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RSA Journal
Issue 3 2021

The pursuit of wellbeing

James Wilson asks how we can create
nurturing states

Anna Severwright looks at how thesocial care system could improve

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Patron of the Society

Executive

RSA Journal

HM The Queen

Chief executive officer
Andy Haldane (from 27 September)
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Natalie Carsey
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Anthony Painter

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RSA Journal Issue 3 2021

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Comment

Anthony Painter“At the RSA we recognise
the importance of building
wellbeing into the systems
that surround us”

As I write this, England and Wales have recently
come out of lockdown and infection rates
seem to be falling. The number of vaccinatedpeople is continuing to rise and we wait to see what a
new ‘normal’ might mean.
But some things from our period of lockdown living
are worth holding onto, and one of these is an increased
awareness about the importance of wellbeing. The
pandemic has highlighted the relationship between
health and broader wellbeing and the unequal
distribution of both across and between nations.
At the RSA we recognise the importance of building
wellbeing into the systems that surround us and its
relationship to poverty, wider economic insecurity
and discrimination. In this edition of RSA Journal we
explore how collective wellbeing can be embedded
into our thinking.
Professor James Wilson addresses the relationshipbetween subjective wellbeing and government policy.
If this is governments’ only end goal, he writes, we
could lose sight of other values important to the public
good. But this is not a call for governments to ignore
wellbeing; he argues for a move from a neglectful state
to a nurturing one, based on a deeper understanding of
the complexity of our societal systems.
All of the RSA’s core programmes start with ananalysis of this complexity. In her article, my colleague
Hannah Webster outlines the work we are doing tobetter understand the relationship between place andwellbeing and the implications for how we engage
local people.
It has been apparent for many years that we do not
yet have an effective way of integrating health andsocial care. Anna Severwright of the Social Care Future
movement shares her vision of a social care systemthat can deliver wellbeing to every individual. Having
personally experienced the sometimes disjointed natureof social care, she knows the importance of listening tothose with lived experience of the system.
www.thersa.org

Can we act now to promote the wellbeing of future
generations? Tatsuyoshi Saijo encourages us to embed
this question in the decisions we are making today. If
we adopted the idea of future design, we could avoid
making choices – such as the introduction of singleuse plastic bags – that, although offering short-term
convenience, create future problems on a larger scale.
Of course, caring for future generations also means
thinking about the wellbeing of children today. Having
spoken to children around the country, Rachel deSouza, the new Children’s Commissioner for England,has gained insight into their thoughts about the
pandemic and more. Mental health and wellbeing are
top of their concerns, but so is getting a good education
and being able to go on and achieve their career goals.
The past year has demonstrated that fear overlost productivity from homeworking for those able
to tended to be overstated. With RSA and Vitality
research showing that only a minority of workers
would prefer to work mainly away from their home,
Alan Lockey, Head of the RSA Future Work Centre,
puts forward the argument for a permanent wellmanaged hybrid working arrangement. The shift invalues that longer-term hybrid working could bring
could be a major step in creating ‘good’ work for all
if handled carefully, ensuring a vibrant organisational
culture is nurtured.
In his piece, Iqbal Wahhab writes about thepotential for food to improve prisoners’ lives, not justin relation to the health and wellbeing effects of ahighly nutritious diet, but also by enabling people togain skills that can be used upon their release.
This edition of RSA Journal offers many ideas as
to how to promote wellbeing. In September, Andy
Haldane officially starts his tenure as Chief Executive
and we will continue to explore with our Fellows andothers how we can all support individuals, business,government and communities to meet the widest
range of human needs.

Anthony Painter is
Chief Research andImpact Officer at
the RSA

3

Contents

ISSUE 3 2021
Long read

Medium read16	Reshaping social care

20 In conversation

30 Binding moments

36 Taking care of business40	Future forebearers

46 Racing for space	Health and social care need tobe tailored to each individual,
writes Anna Severwright	Children’s Commissioner for
England Rachel de Souza isinterviewed by Patrick Butler

10 The intervening state	Is it possible to move from a neglectfulstate to a nurturing one? James Wilson
looks at the complex systems involved	Sport has a way of bringing us
together, says Sunder Katwala,
but there is more we can do

24 A local focus

	Hannah Webster makes the case for a
locally led approach to wellbeing4	Tatsuyoshi Saijo champions
future design as the best way
to safeguard the world for
future generations

	Is social enterprise all it’scracked up to be? Belinda Belltakes a close look at the sector	Peter Marber anticipates thenext Space Revolution

RSA Journal Issue 3 2021

Short read

Periscope
Systems scientist John D Sterman said
“there are no side effects – only effects”.
Complex systems approaches mean
anticipating all these effects (page 15).
In real terms, spending on social care in
England is £300m less than 10 years ago(page 18).

34 Cooking in custody	Iqbal Wahhab outlines the ways
food can make a real difference
to prisoners’ lives

45 A healthy hybrid	A flexible working modelis the way forward, writes
Alan Lockey

One in five children who responded to
the Children’s Commissioner’s ‘Big Ask’
said they were unhappy with their mental
health and wellbeing (page 20).
The 2020 Greater Manchester
Independent Inequalities Commission
said that equality and wellbeing shouldbe put at the centre of public policy(page 25).
Thirty-one million people in the UK
watched the Euro 2020 final (page 30).
On average, there is a budget of £2 tofeed each prisoner per day in the UK(page 35).

49 Fellowship	Ian Craigton-Chambers
introduces his project,
Bat and Chat

50 Last word	Alex Edelman makes thecase for a more meaningful
kind of self-care

About three in 10 social enterprises havea turnover of under £50,000 (page 39).
The Third Agricultural Revolution took
place from 1950 to the late 1960s(page 41).
Only 16% of homeworkers would prefer
to work mainly in a separate location
away from their home (page 45).
Global space activity could generate $1trn
annually in 2040, up from $350bn today(page 48).

www.thersa.org

5

UpdateRSA

Slowing down fast fashion
Are we considering the environmental impact of our wardrobes?

According to a recent RSA
report, Fast Fashion’s Plastic
Problem, fast fashion isawash with new plastics and brands
are doing very little to stem the tide.
After reviewing thousands ofitems on the websites of four big
fast fashion brands – boohoo, ASOS,
Missguided and PrettyLittleThing –the research found that on average
80% of newly listed items contained
virgin plastics. In some cases, 60%of items were made entirely of
new plastics. The amount ofrecycled fabrics used by thesebrands is vanishingly small, at 3%
on average.
Fossil-fuel-derived textiles, likepolyester, have boomed in recent
years, but have big environmental
impacts, including intensive energy
use in production and microfibre
shedding during washing.
The RSA is recommending that
the UK government disincentivises
virgin plastic use by introducing
extended producer responsibility forbrands and exploring a tax on newplastics, income from which could
be used to invest in innovations inbiomaterials and circular economy
infrastructure. Brands and retailers
should be more transparent with
their customers and explore circular
economy models, such as resale andrental, which could extend the useof the clothing.
As part of the Regenerative Futures
programme, the RSA is exploring
how a different future for fashion
could look, one rooted in healthy
environments and communities.

To download the report, visit thersa.org/reports/fast-fashions-plastic-problem
6

RSA Journal Issue 3 2021

Skills
Cities of Learning

The RSA’s par tnership, Cities ofLearning, has demonstrated direct
impact, helping thousands of young
people to recognise skills that are notcaptured by traditional exams.
In an independent evaluation, theLearning and Work Institute stated that
“Cities of Learning and digital badges areclearly in a strong position to responddirectly to the needs of young people aswell as to align with government support
programmes during the pandemic andeconomic crisis.”
Over the past two years, the RSA has
worked with par tners in Plymouth andBrighton, the Real Ideas Organisation

and Future Creators respectively, to codesign a shared vision for local learning.
The Cities of Learning programme helps
places to recognise learning wherever it
happens and direct people towards local
oppor tunities, making learning visible,
measurable and connected.
Cities of Learning convenes local
stakeholders and uses digital badging to
map and connect learning opportunities
to employability outcomes. Pilot projects
were launched last year during lockdown
and have since helped more than 2,000
young people to articulate their skills in a
way that is meaningful to employers.
Cities of Learning is expanding andis currently looking for places andpartners to join the programme in 2022
and beyond.
To find out more, visit
thersa.org/cities-of-learning

RSA insights

Images from iStock

Jackson Lane
Monique Deletant FRSA is Executive
Director and joint CEO of Jacksons
Lane, an arts centre on Archway Road,
north London. It runs several creative
learning activities for young and older
participants, with these programmes
moving online during lockdown.
Activities include JL Circus, whichteaches young people circus skills, andcreative lunchtime sessions for those in
sheltered accommodation. “We havea ringside seat to monitor wellbeing
through our work,” says Monique.
Participants have particularly benefited
from the sense of community createdby the centre during the pandemic.
To find out more, email
monique@jacksonslane.org.uk
www.thersa.org

642%

Local authorities should create Local
Offices for Public Engagement andInnovation, according to Transitions toParticipatory Democracy, a new report by
the RSA in conjunction with the
UK Inclusive Growth Network.This isjust one of six transitions recommended
by the report, which explores how
local policy and practice can encourage
participatory democracy.

This is the percentage of young people
who say they are feeling the pressure to
return to work even if they have Covid-19
symptoms, according to a recent RSA
report, Back to Work. Published prior to
19 July, when all Covid-19-related
restrictions were lifted in England, theresearch found that another wave of thevirus would push a quarter of workers
over the edge financially. The RSA is callingfor a support package to aid the back-towork effort, including sick pay and UBI.

To find out more, visit
thersa.org/reports/transitionsparticipatory-democracy

To find out more, visit
thersa.org/reports/back-to-work7

UpdateAgendaThe Learning Society

Fellowship
New Fellows
Impact entrepreneur Joshin Raghubar was
one of the founding members of the Cape
Innovation and Technology Initiative (CiTi),
and is now the Chair of the Board. CiTi hasdeveloped a tech ecosystem in Cape Town andtrained and placed thousands of disadvantaged
youth in digital jobs. Joshin is also the founderand Executive Chair of iKineoVentures, aventure studio that looks to encourage themost innovative projects.

The RSA is developing a new programme, the Learning Society,to help people who have struggled in formal education to accesslearning throughout life. Using its Living Change Approach, the
RSA is consulting with Fellows and partners to develop the
programme. The vision informing the project is: “a society thatenables, recognises and values learning for everyone, throughout life
and across multiple settings, to promote economic security, social
equity and individual wellbeing.”
To get involved, contact Tom Kenyon on tom.kenyon@rsa.org.uk

Good Work Guild
The RSA is launching the Good Work Guild this September tobring together ‘future of work’ practitioners from around the globe
to help develop solutions in relation to such issues as worker
voice, economic inclusion, skills and training, and labour market
transforming technologies. The Good Work Guild will generate
opportunities for learning, collective action and advocacy, creating acommunity of practitioners to shape policies, practices and markets
with the aim of making sure that everyone can pursue good workin an age of technological change.

Jaime Toney is a professor of environmental
and climate science at the University ofGlasgow and the co-founder and Director of
the Centre for Sustainable Solutions at theuniversity. The centre aims to enable individuals,
communities and organisations throughresearch, education and partnership to makechange towards a sustainable future, creating
equitable and just conditions for current andfuture generations.
Make the most of your Fellowshipby connecting online and sharing your skills.
Search the Fellowship at thersa.org/fellowship.
While you’re there, don’t forget to update yourown profile: thersa.org/my-rsa.
Follow us on Twitter @theRSAorg
Our Instagram is www.instagram.com/thersaorg
Join the Fellows’ LinkedIn groupwww.linkedin.com/groups/3391
Where possible, Fellowship events have
moved online; to find out more and connect
with Fellows in our global community visit
thersa.org/events/fellowship
Grow your idea through RSA Catalyst, which
offers grants for Fellow-led and new or earlystage projects with a social goal.
To find out more, visit our online Project Support
page thersa.org/fellowship/project-support

To find out more visit: thersa.org/future-of-work/good-work-guild
8

RSA Journal Issue 3 2021

Events

Catch up online

Philanthropy today

Leading public thinkers, innovators and changemakers take to
the RSA Great Room and digital stage to share and debate
the ideas, events and movements that are shaping the futureof our societies, our economies and our world.

Writer and development expert Paul Vallely
is joined by philanthropic activist Sir Bob
Geldof and charity director Fran Perrin to
explore the big questions for philanthropy today:
what does charity mean in an age of increasing
inequality? How should charities and the stateinteract? How can philanthropic giving connect
us to one another, and redistribute not justmoney, but power?

Subscribe to our YouTube channel and ‘like’ us on Facebook to
catch up on the latest content
youtube.com/thersaorg
facebook.com/rsaeventsofficial

Watch now: https://bit.ly/370XNNI#RSAPhilanthropy

How women can savethe planet

How to manage fear andfind fulfilment

Rethinking Education

Gender inequality has helped cause
climate catastrophe and genderequality is needed to help us solve it.
We must see women not simply as
the victims nor the sole saviours of
our global situation, but as holdersof power to make systemic change.
Sociologist Anne Karpf speaks withactivists Daze Aghaji and Stella
Nyambura about building movements
for gender-inclusive climate action.

Cultures of fear in the workplace, infamily relationships and friendships
undermine intimacy, honesty andcreativity. Dr Pippa Grange, a
psychologist who has worked withsome of the biggest names in sportand business, encourages us to lookcloser at what fear is costing us, andto make changes that can help us findconnection, fulfilment and purpose.

Continuing the RSA’s Rethinking Educationseason, an expert panel of educators ask
whether the disruptive events of 2020–21
provide an opportunity for a fundamental
rethink of the capabilities that school
curriculum and assessment focus on. With
Bill Lucas of Rethinking Assessment;
Mary Richardson of the UCL Instituteof Education; Stephen Tierney of the
Headteachers Roundtable; and Jeffery
Quaye of the Aspirations Academies Trust.

Watch now: https://bit.ly/2UTu7zF#RSAClimate

Watch now: https://bit.ly/3BHiooB#RSAFearLess

Watch now: https://bit.ly/375rnBC#RSAEducation

www.thersa.org

9Policy

THE INTERVENING
STATE
Embracing complexity means greater accountability
by James Wilson@jamesgswilson

T

James Wilson
is a professor ofphilosophy at
UCL. His latest
book, Philosophy
for Public Healthand Public Policy:
Beyond the
Neglectful State,
will be publishedin September

10

he main ethical aim of governments is
uncontroversial and longstanding: to pursue
the common good. But best practice in how
to specify, measure and seek the common good haschanged significantly in recent years. One salientfeature has been that greater attention is being paid
to the idea that adequately pursuing the common
good is helped by using direct measurements ofcitizens’ wellbeing to drive public decision-making,particularly by incorporating subjective measures
such as life satisfaction scores. Attention to subjective
wellbeing has made apparent how deep the effects ofcircumstances, such as unemployment, and mental
health issues, such as depression, are on overall
wellbeing and given strong reasons to think that thesewere previously taken less seriously than they shouldhave been.
However, the relationship between subjective
wellbeing and the main end goal of government policy
needs to be interrogated. If taken as the only goal it
will tend to curtail and impoverish our understandingof the kinds of public values that governments
concerned with promoting the common good should
be interested in. For example, it is important – yet
unsurprising – to note that being the victim of a violent
assault reduces subjective wellbeing. More important,however, is to notice that the reduction in subjective
wellbeing is a response to and an interpretation of asense of personal violation. So responding to theseconcerns is not just one of a number of ways in whichgovernment can increase wellbeing in the aggregate: itis something that individuals have a right to requireof governments. Pursuit of the common good means
governments must respond to the normative structureof situations, rather than just attempting to shift the

subjective experiences of individuals. It is problematic
if a government responds to a crisis in publictrust – such as threatened the UK’s recently delayed GP
Data for Planning and Research policy – by treating
it purely as a communications challenge, rather thana signal that it is the trustworthiness of the policythat needs to be ensured. Rising to the challenge of
demonstrating trustworthiness requires articulation
and reconciliation of shared values.

Societal stigmatisation
This is true not just in extreme situations, suchas interpersonal violence, but also in a range ofcases related to health and wellbeing. For example,
many long-term health conditions are subject tostigmatisation. Stigma requires picking out somehuman differences as significant, and labelling them.
A distinguishing feature will become stigmatising
only if it is associated (or comes to be associated)with existing negative attributes. A sense of shame orbeing stigmatised will affect individuals’ willingness toengage with healthcare, to disclose their conditions toothers, or to continue to maintain an outgoing focus,
as Russell T Davies’s It’s a Sin powerfully dramatisedin the case of HIV/AIDS.
Many long-term illnesses are subject to stigma, andbeing stigmatised significantly worsens the experienceof having a long-term condition. As sociologists
Bruce Link and Jo Phelan argue, the relationshipbetween stigma and status loss is bidirectional:
stigma itself causes status loss, but low or diminishedsocial status can itself be a cause of further stigma
or discrimination. Power inequalities easily lead tostigmas being created where they previously did notexist; and lack of social power is one of the things
RSA Journal Issue 3 2021

www.thersa.org

11

Illustrations by Erick Centeno

“We are not spectators
or detached scientificinvestigators ofsocial reality”
that is often stigmatised. Stigmatisation is bad in
itself for subjective wellbeing, and also tends to leadto further negative effects.
Because of all these factors, it is short-sighted tothink, for example, of mental health stigma as justa matter of subjective experience. Stigma is by its
nature a kind of othering of less powerful groups
by more powerful groups. We need to think of it
as a structural cause of unfair inequalities in healthand wellbeing, and policy responses to it need totake this into account. As stigmatisation arises fromsystematic differences in power, and further magnifies
these power differentials, attempting to remove
stigmatisation without changing the underlying power
structures is difficult, and can easily backfire.
Better awareness of these challenges explains why,
despite the very welcome improvement in the volume
and quality of data available to decision-makers, thetask of government has become, if anything, more,rather than less, challenging. There are now many
more ways in which a government can fail. Especiallywhere, as in the case of stigma reduction or tackling
structural racism, the problem that governments
need to solve requires change of deep-seated social
attitudes. Success is fragile and cannot be secured
through legislation alone. Persuading rather thancoercing is crucial. To make matters worse, the greater
12

availability of data makes it more obvious whenpublic policy fails to achieve its objectives.

Complex systems
Responding to these challenges, the RSA, among manyother thoughtful commentators, has been arguingfor a deep reorientation of public policy away fromnew public management approaches that focus onefficiency through setting targets and key performanceindicators, to complex systems approaches. There is arange of approaches to public policymaking that draw
on complexity science, but all are united in arguingthat top-down or command-and-control systems inpolicy will often suffer from, among other faults, afailure to anticipate their systemic effects. This tends
to lead to policies either not achieving their intended
results or having unintended additional effects – what
the American systems theorist and ecologist Donella
Meadows called “policy resistance”.
Taking a long view, it is striking not just how
intellectually strong the case is for the shift tocomplex systems approaches, but also that similararguments have been made with relatively little effectfor over 40 years. While complexity science hasoften recommended a much greater reflexivity in theapproach to interventions, it has not always reflectedsufficiently on the reasons why it has itself struggled
RSA Journal Issue 3 2021

for acceptance in public policy. Doing so will allow
us to make progress on how governments should go
about attempting to promote citizen wellbeing, and inparticular the relationship between citizen wellbeing
and the public good.
The paradox at the heart of systems thinking is that
it is both familiar and deeply counterintuitive at thesame time. It is hard to work in a large organisation,or to attempt to interact with government services
such as social care, without becoming vividly awareof the ubiquity of unintended consequences and the
myriad ways in which something that clearly seemed
like a good idea in theory ends up being highly
problematic in practice. For example, the Northern
Ireland renewable heat incentive policy aimed toencourage businesses to shift from fossil fuels to
renewables by subsidising the burning of wood pellets
in boilers. However, the subsidy per kilowatt of energy
produced ended up being higher than the cost of thefuel, meaning that it became profitable to run the
boilers to heat empty sheds, leading to the ‘Cash for
Ash’ scandal. While such experiences are universal,
they will be interpreted differently, depending on thepresuppositions we bring.
The mental model of causation that politicians andcitizens alike tend to start from is akin to something
like a billiards table: everything is static until a force
is applied from the cue to the cue ball, which thenstrikes another ball and causes it to sink into thepocket. In such a world, causes are easy to identify,
and responsibility is easy to parcel out. In reality,
social systems, institutions and biological systems
behave very differently. Where they exhibit stability,
it tends to be a dynamic stability. Things do not staythe same because nothing is changing, but rather
because they are kept within boundaries by dynamic
interactions within a system. This is most obvious
in the case of the processes of homeostasis in livingorganisms, where the maintenance of a fairly constantinternal environment requires continual dynamic
adjustments. The composition of a neighbourhood or
rates of violent crime can be seen to also be affectedby a process akin to homeostasis; stability and change
should be understood in terms of the interaction of
mechanisms, rather than presupposed as a constant.

The problems of complexity
Thinking in terms of complexity increases the range
and density of interrelations that need to be taken into
account in policymaking, and leaves policymakers
better equipped to avoid certain obvious problemsof policy resistance. However, better understanding
systemic interrelations does not by itself reduce thewww.thersa.org

difficulty of the ethical problems policymakers facein determining, measuring and pursuing the common
good. Complex systems approaches are premised on ashift of our understanding of what causes what, andthe implications this has for our planning: they do notby themselves tell us what our goals or aims should
be. This is one reason for the otherwise surprising
bedfellows that complexity brings together, cutting
across political divides, from ecologists such as Donella
Meadows, to market enthusiasts such as Hayek, andurbanites such as Jane Jacobs.
Complexity does not, however, leave everything
the same when it comes to government policy. It has
more radical implications too, as it compels a deeper
reflection on the kinds of contingent reasons why
policies can fail, and how to avoid this. Feedback
loops and sensitivity to initial starting conditions canlead to unpredictable results even within deterministic
systems. Where human beings are involved, as they
always are in public policy, the ways in which citizens
incorporate expectations of each other’s behaviour
into their own actions is crucial. How the humanbeings who partially compose a system interpret
elements of the system, and how easy or difficult the
expectations of others make it for them to get what
they want, will alter the behaviour of that system.
I call this performativity.
The basic idea is simple, but mind-bending in
its implications. As philosopher and psychologist
William James remarked in his classic essay ‘The Will
to Believe’, if you assume that someone is hostile toyou, and then act on that basis, they may respond to
your apparent distrust. If you then take their response
as evidence of their hostility, things can easily escalate
into a full-blown enmity in which it is true that theother person is hostile to you, even though this is true
only because of your initial assumption. Start with theassumption that the other is trustworthy and likeable
and act on this basis, and the cascade of behaviour
may go the other way; the other returns the openness
and compliments, which are interpreted as signs
of friendliness and as the cause for further friendly
moves. How many friendships and enmities have theirbasis in the contingent workings of performativity?
We are not spectators or detached scientificinvestigators of social reality, but the actors who are
creating the show. As pithily summed up by the British
economist Charles Goodhart, in what has come to be
known as Goodhart’s law: “Any observed statisticalregularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed
upon it for control purposes.”
One implication of performativity is that many ofthe problems that need to be tackled by governments
13

“Moving on from aneglectful state to a
nurturing one will not
be easy in the current
circumstances”
will not be solved more easily by stronger or more
directive government action. To take just one example,
the dynamics of vaccine hesitancy are significantly
shaped by judgements about trust in state authorities,
and so replacing a model that previously encouraged
vaccination on a voluntary and solidaristic basis witha mandatory one is liable to reduce public confidence
in the programme. If the coercion is perceived to beheavy-handed or unmerited, it may increase vaccine
refusals, and fail to increase overall vaccination rates,
achieving the exact opposite of its aim.
This is a message that has been appreciated bythose on the political right who emphasise market
solutions, but generally resisted by the left and centreleft. However, this debate needs to be reconfigured.
The theoretical reasons that economists advance forthinking that the deliverances of a market will be
optimal for wellbeing hold only under assumptions
such as perfect information and zero transaction
costs, which never in fact obtain in real-world
circumstances. Looked at from the perspective ofa rigorous complexity approach, competition in an
economy is no more likely to lead to results that are
optimal for wellbeing than is the process of natural
selection. Without firm government intervention,
the interrelated systems that make up society willoften act to exacerbate existing inequalities andincrease the risks to those who are most vulnerable.
In such circumstances, government inaction isneither neutral nor a way of maximising wellbeing,
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but amounts to allowing the vulnerable to cometo harm.
However, nor is the idea that ambitious governmental
intervention must fail supported by complexity
approaches. While there are many instances inwhich public policy breaks down because systemicinteractions have not been adequately attended to,it is simply mistaken to draw the conclusion thatcomplexity approaches provide blanket support forgovernment inaction. One obvious reason is that there
is a range of cases in which the mechanisms that leadto disease and ill health, or conversely to health andwellbeing, are well understood, and there are many
interventions that can be scaled cost-effectively to thelevel of a society without undermining their effects,
or where wider take-up in fact enhances their effects(such as philanthropist Melinda French Gates argues
is the case for women’s empowerment).
The main lesson that performativity should teach us
is a greater flexibility in the way we think about value
conflicts. There will be different ways of sustainably‘solving’ a problem posed by conflicts of value suchas population protection and liberty in the Covid-19
recovery period. What matters ultimately for policy
is establishing effective control of the disease as the
economy returns to normal, and doing so in a waythat both maintains public confidence and leads tonorms that encourage the behaviours required by thepolicy becoming more firmly embedded over time.
What combination of social norms, restrictions and
RSA Journal Issue 3 2021

technologies will best succeed depends on the different
perspectives, values and strategies that other citizens
in fact have. It is something that policymakers need todevelop in dialogue with publics rather than seek toimpose upon them.

Whose responsibility?
Simple models of causation – because they discountthe role of systems – tend to conflate causation andresponsibility. Their first instinct is that if someone
comes to harm then someone must be to blame; theirsecond is that if no one can be found to blame, thenthe result is unfortunate but not unfair. Both instincts
are mistaken.
Complex systems approaches require thatpolicymakers not only see more interconnections, butalso take ownership of more of them; it is no longer
plausible to disclaim responsibility for unanticipatedside effects of policy. As systems scientist John D
Sterman put it, “there are no side effects – only effects”.
As he explained, “‘Side effects’ are not a feature of
reality, but a sign that the boundaries of our mental
models are too narrow, our time horizons too short.”
Complex systems accounts require us to acknowledge
that it will often be the case that systemic harms andinjustices occur without it needing to be the case thatanyone intends to create harm or act unfairly.
The idea that people are set up to fail or are victimsof systemic injustice creates a more complex set ofquestions about whom to hold responsible and how
to do so. In my forthcoming book I describe what weneed to overcome as the “Neglectful State”. This is astate that fails to attend to systemic risks to health andwellbeing, and as a result allows significant numbers
to come to avoidable harm or death. Neglectful statesoften also attempt to deflect attention from theirfailings by redescribing systemic harms as failures of
personal responsibility.
Moving on from a neglectful state to a nurturing
one will not be easy in the current circumstances. The
wider the range of effects that governments admit are
relevant and that they can be held accountable for, thelarger the target they create for opponents. This is one
reason why, despite the preponderance of thoughtful
voices over decades advocating for complex systems
approaches to public policy, take-up of complex
systems by governments is often resisted in practice.
Another reason is that complexity frameworks
require us to think more creatively about the goalsof public policy, what success looks like, and how tomeasure it. As we have seen, performativity implies
that the ends at which policy should aim are not fixedand straightforward, and that we should not expectthat the effects of interventions will be predictable.
www.thersa.org

What is the best way to specify the common good insuch circumstances? I argue that the idea of public
value can help: public value is created, or captured, tothe extent that public sector institutions further theirdemocratically established goals. Such a perspective
helps to articulate what is at stake in a policy decisionsuch as whether to extend the scale of commercial
use of NHS data, but importantly does not prejudge
whether doing so will create (or destroy) public value.
What matters is the extent to which doing so would
enable the NHS better to pursue its goals as set out in
the NHS Constitution, including the need to maintain
trust in a confidential health system.
In order for governments to genuinely adopt
complexity policy frameworks, they must not only
have a real commitment to deep change, but also theconfidence that there is a common understandingthat shifting the dial on systemic problems is hard.
Tackling a problem such as structural racism ismuch less like applying a force to get a cart moving
down a well-maintained road, and more like rollinga stone up a steep hill. Even this image somewhat
underestimates the difficulty of the task. The slopes
and difficult terrain that challenge governmental
attempts to dismantle systemic inequalities were notcreated by slow geological processes that predate
human beings; they are created by us, and in certain
respects they are us.

RSA Fellowship in action

Her Pivot
Mie Kajikawa received a £2,000 Catalyst Seed Grant for her
project, Her Pivot, which aims to empower women in theJapanese sports business industry. In 2020, Japan was ranked
121st out of 153 countries in terms of gender equality, according
to the World Economic Forum. There are few women working at
leadership levels in the corporate side of sports, and women makeup only about 10% of the audience for sports business seminars.
“As the first Japanese woman who worked with the National
Basketball Association, I wanted to inspire young women in
Japan, especially in the sports business,” explains Mie.
Her Pivot is developing a programme which will provide
support and professional advice through events such as public
speaking training, expert talks and forums. Mie plans to expand
the project in the future. “I would like to develop the programmeinternationally, as well as establish a mentor programme forwomen in Japanese sports organisations.”
To find out more, contact Mie at
herpivot2021@nextbigpivot.org

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Public services

RESHAPING
SOCIAL CARE
A brighter future for people who draw on social care means looking
to a more localised, personal approachby Anna Severwright@AnnaSeverwrightW

Anna Severwrightis a convener ofSocial Care Future,a movement thatlooks to bringabout change insocial care16

hile Covid-19 has been tough on us all,and has shone light on many aspects of
our lives and wellbeing, when lockdown
started I remember thinking that it did not feel thatdifferent for me. Actually, I felt more a part of society
than I usually do, because everyone was experiencing
a life more like mine; for a time, everyone was unable
to lead the lives they wanted to lead.
For me and many others who need to draw on social
care for support, entering ‘serviceland’ can mean that
aspects of our lives that we value are changed without
our say, or lost altogether. For me, it is that I want to beable to go out more to see my friends but do not havethe support to do so. For others, it may be having no
option but to leave their loved ones and their home to
go into institutional care, or not being able to choose
what time they go to bed in their own home.
Social Care Future is a movement consisting ofpeople who have lived experience of social care,people who work in social care and other allies. We
want to bring about positive change in the system, toachieve the following vision: “We all want to live inthe place we call home, with the people and things
that we love, in communities where we look out for
one another, doing the things that matter to us.”This vision deliberately does not talk about the careand support someone may need but about the things

that matter in all of our lives and lead to our wellbeing.
This is what social care should be about: people living
good, ordinary lives, regardless of disability and at
every stage of life.
The Care Act 2014 gave local authorities a duty
to promote an individual’s wellbeing. Recently at
Social Care Future, we launched the first findings of
our inquiry called ‘Whose social care is it anyway?’,
which was led by people with lived experience ofsocial care. We heard from over 500 individuals, andwhat was clear was that most were not having thelife experience as described in the vision. In manycases, the current social care offering was not having
a positive effect on their wellbeing, with people telling
us they felt isolated from their community, unable tochoose where or who they live with and living in fearof their support being cut.
So why has the system struggled, and what mightsome of the solutions be?

The nature of wellbeing
Wellbeing is both innately human and gloriously
intangible. We can all identify aspects of our lives that
do or do not contribute to our wellbeing; these interact
to form an ever-changing web. Current commissioning
systems do not like this, because it cannot be easily
measured or given a neat cost per unit.
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17

Illustrations by Joe Wilson

Wellbeing will look different for each person andat different times in their life, so it needs a truly
personalised approach. For me, watering my plants
boosts my wellbeing; for you, going fishing may be
important. But believe me, if I was supported to go
fishing it would not boost my wellbeing!
Again, this challenges systems that love well-defined
pathways but within which most of our lives do notneatly fit. Current systems also demand evidence-basedmodels; this is more difficult, but not impossible, fortruly personalised approaches.

Wider than social care?
Because wellbeing and our lives are complex and do
not fit neat commissioning and service pathways,
we end up in multiple systems. At one point I hadeight different NHS consultants, a GP, two physio
teams, wheelchair services, social care, occupational
therapists…the list goes on. All were involved in mycare, yet they did not talk to one other, or even usuallytake into account what the others were doing.
This led to an uncoordinated approach, which is
not only frustrating and exhausting for the person
living it, but cannot be that satisfactory for the people
working in it either. I would like one plan that focuseson what I want from my life and then details howeach piece of the system contributes, rather than there
being a set of unconnected pieces each in its own
narrow silo.
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The formation of Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) –partnerships between the organisations that provide
health and social care which aim to coordinate services
and reduce inequalities between different groups –could be an opportunity to shift from reactive care
to community-based, preventative approaches that
focus on keeping people well and happy rather thanfixing them when the system has failed to. It is also
vital that ICSs focus on the wider determinants ofhealth and wellbeing; for example, poverty and poor
housing, which shorten lives, and inequalities in careexperienced by some groups, such as the ways in which
women from ethnic minorities receive and experiencematernal health care. Social care is, and needs to berecognised as, a vital part of ICSs, supporting people
to live their lives how they want to, being able to bea part of and contribute to society. For too long it has
been seen only as a last resort or a ‘place’ to which todischarge someone from hospital.

A system under stress
I cannot ignore that another reason social care is
struggling is the huge impact that austerity and themassive budget cuts to local authorities have had overthe past decade. Health charity The King’s Fund statesthat in real terms (after adjusting for inflation) spend
on social care is £300m less than a decade ago.
This is at a time when there are more people, of bothworking age and in later life, needing support (likely
RSA Journal Issue 3 2021

“Wellbeing will look different foreach person and at different times
in their life”
to be exacerbated by Covid-19). Often framed as aproblem or burden, our growing old-age population
should be celebrated, as it shows we are living longer
and have made wonderful medical advances. Less
often talked about is that almost half of the social
care budget is spent on working-age adults, a group
generally ignored by the media and politicians. Last
year, a survey of directors of adult social care foundthat only 4% were confident they had the budget tomeet their statutory duties.
Although in some places this has led to innovative
approaches, in many it has led to increasingly higheligibility requirements to receive support, reducedcare and support offered, and increased charges.
These have direct, negative impacts on people andtheir families, with many describing the “fight” withthe system and stress around reviews due to their fearof care being cut.

Power
Yes, money is tight. But with restricted budgets hasoften come an increase in over-rigorous monitoring
and control from local authorities. Where this has been
most keenly felt is in the area of people having choiceand control over their care, often through the use of
Direct Payments, which were introduced 25 years ago
and meant that disabled or older people could choose
and buy their own care and support, meaning they
could fit it to how it best suited their lives.
However, we are now seeing that a lot of thatchoice has been removed, with increased rules andrestrictions limiting the use of Direct Payments. People
feel they are not trusted and there is increasingly alarger power imbalance between local authorities andindividuals and their families.
When Social Care Future started we co-produced
our vision, so we know what people want fromlife. The good news is that this vision has received
widespread support from people who draw on social
care, their families, people working in social care,sector organisations and the public. What is still being
debated is how we get there.
In our inquiry, we wanted to try to start to answer
that question. We identified five key changes thatwould bring us closer to experiencing the movement’s
vision, bringing us out of a permanent lockdown
and into an equal life. They are: communities where
everyone belongs; living in a place we call home;www.thersa.org

leading the lives we want to live; more resources,
better used; and sharing power as equals.
These are not new ideas, nor are they simple toachieve. So for phase two of the inquiry we will
collaborate with people working in the sector andpeople who draw on social care to develop the five key
changes further, including clear actions and solutions.
We made some initial asks in the report; for example,
we made a recent request of all directors of adult social
care of each local authority that they adopt our visionand use it in their localities alongside Making it Real.
Making It Real is a tool published by Think Local
Act Personal (TLAP), a partnership of organisationscommitted to transforming health and social carethrough personalisation. Using a series of ‘I’ and ’we’statements to describe what good personalised carelooks like, it puts people at the centre of decisions
about their support. We have already had positive
responses and will be working with a group of local
authorities over the next few months.
At Social Care Future we have also been collecting‘Glimpses of the Future’. These are places or people
who are doing things differently already, but who inthe current system are not able to grow or multiply.
Some of these innovative models, like Community
Circles, are looking at the relationships a person
already has and working with their ‘circle’ to lookat ways to support them. Others, like Gig Buddies,connect people with a similar taste in music orinterests so they can go to and enjoy events together.
In Derby since 2012, the local authority has beenusing local area coordinators to support individuals
and local communities, supporting residents to ‘geta life, not a service’, helping to connect them toactivities in their local area, build personal resilienceand explore solutions within the community. They
have found that, as a result, people feel moreconnected and less isolated, there has been a lower
use of traditional services, and the project has made areturn on investment of £4 social capital per £1 spent.
Wellbeing is at the heart of Social Care Future’s
vision for an individual’s life and gives us a clear
aspiration to aim for. But to achieve this, health andsocial care need to stop just delivering traditional,transactional services in narrow silos and look insteadat how they can support the conditions needed for
different approaches that strengthen communities,build wellbeing and allow everyone to flourish.
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In conversation“My job is to truly
understand andrepresent the voicesof children”
Rachel de Souza, Children’s Commissioner for England, is interviewed
by Patrick Butler@patrickjbutler @Rachel_deSouza

Patrick Butler: What do you think you bring to therole of Children’s Commissioner?

Dame Rachel deSouza is Children’s
Commissioner for
England. Patrick
Butler is social
policy editor at
The Guardian

20

Rachel de Souza: Throughout my career mycommitment has been focused towards working in
disadvantaged communities. I was a teacher for 30
years, 15 years as a headteacher, nine of which were asa CEO running a family of schools, and I was an earlysponsored academy principal. What I bring is thisexperience and a belief that children deserve the besteducation possible, that every child – and particularly
those from vulnerable groups and disadvantaged
areas – deserves to be able to thrive and achieve thebest outcomes and be supported to do that.
My job is to truly understand and represent thevoices of children and to be able to amplify them; totake those voices to government and the public sector
and make a difference. The first thing I did on taking
on the role was to ask children about their thoughts
and concerns – particularly coming out of lockdown –and what they wanted for their futures. We particularly
made sure we asked the most vulnerable children,
including those in young offenders’ institutions, inmental health wards and in care.
We need to transform children’s social careservices, with a focus on early help for families whoare struggling, including family hubs and expansionof the Supporting Families programme. We need toensure that all children in the care system have a safe
and caring home, tackling the problems of instability
and the scarcity of high-quality foster and children’s
home spaces for children, especially older teens.

Butler: You kicked off your tenure by launching
your Beveridge Report-style review of children’s life
chances and wellbeing. How is that progressing?

De Souza: I’ve been stunned and delighted by how
well it has gone. We had 550,000 responses; thisrepresents around 6% of all the young people aged
between four and 18 and there’s coverage across every
single local authority area. We can look at the data interms of geographic areas and also by disadvantage,
and who children have identified they live with, forinstance, whether they are in care. I’ve read through awide range of comments from children’s responses andcannot wait to share these.
Mental health was the biggest concern – 20% of thechildren who responded said they were unhappy with
their mental health and wellbeing. There are some very
powerful themes coming through about life at school,
about mental health, but also about children’s own
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21

Images from Si Barbercommunities. There’s no lack of ambition in England’schildren. They have an absolute desire for a great job
and career, a great life ahead, and there’s some reallymature thinking in the responses. We’re also seeing
passionate responses on issues like climate, equality
and fairness in society from many different angles, andsome really touching stuff from children about selfconfidence. The hope is that these insights can really
inform policy. I went out to Grimsby, Scunthorpe,
Gateshead, Manchester, Bristol, Luton; right round thecountry talking to children.

Butler: Do you see the solution to some of thoseissues as being primarily through schools andeducation, or do you think that solutions come froma much wider arena?

De Souza: One of the reasons I was so excitedabout the Children’s Commissioner role was thatit reaches across the boundaries between educationand the wider services supporting children, families
and communities. Having been part of the education
reform movement right from that first Blair academy
school, I felt we needed to look at the services andthe tier around vulnerable children with the samezest that we’ve looked at curriculums and improving
schools. So, for example, special educational needs
and alternative provision need to be seen as part ofmeeting children’s mental health needs.
Children are very thoughtful and concerned about
education; it’s important to them both in relation totheir life at school now and also to the education theyneed to get the future they want. That’s what they’retelling us.

Butler: Last autumn, The Guardian published anarticle about young people’s experiences of lockdown.
One boy said: “I’ve pressed pause on my life andthough I’m dying to resume it I don’t even know if
there’s a play button anymore.” That encapsulated
for me that sense of profound uncertainty, of a life
interrupted that many young people felt.

De Souza: I talked to a 15-year-old captain of afootball team in Bolton and he said that he was totally
bewildered during lockdown and didn’t know what
was happening. Everything that he was used to being
able to do, like sport, the things that helped him to
make sense of the world, he no longer had access toand he felt terrible.
And then there are children who have been bereaved.
In Bolton, where they had the Delta variant first, I went
to Essa Academy where a number of close relatives ofthe schoolchildren had died. A lot of the children said
22

they wanted to be doctors because of these deaths;
they wanted to be able to do something about it.
They also told me they needed support, that theywanted someone to talk to but they didn’t know who.
While preferences were very much around the idea ofdigital online counselling, they also thought it would
be good to have counsellors in schools.
In Bolton they were talking about their physicalhealth and how that had gone downhill for them.
Particularly the primary school children; they wanted
to be able to play sport and to be out and about.
In Luton some of the children talked to me aboutparents who’d lost jobs or parents they were worried
about who were going out in delivery vans, mums who
were nurses. They had fear about that but were also
wanting to be able to get out and have places to go.
What we really need to be doing is ensuring thatchildren and young people know how to achieve thethings they want to achieve. They worry they’ve missed
so much learning that they’re not going to be able toget back on that horse and get a fulfilling career. It’s
important to help them understand different careers
and apprenticeship pathways and so on, making themaware of opportunities and reassuring them about
what is going to be available. Because it’s been a shock.
It’s very welcome that the government is promising
additional funding for tutoring and extra support.
I want to work with the government to build on
this and ensure that we have a longer-term focus on
tackling the disadvantage gap for the most vulnerable
learners. We need to ensure all children get a goodeducation, support to promote their wellbeing andaccess to additional help if they need it.

Butler: In some ways the already serious issue ofchildren’s wellbeing was pushed even more to theforefront by the pandemic. Do you think this’ll
be a generation who are mentally scarred by theirexperience, or do you think that perhaps young
people are more resilient than we give them credit for?
De Souza: There is no question we have an increasing
mental health problem and it has been exacerbated by
Covid-19. The NHS Digital stats show that, in relation
to five- to 19-year-olds with a mental disorder, this hasgone from one in eight before Covid-19 to one in six.
I was very heartened talking to Sarah-Jayne
Blakemore, who wrote Inventing Ourselves: The
Secret Life of the Teenage Brain. She assured me thatthe plasticity and flexibility of teenage brains means
they should be able to bounce back. What we know
is that having good-quality relationships and spendingtime with their peers – it doesn’t need to be too many
– is important, and that’s why I’m really supportive of
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“There’s no lackof ambition in
England’s children”
talk about extending school days, summer activities,
all the programmes to get teenagers back together. In
short, I don’t think children have been scarred for life
but we do need to take the problem seriously.

Butler: Pre-Covid-19, there was growing anxiety
about the influence of social media on young people.
How, regardless of class or background, it was
facilitating excessive introspection, the impossible
pursuit of perfection, online bullying and easy accessto porn. Is this something you are concerned about?

De Souza: It was tech and digital that allowed us
to remain connected and for children to continuelearning during the pandemic, so we don’t want tothrow away the gains we’ve made. Many children
are telling us how they’re now able to use digital in amore confident and capable way; although I do think
there’s an overwhelming feeling that it’s good to beback at school and you learn better there.
On the question of online harms, obviously we’ve
got the Online Safety Bill coming back, which weneed to take incredibly seriously.
I’ve made sure since I’ve been in post that I’ve beenthoroughly briefed by the National Crime Agency
and others to see what the real problems are. I am
concerned about what children and young people areexposed to on social media sites and the internet. I’mconcerned about very young children and any children
under 18 just stumbling over porn. Oliver Dowden
and Gavin Williamson have written to me to advise
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them on what we can do about that, so I have alreadybeen speaking to adult content tech companies about
how we can keep children safe.
If we’re going to do that properly we’re going toneed to make age verification universal on these adultwebsites. This means challenging tech companies andsupporting parents. I’m getting 16- to 21-year-olds towrite the guidance for parents: getting them to thinkalong the lines of what they wish their mums and dads
had known. I think that’s the best voice to do it in.
These issues form a real central plank of what I’mdoing this next year and I think, if anything, this sideof things has probably worsened during lockdown.

Butler: In March you said “I’ve seen first-hand theeffects of this crisis on young people’s hopes anddreams and sometimes our answers simply haven’t
been good enough.” Could you elaborate on that?
De Souza: I was making a comment about all adults
to be honest. What young people have told me is thatthey didn’t feel visible or that their questions wereanswered. I wish we’d been talking directly to children
more about the pandemic and what was happening,that we’d been getting messages out on children’s
programmes. I never wanted to see a day that schools
were closed. You have to listen to the science, but
we also have to look at the harms of school closure.
I suspect we will all think long and hard about the
impact of closing schools and try our best not to letthat happen again.
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Artwork by Kerry Hughes

Place

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RSA Journal Issue 3 2021

A LOCAL FOCUS
The promotion of local wellbeing centred around individuals andcommunities will mean rethinking our provision of many overlapping services
by Hannah WebsterT

he RSA is exploring what it means for ourcollective wellbeing to motivate us to design a
better, more equitable future. In short, we arethinking about how we might organise ourselves andour systems in a way that supports people to lead agood life, through their health, work, networks ofsupport, economic security, housing, community andmore. To understand what contributes to a good lifemeans acknowledging a self-defined interpretation of
wellbeing that is necessarily broad. My wellbeing, forexample, is derived from my circumstances, and while
the areas of my life that contribute to it might overlap
with yours, the specifics will differ.
While few might disagree with the sentimentof supporting the wellbeing of people and places,
in many instances it is a priority that falls behinda complex web of financial and institution-specificincentives. And at its worst, our current system meets
this complexity by setting up the ability to attain
good wellbeing as something that only the individual
can achieve themselves, if they just spend enoughtime, or energy, or money. It commercialises andoutsources what could be a collectively supported andmaintained experience if we designed our society towork towards it.
Within this scenario, personal resilience andresponsibility become the weapons of choice against
poor wellbeing, leaving an absence of systemic

www.thersa.org

support and coordination. Without coordinated andactive design towards improved wellbeing, and withthis absence filled with individual responsibility, we
see instead that inequalities within and between places
are allowed to emerge and proliferate.
But, as the 2020 Greater Manchester Independent
Inequalities Commission concluded, there is anecessity for “equality and wellbeing goals to be putat the heart of public policy and across the private
and voluntary sectors”. As we look to our emergencefrom the Covid-19 pandemic, we need a system where
the state, communities and those who live in them
participate and collaborate at a local level towards ashared aim of collective and individual wellbeing.
This importance of working locally was put under
the spotlight in the early days of the pandemic.
Mutual aid groups, local supply chains for personal
protective equipment and pivoting community groups
brought to the fore the benefits we already knew
about working in small geographies. But much of thisnew activity operated in the context of an emergency
response and relied on individuals or communities
taking on additional labour. What would it mean totake a locally led and sustainable approach to oursystems, services and support by design? And whatvalue does this hold for our wellbeing?
By local, we tend to mean place under geographicalparameters, but we should acknowledge that thisHannah Webster
is a SeniorResearcher in the
Public Services andCommunities teamat the RSA

25

“What would it mean totake a locally led andsustainable approachto our systems, services
and support by design?”
brings a degree of the subjective. The local of one
person might differ to that of a neighbour, while
the administrative boundaries are likely to differ
even further again. Boundaries of local authorities
overlap rather than overlay with the boundaries of
constituencies, or clinical commissioning groups. Withno fixed conception of a locality, it might feel complex
to use this as the guiding scaffolding for our society.
But this complexity is not insurmountable if wechange the lens we have on how decisions are madeabout local areas. To navigate between the scale atwhich people live their lives and our geographicalpolitical landscape, we might use a person-centred
approach as our compass. Being flexible about
geography, boundary or coalition allows us to meetthe needs of individuals on their own terms. It ishere where our contention that participation – as aprocess and as a principle – can help us to navigate
the complexity that comes into play.
Centring the experience, ambition and challengesof residents in local places, and drawing collaborationand shared purpose between the services that support
them, require a participatory approach to defining
what both the ‘local’ and ‘wellbeing’ means toresidents. Without this driving ethos, we continue to
use the idea of local as an administrative function
rather than an actor in its own right.
26

The good news is that, although this is never going
to be easy, currently there is a huge opportunity tothink locally and be guided by individual and collective
wellbeing. We are at the intersection of a number ofshifts in our policy landscape that, together, could
set us up for a moment of real change across our
personal, collective and planetary health.
There is a latent opportunity in the levelling up
agenda. Though loosely defined – in Boris Johnson’s
Queen’s Speech in May 2021, the commitment was
to levelling up “opportunities across all parts of theUnited Kingdom, supporting jobs, businesses andeconomic growth and addressing the impact of thepandemic on public services” – the government’s
headline policy ambition has potential to advance awellbeing agenda. But to work, the approach must be
tailored and local to ensure that residents genuinely
see improvement that will support their wellbeing.
For communities identified for levelling up, theeconomic, social and political will inevitably bleed
into each other. Yes, more infrastructure is needed inthese areas, and high streets may be a necessary focus,
but we also need to consider what changes local
people want to see. Without such a consideration, any
support will be superficial and unsustainable.
It is listening to these voices that will ensure that
communities feel the benefit of levelling up, and that
RSA Journal Issue 3 2021

the experience is not just seen through the metrics
that the government chooses to measure. The current
infrastructure associated with levelling up quite clearlyrisks going in the other direction; in Stocksbridge,
for example, the levelling up fund board included
the local MP, her husband and his business partner.
Concentrating power in this way actively undermines
the ambitions of government.
Levelling up is not the only agenda currently
speaking to our local systems. The Department of
Health and Social Care White Paper establishes
Integrated Care Systems (ICSs), a new infrastructure,
which changes the geographical boundaries aroundour health and social care system and actively
encourages collaboration between services within the
sector and across related local anchors. With local
collaboration a specific part of the remit of ICSs,
getting this right from the start might set up a local
anchor for our health and wellbeing.

What are the implications?
This approach will, of course, require a complete
reframing of how we manage, commission andfund our local services. The establishment of the
combined authorities and mayoral positions is one
step towards devolution, but we need to continue toconsider increasing the power of local and hyper-local
institutions and communities. The levelling up agenda
speaks directly to this ambition but, as yet, does not let
go of the centralised power to make it a reality.
In July of this year, Boris Johnson alluded to a
county-level devolution to improve local services but
called for leaders to “come to” government with avision. The radical redistribution of power needed
will never stem from such a case-by-case, centrally
assessed basis, especially when political motivations
are at play. Instead, such an approach will bear out
further inequalities within and between places, where
local areas with fewer resources or less political
capital to engage with central government are left
unsupported. To follow through on such a promise,
we need greater devolution by default.
A more systemic redesign could overcome thelimited nature of funding mechanisms between
local and national government. As the RSA’s newly
appointed Chief Executive, Andy Haldane, exploredin his recent Community Power Lecture for the Local
Trust, “competitively-bid central pots of finite, shorttermish money tend to lock-in the advantages of those
who already have resources.”
The Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose
argues that mission-led vision and systems might
help us to address the major challenges of our time.
www.thersa.org

Missions – which the institute defines as “concretetargets within a challenge that act as frames andstimuli for innovation” – in this instance frame acomplex, ambitious change. For example, applying
a mission-led approach to innovation-led economic
growth. Setting our collective wellbeing as a mission
for local systems might be one way to practicallymove towards true levelling up, with participatory
approaches helping to define the detail of what will
support residents’ wellbeing.
In addition, there is a pressing need for residents tobe more meaningfully engaged in the decisions that
affect them. The Institute for Community Studies
at the Young Foundation recently published “Why
don’t they ask us?”, an exploration into the role ofcommunities in levelling up, in which a key findingis that “the majority of ‘macro funds’ and economic
interventions over the last two decades have not
involved communities in a meaningful nor sustainable
way.” The risk is that this disempowers the very people
who these funds or services seek to serve and creates a
misdirection of resources as the geographical framing is
too broad for clear participation and targeted delivery.
Pockets of innovation, best practice andredistributive participation are happening acrossthe UK but these are often reliant on the energy ofindividuals in a professional, and personal, capacity
to make such a change. To move towards a genuine
shift in power and a reframing of the priorities of oursociety we need to join up innovations, learn fromeach other and understand what role different levelsof the system might play.
Such an approach could learn from innovation
happening now. In Barking and Dagenham, thecommunity-led Every One Every Day programmespans over 24,000 opportunities for participationand 150 neighbourhood projects. Its aim is to “makeeveryday life better for everyone”, but their nonprescriptive, participatory approach means that thework spans what is important to residents. Their
impact evaluation found that a key outcome of theprocess was linked to improved wellbeing; eight in 10
participants reported increased confidence and 90%
reported enjoyment and happiness.
More generally, asset-based models of community
services and in particular health and care can – if
supported – ensure we lead from within communities.
For example, Think Local Act Personal is based on
the ethos that local places and the people that live
within them can achieve more together when theyshare an asset-based mindset, focused on the potentialof what places could, and do, produce with the people
involved or affected.
27

In Northern Ireland, the 2016 local-authorityled Belfast Conversation asked residents what theywanted for the future of the city and created an agenda
focused on 2035 based on their input. Residents
wanted for “everyone in Belfast [to benefit] from athriving and prosperous economy” and for “everyone
in Belfast [to experience] good health and wellbeing”
as two of five key priorities. This conversation will
be repeated this year to ensure that resident voices
continue to be heard.
In Wales, it is a national policy that encourages
the creation of participatory approaches focusedon wellbeing. The Wellbeing of Future Generations(Wales) Act 2015 makes a legal obligation of publicbodies to embed the “social, cultural, environmental
and economic well-being” of those they serve as adriving force. Within this macro framework, local
community anchor organisations are seen as criticalto supporting communities. Enabling communities tothrive includes embedding meaningful participation
where public bodies create the right conditions forthis to lead to real change.
We can learn from examples like these – and the manyother initiatives operating at the community, local andnational level – how an inclusive and communityled approach to wellbeing might be supported.
They demonstrate that trusting communities andindividuals with leadership and ensuring that systemwide incentives are aligned with a wellbeing agenda

RSA Fellowship in action

Adding care planning to the Plait system
Mark Chapman FRSA was awarded a £10,000 Catalyst Scaling
Grant for his project, which will add care planning to the Plait
business administration software system.
Plait is used by a growing number of homecare providers, but itlacks an integrated care planning function, meaning users currently
have to employ other platforms alongside it. Mark and his teamat ReallyCare CIC will use the Scaling Grant to evaluate homecare
providers’ wants and needs and then create a joined-up system,
which will provide a more streamlined, accessible service.
“What is different about ReallyCare and Plait is that thecompany is not for profit and the software will be open
source. This will drive innovation and be a brake on relentless
price increases by the major software providers in the vastly
underfunded care market,” says Mark. “We would love to hearfrom any Fellows who have expertise in care planning,” he adds.
To find out more, contact Mark at mark@reallycare.org

28

and resources can embed engagement over the longterm, not just for a snapshot in time.

What is the RSA doing?
The RSA’s Living Change Approach is based on
the belief that it is not possible to address systemic
challenges at the level of single interventions or fromsingle actors. Instead, central to any successful story ofchange is a clear ambition that is supported by thosefor whom it seeks to drive improvement, and which
drives alignment across the local and national system
of influence.
The RSA is committed to a world where everyone
can participate in creating a better future, and we havebeen exploring how we might contribute towards
such a participatory future that centres on collective
wellbeing. Our ambition is for local systems to be
designed to actively support individual and collective
wellbeing in places. This requires us to understandhow systems work, what the incentives acrossdifferent actors are and, crucially, what the wellbeing
needs and aspirations of residents are.
The RSA is by no means the first to arrive at awellbeing agenda. In recent years there has been aswell of activity around this topic, with a number oforganisations – the Wellbeing Economy Alliance, theCentre for Thriving Places, What Works Wellbeing
and more – articulating what a wellbeing-led economy
or policy landscape might look like. We hope to bringa contribution that unites participation and place tosupport a vision of wellbeing driving the systems thatsurround us.
Our starting point is to gain knowledge about
this area, testing ideas and interventions that mightshift the dial towards participatory, wellbeingled systems in local places. We are approaching
this through three lines of enquiry: What are
the wellbeing needs in different places? What doresidents want to see change? And how can local
areas become genuinely participatory to see such achange happen?
The RSA has embarked on this journey through arange of projects. First, if we are to meaningfully set
wellbeing as a local ambition we need to understandwhat this means in context. Our broad definitionmeans that there is no one route to wellbeing but –by understanding the experiences of residents, thecontext of the assets and opportunities in local areas,and how local systems operate – we can start to createa picture of what change is needed.
Crucially, we need to understand the drivers ofinequality and how these shape people’s ability tolead a good life. Only by understanding the roots
RSA Journal Issue 3 2021

“Our ambition isfor local systems to
be designed to actively
support individualand collective
wellbeing in places”
of inequality can we work towards an equitable
future. For example, in our work supported by
the Health Foundation, we are exploring the roleof economic security in the future health of thenext generation. Understanding the links between
economic circumstances and physical and mental
health and wellbeing will be critical to enabling thenext generation to lead a good life.
To this end, later this year the RSA will be runningplace-based research enquiries in four locations acrossthe UK to understand what drives young people’s
sense of economic security and wellbeing, and what
future they want to see for themselves and their local
area. Our aim is to ensure that the voices of young
people are heard by the key actors in the local area.
We will build on this learning in our second lineof enquiry around what residents want to see change
and how they get a meaningful say.
Later this year, the RSA will publish its findings froma neighbourhood assembly it facilitated in Nechells,
Birmingham. Supported by the Oak Foundation, thisbrought together a diverse group of residents overa series of deliberative sessions to understand whatrole their housing and neighbourhood plays in theirability to lead a good life, co-designing with themideas for policy and practice that they want to see
done differently.
This project represents an important shift in themove to genuinely participatory places, by startingthe conversation with people – in a neighbourhood
www.thersa.org

that is often overlooked – rather than policymakers.
We have purposefully brought a broad and malleable
question to the group: “What do you need fromyour home and your neighbourhood, now and in the
future, for everyone in Nechells to lead a good life?”
This offers a contrast to a consultative or ‘light-touch’approach to participation that is often conductedwith a predetermined issue or solution and seeks
only feedback.
Of course the RSA is just one organisation and,alone, it cannot bring about a more participatory
future. However, our work will provide important
evidence and, we hope, inspiration, helping to drive
new inclusive ways of doing things. To support local
places to adopt a more participatory approach, ourTransitions to Participatory Democracy handbook
considers the complexity and scale of the challenge
and offers practical examples of how different
participatory approaches can be embedded andtailored to local needs.
Central to these examples and suggestions are aneed to equalise participation opportunities, including
compensating people for their time, supporting specificrequirements and using technological participatory
methods, along with support and resources to enable
participation in this way. Doing this well requires
investment of time and money and the divestmentof power. But if we successfully and equitably movetowards participatory places, everyone’s wellbeing
will benefit.
29

Identity

BINDINGMOMENTS
What the England football team’s manager, Gareth Southgate, canteach us about social connection
by Sunder Katwala@sundersays

T

he dust has long since settled on a Euro
2020 football championship in which theEngland team became a focal point for publicconversations about national identity, racism andso-called ‘culture wars’. Their manager GarethSouthgate, declaring that “I have never believed that
we should just stick to football,” earned praise forengaging constructively with these divisive, long-term
issues, with a bridging voice that politicians havestruggled to emulate. So what did we learn fromSouthgate and from Euro 2020?

The power and limits of sport

Sunder Katwala
is Director of
British Future,
which conducted
the Talk Together
research on behalfof the Together
Coalition. The
Talk Together
report can be readat together.org.uk/
talk-together/30

As technology fragments audiences, major sporting
events offer a rare moment when millions (31 million
in the UK, in the case of the Euro 2020 final) of us
still do the same thing at the same time. Earlier thissummer, the unscripted human drama of live sport
seemed more compelling than ever to many fans acrossthe continent. Yet this unpredictability should makeus wary of sport’s power to shape identity narratives.
It seems a risky gambit to stake the future politics ofanti-racism on how far the England team progress
through a football tournament, if three missed penalty
kicks can transform the national narrative overnight.
What we need to understand is what sport can do,
and what it cannot. What sport does best is provide
an idealised vision, such as the image of a nationalteam of which we can all be part. Sport has the power
to bridge ‘them and us’ identity divides by offering a‘new us’ identity that we can share. This was the idea
promoted by the England Together campaign, withfaith and civic society advocates sending the message

that “football is coming home, and it is a home we all
share”, as Imam Qari Asim put it. Symbolism matters.
Sporting events can demonstrate the breadth of public
appetite for an inclusive story of who we are. But suchheightened moments are, by their nature, ephemeral.
If we find the vision attractive, we need to work out
how to do the spadework to bring it closer to reality.

Setting boundaries
Euro 2020 has not called off the idea of a ‘culture
war’ over identity, but it has begun to draw some
useful boundaries. The political right has beenreflecting on why fence-sitting, over calls to boo or
boycott the England team when players took theknee as an anti-racism gesture, backfired. There is
a common-sense lesson about the limits of a ‘war
on woke’. It is legitimate for social conservatives tocontest arguments about culture and identity fromthe left, but public arguments cannot be won by
raging against the modern world. Rather, successful
challenges to perceived ‘woke’ excess in the 2020sneed to be founded on an acceptance of social shifts ofthe past half century that are deep-rooted. Mirroring
this is the challenge the left faces to preach beyond
its own tribe: a team which belted out the national
anthem before taking the knee may offer insights into
how to broaden the audience.

The UK’s many identities
Over the past quarter of a century – since Euro ’96
and devolution – the United Kingdom has become
more conscious of being a multinational polity. Sports
fans moved on from cheering for England, Scotland
RSA Journal Issue 3 2021

Image from Alamy

www.thersa.org

31and Wales at Euro 2020 to supporting Team GB in
the Tokyo Olympics. This intuitive understanding thatmost of us have more than one flag and more than
one national identity is seldom seen in civic society.
We need identities at every level to be civic – open to
those who wish to belong – rather than the propertyof an ethnic group. UK governments achieved thatwith British identity, the citizenship identity, while
there have been significant efforts, after devolution,
to shape civic identities in Scotland and Wales, andto formally recognise Northern Ireland’s multiple
national identities. But few civic institutions in
England can confidently navigate when and how totalk about England.
England has remained a ‘90-minute nation’, rarely
recognised outside its football, cricket and rugby
teams. There has been a dramatic, underestimatedshift towards Englishness being understood to crossethnic lines, yet both white English and ethnic minority
citizens express much more confidence about this as aprinciple reflected in England’s sporting teams, withmore uncertainty about whether it extends to the flagand St George’s Day. This suggests that those seeking
to bridge ‘them and us’ divides across class, ethnic andfaith lines in England should focus at least as much on
English as British identity. Over 32 million people gave
their national identity as English in the last census;
only half that number identified as British. Yet theleaders of London-based national institutions, whoseliberal tribe feels more British than English, often seem
unaware that theirs is a less widely held view.

How to join the dots
On the first day of this new decade, a broad coalitionof civic voices pledged to make this a “decade ofreconnection” in British society. Nobody had heard of
Covid-19 then, although the pandemic has increased
the public appetite for this cause. There are several
lessons from this summer about how to put that
aspiration into practice.
The UK is a more anxious and fractured society
than we want to be but with the potential to be morecohesive than we sometimes tell ourselves. Narratives
matter, and making effective use of major national
moments offers a powerful opportunity to shape them.
It is now 15 years since the former prime minister,
Gordon Brown, observed that the United Kingdom is
one of the few countries without a national day, thoughsuch a proposal is more fraught in a multination
UK. There should be no bar to the invention of new
traditions, such as the Neighbour Day proposed in MP
Danny Kruger’s social connection report, Levelling up
our communities: proposals for a new social covenant,32

to the Prime Minister last year. The greater gains inpublic reach will usually come from making use of themany national moments we already have. A stacked
2022 calendar includes a Platinum Jubilee, the UK
Festival 2022, the centenary of the BBC, the hostingof the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, anotherfootball World Cup, and more besides.
The gradual reinvention of existing traditions
can institutionalise recurring practical opportunities
to bridge divides. Remembrance, for example, hasbegun to significantly broaden its appeal acrossethnic and faith groups in recent years. The armies
that fought the two world wars resemble the Britainof 2021 more than that of 1914 or 1940 in theirethnic and faith make-up. A significant rise over the
past decade in public awareness of the scale of theCommonwealth contribution deepens the opportunity
for Remembrance to become an annual moment ofbridging social contact. According to a survey by
Number Cruncher Politics for British Future, overthree-quarters of white and ethnic minority Britons
support this; the challenge is to unlock and reflect thatin the local practice of Remembrance.
Efforts to create new moments can repurpose pegs
that already have a public resonance. The birthday of
the NHS – the most cherished of British institutions –was chosen by the Together Coalition as the occasion
for its first national Thank You Day during Covid-19,
generating impressive public reach for a new initiative.
The Windrush story has become the key symbolic
origin moment for the rise of modern multi-ethnic
Britain, and the anniversary of the ship’s arrival has
been marked as Windrush Day by a broad civic
coalition since 2013, later adopted by government.
The 75th anniversary in 2023 offers an important
opportunity to entrench the story of migration anddiversity as part of our national story.
Those working for social connection now needa stronger public story to join the dots, engaging
local and national partners in practical strategies
that use these national moments to forge a sustained
movement to bridge our divides.
The Talk Together project, the largest ever public
engagement exercise on what unites and divides,
captures how narratives that emphasise what we share
can resonate broadly but only if they are combinedwith a clear plan about what needs to change inpolicy and practice. Otherwise efforts to celebrate
what we share risk being received as a Panglossian
establishment-led endorsement of the status quo.
The solution is to recognise clearly the divides in oursociety too, and to challenge us all to play our part inbridging these together.
RSA Journal Issue 3 2021

BRIDGES

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33

NOAM CHOMSKY: Augusto Starita / Ministerio de Cultura de la Nación, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons. AUDREY TANG: Audrey Tang, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.
RUTGER BREGMAN: Victor van Werkhooven, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons. CAROLINE LUCAS: David Woolfall, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.

TO THE

Prisons

COOKINGIN CUSTODY
Providing nutritious food and opportunities to learn about healthy eating
can have a dramatically positive impact on the lives of people in prison
by Iqbal Wahhab@IqbalWahhab

T

Iqbal Wahhab
is a Bangladeshiborn British
businessman
and the founderof Tandoori
Magazine, andrestaurants The
Cinnamon Cluband Roast34

he first time I visited HMP Wormwood Scrubs,
just over a decade ago, I was shown aroundthe kitchens, where I met a prisoner who had
worked his way up the line over two years. Startingwith pot washing, he had progressed to what wewould call head chef, responsible for hundreds ofmeals a day. I asked him what he planned to do on
release and, when he said he had no idea, my heartsank. Why had nobody instilled in him the fact that
he now had skills that restaurateurs like me were indesperate need of?
The prospect of prisoners being taught culinary andservice skills to offer them a career in hospitality rather
than a return to crime is thankfully more sophisticatednow, most notably with the great success of the Clink
Charity’s Clink restaurants, which started in HMP
High Down and this year announced the roll-out of
Clink Kitchens to 70 prisons in England and Walesover the next three years.
Yet what we have historically failed to act on is
the neglect that we continue to show for the foodthat prisoners can access. This ignores the damaging
consequences of not seeing food as part of prisoners’
self-care; both in improving their mental health andresulting behaviour and placing them in a positive
frame of mind to learn skills that could secure them ajob on release. These factors form part of the prison
service’s duty of care.

While there are many charities working on exprisoner employment issues, there are only two thathighlight the consequences of poor nutrition. Think
Through Nutrition has made this their priority for the
past 37 years. In 2002, their double-blind controlled
trial at HMP/YOI Aylesbury showed that improved
nutrition led to 37% fewer violent offences and 26%
fewer offences overall. Their 2009 study, involving
856 young people at three young offender institutions,showed similar results. In both trials some participants
were given nutrient- and vitamin-rich capsules andothers were given placebos. Neither group was told
which they were given. Those receiving the active
supplements recorded a reduction in committing
serious offences.
There is much work still to do to calculate thecost implications of this. In addition to reduced
violence (to prisoners and prison staff) and selfharm, the studies reported improved brain health,development of positive social connections andrelationships, concentration, mental wellbeing andcognitive function.
Tahani Saridar, Director of Development andProgrammes at Think Though Nutrition, says: “Poornutritional provision can not only have a lasting
impact on the wellbeing of an individual in custody,
but it is also costly to the custodial estate. Various
medical complications that arise from poor nutrition,
RSA Journal Issue 3 2021

Photography by Pixeleyes

including nutritional deficiencies, mental ill-health,cognitive decline, cardiovascular disease, diabetes andhigh cholesterol, add extra burden to prison healthresources[…] Learning to better balance their diet andlifestyle can have a dramatic impact.”
Last year, the charity undertook a pilot involving
33 prisoners at HMP Eastwood Park. Using alearning toolkit and new healthy menus, this aimed
to understand how food can shape how the brain
functions. It found some improvements in cognitiveand mental health and that participants had better
concentration levels, were more likely to engage inactivities and felt more sociable.
The average budget allocated to feeding a prisoner
is around £2 a day. This does not leave catering
managers with much scope for improvement but it
is not an impossible task, as proven by David Hill,
who won a Butler Trust award for his work at
HMP Buckley Hall. Engaging kitchen workers andprisoners in baking cakes, which were then sold toother prisoners, brought in £52,000 in one year to
subsidise Dave’s ambitions for better food.
More can be done using resources that are readily
available within the prison estate. For example,
prisons could use their land to grow high-quality foodto stretch their food procurement budget, engaging
prisoners in the process and building understandingof the nutritional quality of food.
www.thersa.org

In 2016, journalist Lucy Vincent set up Food
Behind Bars to engage prison catering managers andprisoners in exploring the many layers of complexity
and opportunity around food. She says: “We educate
prisoners in a practical and engaging way on thebenefits of cooking and eating well[…] Together, we
help cultivate a culture around food in prison that
equips prisoners with the increased knowledge andwellbeing they need to help them achieve a goodquality of life on the outside.”
During lockdown – when prisoners were sometimes
confined to their cells for 23 hours a day – accessto work and education was limited. Lucy organiseda recipe-writing competition for prisoners at HMP
Brixton and was deluged with entries, which werethen passed by high-profile judges like Asma Khan of
the Darjeeling Express restaurant. The winning dish,a Bangladeshi chicken curry prepared by ‘J’, featured
on the menu of nearby Brixton restaurant Nanban.
J said: “A few months into my sentence, I realised
how badly I missed my mother’s Bangladesh-infusedcurries. The curries you have in jail don’t compare to
the traditional ways of a curry made with love. So thedish I have prepared is filled with and infused with a
lot of passion, traditional methods and spices.”
Let’s hope that when he’s released, J gets a job where
he can cook that dish in person, making both him andhis mum proud. Perhaps I could take him on.
35

Social enterprise

TAKING CARE OF
BUSINESSHas social enterprise proved it is not fit for purpose?
by Belinda BellI

Dr Belinda Bellis currently aFellow of Social
Innovation at
the Universityof Cambridge
Judge Business
School, where
she previously
established and led
the programmes
for social
entrepreneurial
support36

deas can sometimes suit a moment in time, andsocial enterprise shone brightly as the newmillennium dawned. In the UK, the 1997 electionof Tony Blair and the New Labour government, after
18 years in opposition, could be seen partly as arejection of the consumerist, individualist dogma of the
1980s and partly as a reflection of the increasing social
consciousness of the time. The New Labour thesis
was that through an amalgamation of capitalism andsocialism – the so-called ‘Third Way’ – free markets
could be utilised to deliver economic prosperity andsocial justice. Hopes for the future were high.
Social enterprise was an attempt to use the power
structures and business methodologies of conventional,
capitalist systems but translate them so that social
justice was at their core. This was a powerful idea,
representing innovation at the intersection of socialand financial paradigms and potentially even marking
the start of a new economic era.
I have had the privilege to teach, support and work
directly with thousands of dedicated, committed,
bright and bold social entrepreneurs. And now,
looking back, what has been achieved by theirenterprises, my own, and the sector as a whole? Verymuch less than I had hoped. And I have come to think
that, actually, we have even done harm.

There has been precipitous growth in ventures
identifying as social enterprises. A database searchfrom sources including mainstream newspapers,
journals and broadcast transcripts shows mentionsof social enterprise growing from fewer than 100 per
year in 2000 to over 10,000 every year since 2014.
Non-profits, community businesses and co-operatives,
as well as more mainstream businesses that have social
impact as a core purpose, are all often gathered under
the heading of social enterprise. You also hear about
impact businesses, social ventures, social businesses
and B corps; the result is that the seemingly simple
question of whether social enterprises are non-profit
organisations or not is met with a caveated response.
And yet the question of distribution of profit goes tothe heart of the radical endeavour that social enterpriserepresents. Social enterprise was meant to be about
reshaping capitalism, enabling the capture and releaseof social and economic value to communities. Somesocial enterprises extract profits for private gain; thisenables social enterprise thinking to permeate themainstream, but also allows uncertainty to enter,creating a lack of clarity about the underlying ethosof the sector. It opens the door for ‘social washing’ ofregular businesses.

What even is a social enterprise?

Different forms of social enterprise are problematicin different ways. For instance, organisations thatare akin to traditional charities might be seen
to undermine voluntarism, while those that are

A social enterprise is generally understood as anorganisation that seeks to solve social or environmental
problems by using business as a tool for change.

Problems, problems

RSA Journal Issue 3 2021

www.thersa.org

37

Images from Getty, iStock and Yellow Images

more traditionally commercial might fail to create
significant, genuine impact.
Take, for instance, a non-profit social enterprisethat provides services to vulnerable young people andwhose revenues mainly come in the form of annual
contracts from the council. What is the difference
between this and a charity doing similar work?
Largely, it is in matters of culture. The social enterprisewill think of the council as a customer, will expect
contracts instead of grants, will perhaps have a lessdeferential relationship with the council. And what are
the advantages of this? Charitable legislation can be alittle clunky to work under, but it is wrong to suggestthat charities per se are somehow less professional or
efficient than other organisational forms. So, for a caselike this it is a matter of choice – a social enterprise ora charity – with little real-world impact.
Or so it seems. I often meet people intent onestablishing a social enterprise when a charity orcommunity organisation would be a better fit, as theorganisation is not intended to be revenue-generating.
The prevalent social enterprise discourse tends to castcharities as somehow behind the times and suboptimal.
Charities often feel pressure to convert to a social
enterprise model in pursuit of ‘sustainability’, turningsocial problems into commercial opportunities, andabrogating public and philanthropic funders of theirtraditional responsibility to maintain social services.
Important things can be lost when work withvulnerable young people is undertaken by a social
enterprise rather than a charity. Despite somedifficult media coverage in recent times, charities arewidely understood, well regarded and trusted. Social
enterprise, perhaps due to the definitional ambiguity,
has never really become a movement in the publiceye. As many social enterprises have found over the
past year, the business-like independence they seek
has not built the type of relationship where a council
sees much value in their organisation surviving.
It is relatively easy to replace one contract deliveryorganisation with another. Social enterprises haveoften fallen between the gaps of support packages
designed for either charities or businesses.
To turn to an example at the more commercial
end of the social enterprise spectrum, let’s picture an
ethically minded entrepreneur with a slow fashion
business. Staff and customers are attracted to theexplicit mission of the business: this is the classic winwin scenario. The organisation can be an exemplar
that demonstrates that doing good business is possible.
But with no robust standards it is tricky todifferentiate an ‘ethical dress’ from the myriad ofother not-actually or not-quite-so ethical dresses.
There is marketing power behind the story of social
38

impact and it is hard to compete on price with otherbusinesses that are actually cutting corners. Our
genuine social entrepreneur risks legitimising lessethical businesses, while also not being able to makethe numbers stack up.
Realistically, there is a cost to being a social
enterprise. There are structural challenges in businessmodels that make the social entrepreneur’s job harderand, almost always, the margins lower. Our fashion
business may break out of this conundrum and becomelarge and profitable. However, if it is structured toallow profits to flow to the owners, rather than backinto the business, this then exacerbates inequality interms of asset accumulation among the wealthy.

Reaching the wrong destination
Importantly, both organisations are failing to explicitly
critique the systems within which they work. They
are trying to apply a business solution to a social
problem, but they are not looking at the root causesof the problem.
Much of the work undertaken by social enterprisesin the education and health sector would not beneeded if adequate public services were in place. Thisis an argument long levelled at charities, and social
enterprises are no different; the challenge should also
be made to them. When an organisation patches upsuch problems downstream, there is less incentive forthe problems to be eliminated at source. If the only
tools in our box are social enterprise or charity, thenwe are missing the opportunity to use other properly
different levers, such as addressing disadvantage
by reforming the benefit system or introducing
innovations such as a universal basic income.
Similarly, an entrepreneur motivated to consider
making changes to the fashion industry is likely tobe thinking of the impact of cotton farming on water
usage and the exploitation of workers in garment
factories. But they may not focus on the fashionindustry’s systemic problems. The industry exists
within an economy that systemically exploits people(particularly women) in service of fashion cycles andconsumer spending. Now that is a problem worth
addressing, but the tools to address it are not in
the shape of a social enterprise but, for instance, in
educating our children differently, in campaigningand in consuming less. In general, social enterprises
undertake little campaigning, as it is not a revenuegenerating activity. It is therefore more frequently thedomain of charities.

Neoliberal at heart
In practice, endeavours that appear to be radical often
serve to maintain the status quo. This is the case withRSA Journal Issue 3 2021

“In practice, endeavours
that appear to be radical often
serve to maintain the status quo”
social enterprise. The focus on markets, scale andinvestment is telling: social enterprise is neoliberal atits core.
The implicit and explicit focus on markets
reinforces the hegemony of market-based approaches
and an assumption that markets will produce
optimal outcomes. This construction is firmly open
for debate. There are many ways to get things donethat are not market dependent: the UK’s responseto the pandemic, for example, has included both
massive, non-market-based public interventions andan extraordinary galvanising of community-based
mutual aid.
According to Social Enterprise UK, around three
in 10 social enterprises have a turnover of under£50,000, and the lack of scale of much of the sector
has been recognised as a concern for some time. Yet
scale is a normative business concept and so it isworth interrogating. To take one example, the Body
Shop was a venture with a deeply ethical founderat its core who was unable to retain control of thebusiness – or its impact – when it was sold on to alarger organisation. The evidence is clear: bad things
happen literally every time organisations become verylarge. We must challenge the presumption that scale
is inherently positive in any organisation – regularbusiness, social enterprise or charity.
And then there is impact investing. Any critiqueof the social enterprise sector reaches its apogeein this arena. The topic deserves a full airing in its
own right, but, in summary, those who seek social
www.thersa.org

equity should question the process that leads tosuch uneven distribution of resources that a classof investors exists in the first place. And we need to
face up to the fact that the underlying facilitating
condition – a growth economy – is unsustainable forthe planet.
Social enterprise has taught us that there is huge
appetite for a different way of doing business: fromentrepreneurs, from customers and yes, even frominvestors. I draw some hope from the fringes ofthe movement; a pocket of activity in which there
may be an antidote to the anomie and isolation ofmodern commerce. This radical transformation of
our economies and communities rarely calls itself
social enterprise. It is taking place in organisations
such as co-operatives and community land trusts thathave a clear ideological and governance framework
and an intentional approach to creating fair formsof work and sustaining communities. This is how
social enterprise could have been and, perhaps, still
could be.
But, for the most part, social enterprise has been
unable to demonstrate that it is really possible to
make more things count in capitalism than just thebottom line. To be truly radical it is necessary to go
to the root causes of things. Those involved in social
enterprise – funders, practitioners, policymakers –should perhaps refocus on the systems and context
and consider how that broader environment can beadapted, improved or dismantled. For me, it is timeto go back to the drawing board.
39

Illustration by Mark Power

Sustainability

40

RSA Journal Issue 3 2021

FUTUREFOREBEARERS
Can people be encouraged to take the needs of their distantdescendants as seriously as their own?
by Tatsuyoshi Saijo@yoshisaijo

In 1898, Sir William Crookes was elected presidentof the British Association for the Advancementof Science. When he delivered his presidential
address, it was not on physics or chemistry, but on
the food crisis: “England and all civilised nations
stand in deadly peril of not having enough to eat.”At the time, Britain imported guano and nitrites fromSouth America for use as fertilisers, but stocks were
declining, threatening the nation’s food crop. Sir
William suggested instead producing ammonia byreacting atmospheric nitrogen with hydrogen sourced
from water. Germany’s Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch
responded to his call by building the first commercial
ammonia plant in Oppau in 1913. They went on to
produce large, marketable quantities of the product,
making a steady profit.
Norman Borlaug, who acquired a PhD in plant
pathology and genetics from the University of
Minnesota in 1942, moved to Mexico in 1944 towork on wheat breeding. There, he developed awheat variety that considerably increased yield. India
imported 12,000 tons of Mexican wheat in 1966
and Pakistan imported 42,000 tons in 1967, not for
food, but as seed for cultivation to support people
starving in the famine. The success of the new wheat
variety would not have been possible without large
amounts of fertiliser. In fact, the Haber–Bosch process
www.thersa.org

was essential in the advance of the Green Revolution,otherwise known as the Third Agricultural Revolution,
which took place from 1950 to the late 1960s.
Increased cereal production led to a decreasein hunger and an increase in population. By about
2015, approximately half of our food was grownusing organic fertilisers, and half using chemical. And
ever greater quantities of grain, which could also be
used to support the population, have been diverted
to livestock farming. Our quest for a better life has
led us to use an increasing amount of energy, which
in turn has accelerated the release of carbon dioxide
into the atmosphere, altering the carbon cycle andcontributing to climate change.
Haber and Bosch were – separately – awarded
the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, while Borlaug wasawarded the Nobel Peace Prize. They must havebelieved that their work, which supported increasedfood production and a better quality of living for
many, was righteous. However, they did not consider
the long-term social consequences of their innovations
and how they might impact future generations.

Tatsuyoshi
Saijo is Headof the ResearchInstitute for Future
Design at Kochi
University ofTechnology. His
latest book, Future
Design, waspublished in 2020

Unintended consequences
The criterion for commercial success is marketability,
and the Haber–Bosch process has been a tremendous
commercial success. However, the market does not41

consider the needs of future generations, as they do
not have money to spend in the present day, and so
can be ignored in favour of those who do. But cana democracy based on liberty and equity, especiallyan indirect democracy based on elections, born fromthe ideas of the social contract of Hobbes, Locke andRousseau, overcome the myopia of science and themarket to escape the “struggle of all against all”? Ifpolitical candidates propose new policies from theperspective of future generations, they will not win
present-day elections.
Science, the market and democracy are thefundamental pillars of our society. But they are
neglecting the needs of the people of the future. Whatcan be done?

Futurability
At a dinner following a seminar I gave, we discussed
the problem of listening to future generations,who have no voice in present-day society but are
directly affected by its actions. I wondered aloud
about the possibility of creating imaginary future
generations. Upon hearing this, Laura Stranlund
told us that the Native American Iroquois used to
do just that, making decisions on important mattersas if they were seven generations ahead of their own
time. This stimulated the idea of future design andof futurability.
Futurability is the basic concept of future design.
When food is scarce, parents willingly reduce their own
consumption to provide for their children. Is it possible
to extend this idea to future generations? Although
it is hard to perceive these as-yet-unborn people as
relatives, they are also in fact direct family members of
those of us alive today. A person exhibits futurability
when she or he experiences an increase in happinessas a result of deciding to, and taking action to, forego
current benefits to enrich future generations. Future
design is for designing and implementing mechanisms
to activate futurability within societies and within
participants, thereby, for example, encouraging actionon harmful alterations of various biogeochemical
cycles, such as carbon and nitrogen.

Encouraging future thinking
Back in Japan, I decided to conduct an experiment toinvestigate whether decision-making based on a future
perspective would change outcomes. A group of threeparticipants (representing a generation) interacted
for up to 10 minutes and were given a choice of A($36) or B ($27). They were also asked to think about
how they would divide the money. If this is all thatthey had to do, they would each choose A. Now, we
added a condition. If they chose $36, the amount of
42

money available for the next generation making the
choice between A and B would be reduced by $9,
whichever option they chose. However, if the first setof participants chose B, $27, the amounts available tothe next generation would not be reduced. Even withthese conditions, those who cared only about theirown interests would choose A.
We then conducted another experiment withthe same conditions, but with one change: we
randomly selected one of the three participants tonegotiate with the other two on behalf of the future
generations. Let us call this participant an imaginary
future person (IFP).
We repeated the first version of the experimentfive times, and out of the 25 pairs, only seven choseB, accounting for 28%. When the IFP experiment
was repeated seven times, of 35 pairs, 21 chose B,
accounting for 60%, indicating the effectivenessof the IFP.
We continued with these experiments over theyears, honing the scenarios each time. We began tomake all participants IFPs and to introduce roundsof decision-making; under such circumstances, option
B accounted for 85% of choices. And when we triedexperiments with no IFPs, but said that the threeparticipants must explain their decision-making to
the next generation, option B also accounted for 85%
of responses. Information disclosure was clearly astrong influence.

Real-world application
The results of the experiments have already been
applied practically in Japan. In 2015, the JapaneseCabinet Office issued instructions to municipalities
across the country to create a 2060 Future Plan.
Yahaba, a town comprising 28,000 residents, wasthe first to do so; using future design, it developed
a plan in six months. It divided citizens into twogroups: one group was asked to consider the
future from the present perspective, while the othergroup was asked to consider the present from thefuture perspective. To ensure that the latter groupdeveloped the correct mindset, they were asked todress in traditional Japanese costume (Happi) for the
Yahaba town festival (to prepare them for the act of
doing something out of the ordinary), and then wereasked to visualise being sent to the year 2060 via atime machine. They were given the task of planningcurrent town policies from the perspective of thoseliving in the year 2060.
Participants belonging to the present groupreplaced existing problems with future problems. For
example, they emphasised a lack of nursing homes in
2060. Conversely, the future group demonstrated
RSA Journal Issue 3 2021

“Science, the market anddemocracy are neglecting theneeds of the people of the future”
a far more original approach. Nansho Mountain –a local point of pride, as it is where author Kenji
Miyazawa wrote his most famous novel – had been
devastated by floods. The group proposed that it beconverted into a nature park that could be enjoyedby both the people of Yahaba and wider Japan,
rather than simply being fixed and returned to its
original state.
After hearing the proposals of both groups, in 2018the mayor declared Yahaba a future design town,
and in 2019 he created the Future Strategy Office fordesigning policies from a future perspective. Alongwith residents, this developed a comprehensive future
plan in 2020; 83% of the proposals in the plan
originated from future designers. For instance, inrural towns in Japan facing a declining population,
it is becoming harder to maintain water facilities,
including pipes, without raising water rates – which isvery unpopular. But the future designers realised thatwithout tackling this problem they would not leaveclean water for future generations. They proposedraising water rates, and residents agreed. They also
proposed a plan for which pipes should be replaced
first, taking into consideration natural disasters suchas earthquakes.

The future of future design
Future design has been applied in municipalities acrossJapan, such as those of Uji City, Kyoto Prefecture,
Matsumoto City, Suita City and Saijo City, among
others. In addition, the Tosa Association of Corporate
Executives is leading the implementation of futurewww.thersa.org

design in Kochi Prefecture, which faces the future
problems of a shrinking population and the likelihoodof a potentially devastating earthquake. There are
initiatives for future design application in companies
and for all residents in a town. The Tosa Association isusing future design thinking to seriously consider thesustainability of the region, including issues related towater, energy and food.
Other corporate executives are also using future
design, and it is helping them to make more wideranging and forward-thinking decisions. For example,
if the leaders of a company look to the future, theyenvision a scenario where AI is more sophisticatedand widely used. With future design, they instead
start with the happiness of customers who use theirproducts and services, as well as their employees, andmake decisions that take these issues seriously.
There have been many events that could havebeen changed for the better had future design been
considered. Think, for example, of the introductionof single-use plastic bags: convenient today but anenvironmental disaster in the long run. Future design isimportant and can activate futurability in societies aswell as in the individuals who comprise those societies.
What about at the global level? At the T20 (thepreparatory meeting for the G20) conducted in 2020,
I proposed that world leaders should discuss issues
that affect future generations as imaginary futurepresidents and prime ministers. This proposal was not
adopted, but I will keep trying; I would like to one
day be thought of as what Roman Krznaric calls a“good ancestor”.
43

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A HEALTHYHYBRID
Could a more flexible working model offer the opportunity
to enhance wellbeing and increase productivity?
by Alan Lockey@Modern_LockeyT

he experience of working from home during theCovid-19 pandemic will change work in Britain
forever. Relative to the 63% of individuals
who have not been able to work from home, Britain’s
homeworkers have been better shielded from themore immediate impacts of the virus. Nevertheless,the toll upon their health and wellbeing has beenhigh. According to Nuffield Health, seven in 10
homeworkers report more aches and musculoskeletal
pain, while levels of mental health distress havesoared, particularly during the most recent lockdown.
Despite this, the vast majority of homeworkers
are determined not to return to the pre-pandemic‘normality’ of working exclusively in an office. Recent
research by the RSA and Vitality, a health and life
insurer, found that only 16% of homeworkers would
prefer to work mainly in a set location away fromtheir home. The reason for this is simple: people havefound working from home helpful for coping withthe wellbeing challenges of the pandemic. But at a
deeper level, the way homeworkers relate to work
has changed too. Our research shows that Britain’s
homeworkers increasingly expect work to support
their wellbeing, work–life balance, mental health andability to pursue a physically active lifestyle. When
we do eventually go back to our offices, we are goingback as different people; people who want, to quote
the Brazilian philosopher of work Roberto Unger,
work that allows us to “live a larger life”.
Organisational leaders should now explore thepotential for a ‘healthy hybrid’ model that candeliver inclusive productivity gains for their businessalongside a healthier, happier workforce. The storyof productivity during the homeworking experimentis illustrative of the challenges ahead. On one hand,www.thersa.org

homeworkers have clearly
worked harder; our researchsuggests they have worked an
extra three hours per week on
average. Meanwhile, the fact that
productivity has not dropped off acliff should be a stark warning thatsomething has gone badly wrong in the way
we design our physical workplaces. Homeworkers
told us most tasks were easier at home, including
the creative tasks often thought to be a comparativeadvantage of offices.
On the other hand, there are concerns that these
extra hours represent a ‘burnout’ model of workthat is unsustainable due to its impact on wellbeing.
Moreover, some homeworkers have struggled tomaintain their productivity due to an increased
demand in caregiving, a reminder that the benefits offlexibility are never distributed equally.
For most organisations, finding a ‘best of both’equilibrium that can balance the collaborative energy
of workplaces with the wellbeing-enhancing flexibilityof working from home will take time and patience.
Yet, in the main, we should be optimistic. The shift invalues that ‘healthy hybrid’ work represents can help
create a movement for good work grounded in theinsight that wellbeing and productivity – health andeconomic competitiveness – are two sides of the same
coin: human beings need both in order to flourish.
We must not squander this insight as the acutephase of the pandemic passes. When we look backupon this terrible tragedy, our hope should be that wewill also be able to see it as a catalyst for good. One
way to achieve that will be to embrace the possibilitiesof ‘healthy hybrid’ work.

Alan Lockey is
Head of the FutureWork Centre at
the RSA45

Universe

RACINGFOR SPACE
Tackling the final frontier
by Peter Marber FRSA
@petermarber

GPeter Marber
FRSA haspublished sevenbooks, teaches
at Harvard
University andis a Fellow
at the Royal
Astronomical
Society46

rowing up in the late 1960s, space exploration
filled my imagination with awe and wonder.
I spent endless hours watching The Jetsons,
Lost in Space, Star Trek and the Apollo missions
and always thought that, by now, space travel would
be commonplace. While my childhood dreams of
becoming an astronaut faded as I entered adulthood,
it is time to get excited about the cosmos again.
Around the globe, governments and corporations
are revving up the space economy: 72 countries claim
active space programmes and over a dozen have launchcapabilities. While the US has been the perceived
leader in the field, China’s space programme – alongwith the country’s growing economic strength – hasbeen advancing. India, too, wants in on the action,
along with thousands of private-sector companies
and universities.
Why the rush to space? Many believe that building
infrastructure in space will shape many, if not all,industries on Earth – energy, communications, financeand insurance, and transportation, among others –with incalculable socioeconomic benefits.
Resources certainly will be key. One can imagine agreat race to establish lunar mining camps for valuable
rare metals needed in batteries, electronic gadgets andsophisticated military equipment. Since China has anear monopoly on production of these on Earth, there
is geopolitical interest from many countries wanting
to source them from the Moon, thereby reducing theirdependence on one country.
Moreover, scientists claim that lunar ice can beconverted into hydrogen and oxygen to create rocket
fuel, which is crucial for deeper space missions. For

any country interested in exploration beyond theMoon, this opens up a huge opportunity. Scientists
estimate that asteroids in outer space could containmore valuable metals – such as platinum, iron, nickel
and cobalt – than has been mined in Earth’s history.
The 140-mile-diameter asteroid between Mars andJupiter called 16 Psyche purportedly contains enoughnickel ore to supply current human demand formillions of years.
Space may also be part of the solution to global
warming. Current renewable energy can only beharnessed when the wind is blowing, or the sun isshining, but we need electricity around the clock, every
day, and storage is expensive. Space offers an elegant
answer: solar power stations orbiting and facing theSun 24/7, wirelessly transmitting the energy to Earthvia microwaves or lasers. While technologies still need
to be invented for this to become economically viable,
efforts are under way. China has already announcedplans to deploy space-based solar power stations by2035. The possibility of cheap, clean, endless energy
alone is reason to forge into space.
Wall Street is certainly excited by the potential ofspace and lots of capital will be needed to accelerate
the industry’s expansion. In the past, space was largely
the domain of governments, but a new arena ofcommercial operators such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX,
Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and Richard Branson’s Virgin
Galactic travel effort now operate alongside the public
sector. NASA has even awarded substantial contracts
to SpaceX and Boeing to kickstart the Commercial
Crew Program, giving $4.2bn to Boeing and $2.6bn
to SpaceX. To this point, only SpaceX has met NASA’s
RSA Journal Issue 3 2021

www.thersa.org

47

Image from Envato

certification requirements. In 2020, Morgan Stanleyestimated that global space activity could generate$1trn annually in 2040, up from $350bn today.
Sensing this potential, both the US Bureau of Economic
Analysis and the OECD have already begun significant
efforts to measure the global space economy.
Some of the near-term profitable opportunities
may not sound as alluring as lunar power plants or
exploring the galaxy. In fact, the most likely business
opportunities will be launching more satellites toprovide greater broadband internet access. Moresatellites will drive down data costs, just as data
demand explodes from autonomous cars, the internetof things, artificial intelligence, virtual reality andubiquitous video. With more satellites, the permegabyte cost of wireless data potentially can fall toless than 1% of today’s levels. This is how space helps
reshape our Earthbound economy.
Governance will be needed to referee commercial
and military space activity. Historically, space mining
was considered to be prohibited by Article II of
the 1967 United Nations (UN) Outer Space Treaty(OST). Even though this helped avoid a Cold War
militarisation of space, with over 100 countries
ratifying the treaty, since then broad cooperative spaceaccords have largely failed. The ill-fated 1979 Moon
Agreement – a treaty to govern private commercial
space claims under the UN’s purview – has been
ratified only by 19 countries, none of which even havespace travel capabilities.
The need for governance is heating up. In 2015, theObama administration granted Americans the right toown any materials they extract in space, blowing open
the door for civilian space business. In 2018, China
launched a reconnaissance rover on the Moon’s far
side that has been gathering samples and data for two
years. In late 2019, President Trump announced theformation of a US Space Force under military control.
And in October 2020, the US led the signing of theArtemis Accords, a set of bilateral agreements on space
between America and its allies Australia, Canada,
Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the United Arab Emirates
and the UK, purposefully skirting the UN. This pact
claims to affirm the 1967 OST, but critics note it
actually expands the interpretation of commercial
space law by specifically stating that “the extraction of
space resources does not inherently constitute national
appropriation under Article II” of the treaty.
Still, the intention behind the Artemis Accords is notto establish new regulations for all activities in space,but those that fall under NASA’s Artemis programme,
the next phase in lunar exploration. Artemis’s main
goals include landing the first woman on the Moon48

by 2024 and constructing a lunar base (known as
The Gateway) that will serve as a long-term base forlunar exploration and aid in future travels to further
destinations, such as Mars.
As one can imagine, a future space economy could
be the most exciting human endeavour ever; but it will
not be without complications. Current agreements
like the Artemis Accords may be viewed more as
small, cliquish club rulebooks than a true multilateralagreement. At least, that is how Russia sees it; its
absence from the Artemis Accords reveals a shift in
how the country views the relationship between its
own space agency and NASA.
Of course, there is an important distinction between
NATO and the Artemis project: one is a military
alliance, and the other is a scientific one. Still, Russia
is turning to other potential partners, those with moreclosely aligned governmental philosophies, for future
space missions.
Recently, Russia and China signed an agreement
to collaborate on a lunar base (a primary goal of
Artemis), which could be the defining move that ends
years of US and Russian cooperation in space. China,
too, believes Artemis is a US political effort instead ofa scientific one and state daily Global Times praised
the agreement with Russia as a way to “promotebalance and fairness with strength and real actions”.
As we have seen down on Earth, a lack ofinternational standards often leads to a chaotic,
competitive race to the bottom. Unregulated space
activity could create myriad problems from accidental(or intentional) blocked data transmission to orbital‘pollution’ of too many objects. Indeed, just a few
uncontrolled collisions could generate enough debris
to render near-Earth space unusable. Some observers
also worry that the recent Wall Street mania overspace companies may create players who launch
orbitals but eventually go bust, leaving more potential
for collisions and other dangers. In April 2021, apresentation at the European Conference on Space
Debris highlighted that this “space junk” problem
may be underestimated and could, in a worst-casescenario, increase 50 times by 2100.
And, of course, no one wants to see space militarisedwith escalating arms races.
To borrow an overused phrase from Star Trek,
space is the final frontier. The technological, economic
and governance efforts for building the new spaceeconomy – like other historic transformations – tend to
be a series of quiet evolutions that, in total over time,
become a revolution. Fasten your seatbelts. Judging byrecent developments, the period that future historians
will call the Space Revolution is just taking off.
RSA Journal Issue 3 2021

Fellowship

BAT AND
CHAT
Table tennis has been shown to be of great benefit
to dementia patientsby Ian Craigton-Chambers

Image from iStockW

hile living and working in the US andlatterly Japan, I was inspired and impressedby how the neuroscience fraternities inboth countries perceived and subsequently extensively
researched table tennis as an effective, drug-free andcarer-inclusive therapy for dementia.
Sir Arthur Gilbert, an English ex-pat in Los Angeles,
noticed that his wife – who had been diagnosed
with Alzheimer’s – underwent an astonishingtransformation in demeanour when they played table
tennis socially. He commissioned a study by the Mayo
Clinic, and it produced some very promising results.
In Tokyo, two professors, Teruaki Mori andTomohiko Sato, picked up on these findings andcarried out a major body of research, MRI scanning
350 Alzheimer’s patients before and after they
played table tennis. They discovered that after just
15 minutes, five more portions of the brain had lit
up, instigating the reduction of cognitive decline andsubstantial symptom delay.
In 2013, I founded the Bounce Alzheimer’s Therapy(BAT) Foundation and, utilising my background indesign, set about creating specialist equipment thatwould markedly enhance the therapeutic effects oftable tennis for players with dementia.
I approached the University of Stirling’s Dementia
Services Development Centre and, with their input,
developed the first design for my Table Tennis Therapy
Table. The early onset symptoms of Alzheimer’s affectthe visual cortex. For instance, colours of the samehue begin to meld and spatial awareness diminishes,
as does peripheral vision. Among other measures,
I extended the borders of the table to emphasise
www.thersa.org

perspective and attached side panels to increase spatialawareness. I took the concept to Tamasu Butterfly, aleading table tennis equipment manufacturer, which
agreed to fund the prototype. This was duly launched
to great success, in collaboration with the Alzheimer’s
Show, in 2015.
With input from RSA regional representatives,
version 2 is now installed in hospitals, care homes andcommunity centres across the UK, and a version 3 isto be unveiled at the 2022 Alzheimer’s Show.
In addition, the BAT Foundation has been invited,in collaboration with Table Tennis England, Sport
Birmingham and the International Table Tennis
Federation, to play a role in the Birmingham 2022
Commonwealth Games. We are producing a series ofbespoke dual-purpose multiple player tables that will
be presented to each participating country under thebanner ‘Bat & Chat’.

Ian CraigtonChambers is afounding trustee
and Creative
Director of theBAT Foundation

If you are interested in supporting this initiative,
please contact Ian on Ian@batfoundation.com

Top tips• Focused enthusiasm can be very contagious. Do not hesitate topunch above your weight.
• Think beyond the immediate. Join the dots as potential‘synchronicity’ stepping stones to the future.
• Treat your project as a brand and build it accordingly.

49

Last word

Are there meaningful forms of self-care outside of social-media-friendly
gestures and purchases?
by Alex Edelman@AlexEdelman

I

Alex Edelman is astand-up comedianand writer50

host a BBC Radio 4 show about Millennials
called Peer Group. Which is very funny, given thenearly geriatric average age of the typical Radio
4 listener. Hosting a Radio 4 show about Millennials
is like hosting a North Korean TV show about
democracy. But anyway, I do, and when the show
started in 2016, the number one question I was asked
was “what do Millennials want?”
A really easy question to answer, because
Millennials want what everyone wants, and older
generations seem to have. Housing. Financial security.
Professional fulfilment. Responsibility.
I do not get that question any more. I get asked
why Millennials are so unhappy. The idea that there
are millions of Millennials walking around close to
blowing our tops is taken as such a given that a whole
new buzzword has cropped up around mitigatingthat unhappiness: self-care.
Smoothies. Staycations. Fancy candles. Products soldby cooing influencers. The behaviour and consumer
habits of Millennials that fall under the lavenderscented, terry-cloth banner of self-care have becomea key topic in the culture wars. Proponents argue
that we need time to ourselves, given our manifest
stresses. Opponents from previous generations – whoapparently had uniformly hardscrabble lives – insist
that self-care and the focus on it is just anotherexample of Millennial self-indulgence.
I hate the term, personally, because it is both
maddeningly vague and a giant paradox. One of thebiggest reasons we are actually unhappy is precisely
because of this focus on the self. Millennials, seemingly
overnight, have become supremely isolated. Likethe loser in your high school class, Millennials arecreepy loners. In a 2019 poll, more than a quarter ofMillennials said they have no close friends at all.
Social media bears a lot of responsibility here.
When Facebook appropriated the term ‘friend’ it
started to lose all meaning. A friend has devolved
from someone you had a shared history and bondwith to someone you met once at a coffee shop.
I spoke to an actual friend, David Burstein, authorof a great book about Millennials called Fast Future,and he said something more expansive.
“When technology changes language, it permeates
culture, and comes back around to change nontechnological behaviour. When things we actuallywant turn into buzzwords, they become devalued
and warped.” This has happened to friendship, andthe same is happening to self-care. The urban formof self-care is presented as taking a day off work to
get an avocado rice bowl and sit at home watching
Netflix. I am not siding here with the old whingers
who say Millennials are soft – sometimes you do needmental health breaks, and you should be judicious
about the level of toxicity you allow in your life – but
a good exercise in self-care might be cultivating habitsthat build strong relationships with other people.
Self-care can mean putting yourself in difficult
situations. Dealing with an issue affecting afriendship. Having discussions where how you feel isgenuine rather than emotional currency. Creating anenvironment where you feel protected, fulfilled andempowered every day? That is actual self-care.
Although, there is nothing wrong with the occasional
bubble bath. That counts also.
RSA Journal Issue 3 2021

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The pursuit of wellbeing

James Wilson asks how we can create
nurturing states

Anna Severwright looks at how thesocial care system could improve

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