Category Archives: Research

  • Home
  • Archive by category "Research"
    • ( Page3 )

Category: Research

Soldiers and trauma in any conflict…

Chelmsford Remembers Banner2 image

 

 

 

On 9th February RSA Chelmsford Fellows and Civic Society members listened to presentations by Air Vice Marshall Ray Lock CBE, Chief Executive of the Forces in Mind Trust (FiMT) and Professor Jamie Hacker Hughes from Anglia Ruskin University’s Veterans and Families Institute. Professor Hacker Hughes is President Designate of the British Psychological Society.

Chelmsford Remembers is a Heritage Lottery funded project on the First World War centenary. The presentations and discussion concerned the mental health of Service personnel involved in conflict.

The speakers compared the support available for soldiers suffering from ‘shell shock’ between 1914 and 1918 and those with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) today. The FiMT charity and Anglia Ruskin’s Veterans and Families Institute are engaged in research on the impact of war on veterans and their families. The intention is to develop a ‘curated research hub’ centred on the impact of war on veterans and their families.

This session will assist the Chelmsford Remembers project in showing how the First World War affected the City at the time and in addition, providing some comparison with recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

Image of Malcolm NobleMalcolm Noble FRSA

Project Director

If you are interested in wider research and engagement with this subject the Open University have, through Futurelearn, a new on-line course upcoming.

World War One: Trauma and Memory is delivered by Dr. Annika Mombauer of the OU, in collaboration with the BBC.

‘…you will study the subject of physical and mental trauma, its treatments and its representation. You will focus not only on the trauma experienced by combatants but also the effects of World War 1 on civilian populations’. Source: Open University

The work, for which a Statement of Completion will be available, provides the perfect contextual frame for the sessions created by Chelmsford Remembers.

The course starts on the 25th May, 2015. See more here…

Other articles on conversationsEAST relevant to Chelmsford Remembers:

Essex at War: See more here…

The Great War, the great wrong turn? – See more here…

cropped-conversationsEASTbanner2.jpg

The Self Employment Summit!

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

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


See the movie on YouTubeSee the original film on YouTube here…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other good reads for context:

See our recent article featuring Every Day Employers, an RSA report from the end of last year – offering insights and suggestions to restructure traditional employer/employee relationships. See more here…

See also Salvation in a Start-up, a RSA/Etsy report, from last summer, on the emergence of new micro-businesses. The why and how. See more here…

cropped-conversationsEASTbanner2.jpg

 

Spirituality and Spiritualise

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

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

pdfIcon4 View, print or download a copy of this RSA report here…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Himalayas
A Himalayan view…

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

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

Reverend Sue Martin FRSA, Diocese of Norwich

 

 

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

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

cropped-conversationsEASTbanner2.jpg

 

Chelmsford Remembers
– Mental Health and the Armed Forces

Chelmsford Remembers Banner2 image


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

cropped-conversationsEASTbanner2.jpg

 

Everyday Employers
A new RSA Report

Just published, this report offers fresh insights into the conditionality of being an employer, factored through the lens of rising self-employment, business fears about employment and how central government could deploy a mind-shift in its approach to entrepreneurship and the creation of new jobs.

Authored by Benedict Dellot, the report looks across the business landscape and considers three key areas of analysis that cause the self-employed to falter at the recruitment doorway – pragmatic issues, the mindset and the cognitive biases.

A new RSA Report - see more here...
A new RSA Report

Everyday Employers looks at the practical steps that could be energised in order to overcome barriers to employment.

Pooling risk – where recognition exists that not all risk can be avoided, but could be mitigated by establishing collective approaches to insurance, HR or administrative functions.

From hiring to the concept of accessing a workforce – where employees can be shared across a number of organisations.

Boosting supply, rather than stimulating demand – using existing networks, institutions and and networks to create awareness of new jobs and to generate fresh points of contact with work seekers.

From support expansion to support consolidation – taking a fresh look at a large, hyper-active business support nexus. Assessing fitness for purpose and a leaner operational requirement.

… a divergence in opinion is mirrored in people’s attitudes towards crossing the VAT threshold – one potential consequence of employing staff . While 47 percent of business owners not registered for VAT say it would be difficult to operate their firm if they went past the threshold, this compares to just 13 percent of VAT registered business owners looking back in hindsight…

The question of the VAT threshold for small business is used to illustrate the mindset,   perceived assumptions , that can restrain business owners from taking on additional staff. The report underscores this philosophical error by highlighting research into how little the small business actually understands about government policy,  a gap in knowledge which is compounded by the complexity of the existing business support mechanisms previously mentioned.

In the final section of Everyday Employers, the issue of cognitive bias is analysed. This falls into four distinct categories, the whole of which is, it can be argued, a neat proxy for the ‘landscape of fear’ that can wrack the entrepreneur.

Inertia – simply put, the gain from expansion is outweighed by the potential loss that might be created by the process of growth itself.

Control – a business builder increasingly feels they need to control their creation, nearly always over-estimating their own ability to be productive, for example. This conditioning leads the potential employer to inherently distrust the potential capabilities of new recruits to their business.

Short- termism – a lack of planning and an over-focus on the near term. That and the inability of some business owners to step back from the intensity of the day to day running of their business to appropriately plan.

Social proof – we mimic the behaviours and model our organisations alongside those we interact with. If there is no context for the individual and his or her peers that looks at and responds to growth and recruitment, then they won’t do it either.

Benedict’s report, Everyday Employers, also contains interesting data on self-employment, growth and recruitment. Changing or tempering the landscape reviewed above could have a seismic effect the report argues…

  • “The number of self-employed people has increased by 30 percent
    since 2000.
  • Only three percent of sole traders hired someone (and kept them) over the
    5-year period from 2007–2012.
  • Doubling this recruitment rate to six percent would result in an extra 100,000
    more jobs being created (and sustained) over a 5-year period”.

This is a detailed and convincing report, which comes with practical recommendations for business sector change. It also revisits some previous research and uses the data and analysis to support the operational arguments presented in the report.

For the reflective small business person, the practical politician or the profoundly caring policy analyst, this should be the ‘go to’ manual for the next five years.

pdfIcon4Get your copy of Everyday Employers here.

cropped-conversationsEASTbanner2.jpg

 

 

 

 

Licensed to create?

This interesting new RSA Animate looks at a revolution that is needed in teacher development. Work consigns teachers, it argues, to becoming victims who are trapped by the systems they operate within.

The goal should be to make change-makers, who are authors of their own pedagogy.

The essay collection which supports the argument posits that schools are conditioned by a command and control culture, which ignores creativity in delivery. The teacher, it argues, strives to educate whilst coping with a top down culture of compliance.

Creative Education Reports, ov. 2014
Get the essays here…

To best serve learners, and the professional development needs of teachers, there should be a methodology available that echoes and supports the research which shows students, who have the best teachers, can learn at twice the rate of other students.

This accompanying essays, Licensed to Create: Ten essays on improving teacher quality is edited by Joe Hallgarten, Louise Bamfield and Kenny McCarthy.

The final essay from the collection is by Tristram Hunt, Shadow Secretary of State for Education. In the introduction to The Rationale for Revalidation: a movement to transform teaching, Hunt states…

The teaching profession is changing. One year into this job there are few things of which I am more certain. If this collection of essays achieves nothing else then it will be to highlight how the energy unleashed by this cultural shift has the potential to become a force for far-reaching education reform.

Whether you are just beginning your professional teaching career, ending it or are just passionate about education…there is much to think about in this RSA report.

 

To echo the perceptive analysis in this collection of essays, and to underscore how the change in pedagogy, the re-processing of education in general for the benefit of future generations is an ongoing project. We re-looked at Ken Robinson’s TED Talk How to Escape Education’s Death Valley.

Robinson, speaking and living in the USA, argues for change to support young people who drop out of school, and those who remain it, but who stay disengaged from the education process.

This is not a new message from Ken Robinson, but it is witty and discursive as well as telling, placing the young person at the centre of change in education.

A nice counterpoint to, and contextualision of, the thought processes and ideas revealed in our RSA essay collection above.

(Narrative updated 15:05 / 26.11.2014)

cropped-conversationsEASTbanner2.jpg

Getting imaginative in Chelmsford

Vikki Heywood, Chair of the RSA, will be giving a presentation at Chelmsford’s Anglia Ruskin University on Wednesday 22nd October.

Her topic is the cultural aspects of First World War centenary commemorations. She chairs 14-19 Now, an organisation funded by the Heritage Lottery and Arts Council England, to produce a programme of commissions relating to the centenary.

This talk forms part of the RSA led Chelmsford ideas Festival. Booking is advised at … www.changingchelmsford.com/if2014 interneticon

The event starts at 6.30 pm and finishes at 8.00 pm.

ideasFestivalPic-m
THE ideas Festival in the East of England…

 

You can view, print or download a copy of the Chelmsford ideas Festival 2014 programme here.

Packed full of social, cultural, history and arts events to make a visit to Chelmsford a must this Autumn.

See you in Essex?

cropped-conversationsEASTbanner2.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

Live streaming neuroscientist Susan Greenfield!

Thursday 2 October 6.15 – 7.45 Cambridge Community Foundation,The Quorum, Barnwell Road, Cambridge CB5 8RE

Cambridge Fellows will be streaming the day’s RSA lunchtime talk. (Find the CCF building in Cambridge here)

Mind Change
Leading neuroscientist Susan Greenfield considers the implications of the vast range of technologies that are creating a new environment around us all. How can we ensure these powerful forces bring out the best in us, and allow us to lead more meaningful, more creative lives?

Followed by an informal discussion.

(Baroness Greenfield is Senior Research Fellow at Lincoln College, Oxford University. From 2005 to 2012, she was Chancellor of Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. From 1998 to 2010, she was director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. In September 2013, she co-founded the biotech company Neuro-bio Ltd, where she is Chief Scientific Officer….Ed).

All Fellows and guests welcome.

For more details and directions  emailIcon4 jodurning@btopenworld.com

cropped-conversationsEASTbanner2.jpg

The automatic librarian…

Our small journal produces a lot of data. We generate twitter feeds, meta-tags and article categories…on and on. Does it have a use?

One thing we do at conversationsEAST every month is to run our Twitter generated content through a Knight Lab application called BookRX. (Part of the conversationsEAST team day job is to be booksellers and publishers, so the findings can be used to plan thematic content for our literacy projects, for example…Ed).

For our journal it can serve the same function, offering insights into subjects that can be useful as leaders to content ideas, or to see if the profile of our readers is on the trend we believe we are following.

BookRX works like this…

it analyzes your tweets (the words, Twitter usernames, and hashtags you use) and compares them to terms that are correlated with book categories.

… it is a book recommendation app at heart. The results can be interesting. We publish below this months analysis of our journal Twitter feed. We have featured the lead book in three categories; Science and Technology, Politics and Social Sciences and Business.

The Mobile Wave - are we immersed already?
The Mobile Wave – are we immersed already?

‘In the tradition of international best-sellers, Future Shock and Megatrends, Michael J. Saylor, CEO of MicroStrategy, brings The Mobile Wave, a ground-breaking analysis of the impact of mobile intelligence-the fifth wave of computer technology.

The Mobile Wave argues that the changes brought by mobile computing are so big and widespread that it’s impossible for us to see it all, even though we are all immersed in it’.

The Mobile Wave by Michael Saylor  You can buy this book from Amazon.co.uk here

 

 

Panarchy cover imageThe book examines theories (models) of how systems (those of humans, nature, and combined human natural systems) function, and attempts to understand those theories and how they can help researchers develop effective institutions and policies for environmental management.

The fundamental question this book asks is whether or not it is possible to get beyond seeing environment as a sub-component of social systems, and society as a sub-component of ecological systems, that is, to understand human-environment interactions as their own unique system

Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems by Lance H. Gunderson (Editor), C. S. Holling (Editor)  Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk here

Just Listen cover image‘The first make-or-break step in persuading anyone to do any thing is getting them to hear you out. Whether the person is a harried colleague, a stressed-out client, or an insecure spouse, things will go from bad to worse if you can’t break through emotional barricades.

Drawing on his experience as a psychiatrist, business consultant, and coach, and backed by the latest scientific research, author Mark Goulston shares simple but power ful techniques readers can use to really get through to people—whether they’re coworkers, friends, strangers, or enemies’.

Getting through is a fine art but a critical one.

Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone by Mark Goulston M.D. (Author), Keith Ferrazzi (Foreword). Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk

Did BookRX get the feel of our readership right? The acid test for us is does the machine generated selection have an appropriate ‘RSA feel’ to it? We think it does, providing sources that are appropriately defined through the prism of our journal content.

The app also generates selections for sports and fitness, as well as a fiction list. These are a little more difficult to empathise with, although we may publish future lists as book recommendations of regular interest for Fellows, particularly as the volume of our Twitter traffic grows.

One charitable application for the technology, we can think of, is to use the Knight Lab service to generate book lists for on-line sale as a fund-raising initiative. Taking the guess work out of list building for your audience?

Editors Note:

BookRx was created by Shawn O’Banion and Larry Birnbaum and designed by Jeremy Gilbert and Sarah Adler at Northwestern University’s Knight Lab, with support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the National Science Foundation

Northwestern University Knight Lab advances news media innovation and education. Developing ideas from experimentation through adoption, the Lab makes technology that aims to help make information meaningful and promotes quality storytelling on the Internet.

cropped-conversationsEASTbanner2.jpg

 

Where are the Fellows?

Where we are...
Where we are…

Joanna Massie of The RSA recently created a location ‘heat map’, helping visualise the locations of Fellows in the East of England. Some interesting patterns, some densely populated areas and a few empty landscapes emerged.

(Joanna is our Regional Manager in the East of England, and we offer our thanks for her permission to publish the images here on conversationsEAST).

phoneIcon You can view, print or download a larger image of the map here…(jpeg file)

The visual display shows some interesting, even expected distributions. The Norwich Fellows Group gives the region a bold standing in central Norfolk.

There is a strong A12 ‘corridor’ of Fellows from North East London up to, and including Ipswich. Cambridge offers the region a high density of Fellows in residence, as to be expected.

Hertfordshire and the North West corner of London offer up a surprising density of Fellows too. With, we suspect, the ‘London effect’ coming into play.

Despite the region’s strong showing in Norwich, the west of the county, and the centre, offer a paucity of Fellows. Likewise, the North Norfolk coast has little ‘heat’ on the map.

When thinking about the blank spots, is it that potential Fellowship members exist in these cooler areas? Are they prime areas for some gentle Fellowship activity to stir up interest in membership of the Society?

Joanna used, we believe, discrete and secure postcode analysis to generate the map. It would be interesting to do the exercise again and overlay the original source data with specialisation of interest, for example. Where do the philosophers live, where are the concentrations of technologists and coders, and whither the historians, for example?

Creating heat maps from data?

There are a variety of free on-line tools to help you create ‘heat’ for your project or membership database. Try, for example…

OpenHeatMap – see http://www.openheatmap.com/   Not the most sophisticated web site, but useful as a tool and advice source.

Target Map – see http://www.targetmap.com/  A more complex set of tools, from the free to subscription model.

FusionTables – see https://support.google.com/fusiontables/answer/2571232  An experiment from Google Labs. Sophisticated and powerful, as you might expect.

An interesting and illuminating piece of work about the Fellowship from The RSA.

Thank you.

cropped-conversationsEASTbanner2.jpg

Image credit:

News Desk image by Markus Winkler, Creative Commons, Unsplash...

Categories