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

In recent times, the twin plagues of Covid-19 and anti-Black police violence have caused Ruha Benjamin to rethink the importance of these every day, individual actions across our lives and societies - from the impact of the chronic stress of racism and inequities in our health care system to the power of community organisers who are fostering mutual aid and collective healing.

Here at the RSA, Ruha Benjamin will demonstrate the impact of these micro-changes, drawing on her personal experience and professional research on race, technology, and justice. Alongside the chair of the discussion, Mandu Reid, leader of the Women’s Equality Party, Ruha will offer an inspiring and practical vision of how seemingly minor decisions and habits can spread virally and have exponentially positive effects.

#RSAviraljustice

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When the economist Ha-Joon Chang arrived in Britain in the eighties, he was struck by how bland and homogeneous the British diet was. But it wasn’t just the food – in mainstream economic thinking too, there seemed to only be one item on the menu – the Neoclassical tradition.  

Whilst our diet has expanded and diversified since then, our economic preference has remained stubbornly singular. Chang argues that just as a nourishing and appetising diet needs a variety of flavours and nutrients, our economics also needs to borrow from different traditions and ways of thinking in order to produce the best results for the greatest number of people.   

Discover more about how economics affects every dimension of our lives - check out Ha-Joon Chang's RSA Animate here.

#RSAeconomics

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Is there scope for the introduction of a universal basic income as a transformative public health intervention?

As part of an academic partnership, funded by Wellcome, the RSA is exploring the potential for a UBI, how it could work in practice and what its impacts might be. The research brings together new analysis which shows that even a fiscally neutral UBI could have a significant effect in reducing poverty and insecurity and bring health benefits to those benefiting from the scheme. 

Speakers to include report authors Matthew Johnson, Northumbria University and Hannah Webster, RSA; and guest speakers Ruth Lister CBEand Professor Guy Standing.

The event marks the launch of a new RSA report exploring the health and wellbeing impacts of a universal basic income.Read our interim report on a UBI and mental health

#RSAUBI

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Households, businesses and even essential services are feeling the pressure, with the poorest in our society most harshly affected.

To add to the burden, wages and salaries have failed to rise in line with inflation. The past summer saw several sectors push back on this, as train operators, posties, barristers, dock workers and more went out on strike. Some success was achieved, but for many, their battle is ongoing.
 

With cost of living pressures expected to worsen over the winter, what kind of support is needed now from employers and from the government? And what can the ‘summer of discontent’ teach us about the power of collective action and how people can best make their voice heard in the workplace and wider society?

Hear representatives from Citizens Advice, the Living Wage Foundation and the Trades Union Congress as they explore these urgent questions and their potential solutions.  

#RSAdiscontent

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Rejecting both New Labour’s embrace of free markets and the statism of Corbynism, Blue Labour thinking sought to reconnect Labour with its working-class base, and to bring assets, power and dignity back to local communities.
 

As workers' rights and futures - and the future of the places they live - take centre-stage in politics once more, Blue Labour’s founder, political scientist Maurice Glasman, is joined by Shadow Levelling-Up Secretary Lisa Nandy MP to explore what left-conservatism has to offer the Labour Party, and the country, in the post-Brexit, post-Covid era.

#RSAcommongood

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But, despite affording billions greater material wealth, health and freedom, the age of plenty has not delivered the utopia it initially seemed to promise.  

Brad DeLong, one of the world’s leading economists, argues that instead of ushering in an era of prosperity, wellbeing and unlocked human potential, the gains of what he terms the ‘long twentieth century’ have not only been equivocal and double-edged, but also unfairly distributed.   

DeLong’s magnum opus, Slouching Towards Utopia was an instant NYT bestseller, and has been universally lauded as the must-read account of 20th century economics.  

Join us as we explore why true economic and human progress is a complicated game of snakes and ladders, and what we need to do to create a better world.

#RSAutopia
 

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

From religion to genetics, to human psychology, the Huxleys’ impact was felt across some of the most controversial and significant topics of their day. In studies of the natural world, they contributed to the foundation of the new sciences of ecology and animal conservation.

Adept at writing about themselves in painfully revealing, honest and unprecedented ways, the family’s lives, marriages, successes and failures were also subject to their fascination with emotional, sexual, and psychological experience.

At the RSA, leading historian of science Alison Bashford is joined by historian Thomas Dixon and writer Stuart Jeffries to discuss the impact of three generations of Huxleys, exploring how the roots of the Huxley legacy reach deep into scientific and cultural conversations we are still having today. 

#RSAhuxley

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Estimates suggest that the planet’s average temperature could rise by up to four degrees Celsius. From heatwaves and hurricanes to flooding and droughts, the extreme weather this would bring could render certain parts of our planet unliveable. Changes on this scale may leave many people with no other option but to migrate to more liveable parts of the planet. Those who do migrate may have to navigate national borders and a public image that paints migration as a problem that needs to be solved. 

If mass migration is to be an inevitable part of our future, how can we more proactively approach the scale of the challenge and view it as a key solution to climate-related threats? How can we ensure people driven to migration have agency over their experience and ensure that we build a future that does not exaggerate existing social inequalities?

Here, Gaia Vince will set out her manifesto for this era of planetary change. After outlining likely futures for our planet and the changes this will require from countries, communities and cities, Gaia will explore key questions that will shape the future of human geography and explain how we should see these changes as key solutions to build a better, greener and fairer future.

#RSAClimateMigration

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

Astronomer Royal Martin Rees has spent a lifetime exploring science’s most profound questions, and advocating for its place in our common culture, at the heart of our democracy and decision-making.

At the RSA, he insists that we can be technological optimists, despite the pessimism engendered by intractable politics and sociology.  Environmental degradation, unchecked climate change, and unintended consequences of advanced technology could trigger serious, even catastrophic, setbacks to our society, he warns – and our world is so interconnected that a collapse - societal or ecological - would be a truly global catastrophe. So it’s ever more crucial to ensure that science is deployed optimally, and that brakes are applied to applications that are dangerous or unethical.  

Scientists have a special obligation to promote beneficial applications of their researches, and to warn against the downsides. But priorities in how their work is applied are matters for the wider public - so it’s crucial that the education system should offer everyone enough 'feel' for science to permit an informed debate on its ethics and hazards.

Join one of our most eminent and far-seeing scientists to explore the future of scientific endeavour at a time when innovation must be guided by values science alone cannot provide. The stakes have never been higher.

 #RSAscience

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Society tells us that to be successful we must be tough, stubborn, and resilient. We can all achieve success if we just work hard enough. Across all corners of society, from sport to science and beyond, there are many examples of people who have overcome great hardship to achieve next-level success. 

However, this view focuses on individual achievement and can easily ignore many of the external factors that can undermine our confidence, take away our agency and stack the odds against us. When we look closely at the context around achievement and resilience, the road to extraordinary success is far more complex than it first appears.

Join Bruce Daisley as he explores how success is achievable today and re-examines what it means to be resilient. In conversation with the RSA’s Andrea Siodmok, Bruce will put forward an empowering new programme for building self-confidence and tenacity that can benefit us all, not just the elite few. 

#RSAsuccess

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