as a journal, where we have been working with Tim, our new Fellowship Councillor in the East, to develop a series of gatherings to explore how Fellows can become more engaged with the Society.

You can view, print or download a copy of the 2014 RSA Survey here…

fellowsurvey2014coverPic-m — See the Survey here…

We will, as stated, pivot these, supporting Tim directly in the delivery of a series of Fellowship Councillor Surgeries across the region. This might help inform and engage the interested Fellowship directly. Offering an informal setting, with refreshments, for the survey itself to be discussed and for Tim to explain and heighten awareness of the work and input of the Fellowship Council itself. One of the findings in the survey was that many Fellows were unaware of the function of the Fellowship Council, for example.

Another way forward, we would argue, would be to foster the engagement of female Fellows, either as new Fellows, or to develop some way to engage with the Fellowship on a gender basis. We have written before in this journal and in our regional annual reports about the gender imbalances, including in the Fellowship, in our region.

(We could start an Otrera Group in every region to foster the engagement and promotion of Fellowship skills by gender, for example? -Ed.)

If this imbalance in Fellowship is ‘normalised’ across all regions, we would look to develop a campaign/project to engage by gender across adjacent regions for example. Sharing both the information in the recent survey, but garnering explicit local knowledge on gender bias as part of the project initiation work.

(Having talked so long about the matter, it seems that a short burst of positive discrimination, in terms of engagement and resources, might go a long way? -Ed.)

In our publishing activities we will develop a ‘Fellows have their say!’ web journal page. Where the Fellowship can directly contribute to the regional debate in the East. This might be particularly useful in bolstering the regional events catalogue in terms of feedback or activity recommendation. All this information will be passed directly and securely to the Eastern Region Fellowship team, of course.

We will foster and web publish a set of ‘View from the Fellowship Council’ reports. Getting Tim to write a regular review of Council activity and debate, in a generalised way, which can feed into regional meetings and, more importantly, be immediately available to the wider regional Fellowship. Helping to support and deliver a clearer understanding of its work and role.

We think the new RSA web site, arriving this month, which will enable Fellows to contact each other directly if they wish, offers an important and effective mechanism for pan regional co-operation, as well as improving inter-region project and activity development. We look forward to reviewing it on our web pages.

Also useful, we believe, will be the launch of artSUFFUSION, our sister arts focused web journal. We are refining the publication manifesto this month.

We hope that by combining the arts, crafts and making into one energy stream in the region, whilst connecting new conversationsEAST social enterprise start-up projects, we can also help convert our Society’s brilliant research papers and mission into real world examples of sustainable community business and social outcome funded projects.

We look forward to 2015, hoping that our readers will come along with us?

The conversationsEAST team.

Article image credit: David J. Thomas via photopin cc

Posted by : The Team at conversationsEAST
Jan 2, 2015
Art, Business, conversationsEAST, RSA, Society, The Arts, Volunteering

The Gift of Knowledge?

At this time of year everyone reflects a little on their progress in the previous twelve months, and more often than not, looks forward to the next twelve, with joy or trepidation depending on personal circumstance.

One factor of life that will not change is the ubiquity of the web and the range of services available for the owners of the right ‘machinery’, or for those who have access to it.

This journal is the product of Fellowship imaginations, but others are looking at the world and re-imagining news, reflection and analysis too. Below are some great ways that you can commit to developing knowledge and understanding, all at no cost…beyond that all important access to machinery!

Wonker – a complex news analysis engine:

This is a brave attempt to develop and share knowledge and understanding about the critical social, economic and community development conflicts across the globe.

Just getting started, but with a vast task in front of them, Casey and Nick the creators of Wonker, risk burn-out or perhaps even take-over by mainstream news outlets if the concept becomes a raging success. The site currently offers analysis of the ISIS crisis and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict for example.

That said, even if you are a ‘policy wonk‘ already, the site offers a great way to get contextual analysis from outside your own professional field of endeavour. Alternatively, you can use your professional knowledge to contribute to the Q & A style presentation of Wonker.

As with all user contributed content, there are potential questions of political bias, Americo-centrism in this case or even propogandism as the site develops. It is however, we think, a brave attempt to make clear the complicated to either the disengaged or the distracted, one conflict at a time.

See more of Wonker here…

Highbrow – expand your knowledge universe, one email at a time…

Not a new concept on the literate web, but this service is nicely presented for those who have just five minutes a day over ten days to become acquainted with a new field of study, one email at a time.

It’s not particularly clear on their web site, but you are constrained to one ten day course subscription at a time. Presumably to prevent burn-out or ‘knowledge fatigue’?

You can choose your starting date, in order to manage the light work-flow from the beginning. Courses you can choose from cover such topics as art, history, philosophy and psychology, amongst others.

It will be interesting to see the content as it develops over time, as the delivery is heavily dependent upon TED talks at the moment. Worth checking out, either as a refresher in a busy email day, or as context to develop a new interest.

See more of Highbrow here…

Don’t forget The RSA…

If video access to fresh thinking is your mode of learning, then the RSA has a long history of offfering its audience the most topical material from thought leaders of the day.

The RSA can offer you a whole range of video talks and presentations from some great thinkers. The example below is one such. The need for a revolution in education, breaking the political and social bounds of the mind to create new worlds. (Makes me breathless just reading this…Ed.)

Debra Kidd argues for the creation of ‘architects of hope’ for young people. A powerful ambition and an idea well worth spreading. One interesting observation Debra makes is that individuals need to know what they are voting for and how the solutions offered by the political machinery are tinkered with by the self interest of the elected representative.

See this original video on YouTube here.

Knowledge, context and critical thinking are key. With a tsunami of information crashing over us, the tools and resources above can help with process, we would argue.

See a catalogue of RSA videos here…

Happy New Year.

Headline photo credit: Bill on Capitol Hill via photopin cc

Posted by : The Team at conversationsEAST
Dec 26, 2014
conversationsEAST, Culture, Education, Publishing, RSA, Society

Seasonal Greetings
to everyone…

We hope that all our readers, subscribers and site visitors enjoy a warm and happy seasonal break, wherever you may be?

Thank you for your support and interest in the East of England regional activity in 2014. Below is our conversationsEast road-map for 2015. A short list, but with much energy and enthusiasm behind it.

Launch of our sister site artSUFFUSION.org in the first quarter 2015 (…putting the arts back into the RSA regional profile?)

Beginning our ‘guerilla gatherings’ programme, with some test ‘get togethers’, initially focussed on spreading news and information about the Fellowship Council. (A sort of Fellowship Councillor surgery programme in the East really).

Finally publishing our web and project support offer in a formalised and structured way to help regional projects build a web presence or develop a project plan.

Making our news feed a simple subscription based print edition, so that the lack of technology is not a bar to receiving our news.

As with all our conversationsEAST sponsored support – publications, events, coffee and buns are always free at the point of delivery.

Updated: 26th December 2014: Provided you don’t have Google code blocked in your browser, you can now translate all our content on individual article pages into many languages…including Latvian and Igbo, for example. Click the headline, and use the Google Translate drop-down box on the top right of every web page. Making the RSA more accessible…

Tag Archives: conversationsEAST