Category Archives: Society

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Here at conversationsEAST we are delighted to be able to donate web hosting, design and content creation services and new media support to this new, nascent movement.

Inequality in Education – turning the tide (IETT) is about change in the educational landscape and improving equality of opportunity and outcome for children and young people across England.

interneticon  You can see the new IETT web presence here

You can follow IETT news on Twitter too:   @Tide_Turning

The web site features not only regular news and featured ideas on the pages of The Tide, the IETT web journal, but also regular newsfeeds from a variety of sources across the education landscape.

Monographia is a growing web resource of research papers and conference contributions that mark key themes for IETT groups. The Debate – filmed is a growing archive of videos that go to the nascent movement’s campaigning and research aims.

If you have an interest in educational reform, or the social inequality agenda, we commend this site to you…Ed.


 

Developing your project web presence?

The conversationsEAST team are keen to offer web support to socially focused web projects in the East of England.

We are particularly happy to support projects led by RSA Fellows, as our donating Partners at SmithMartin LLP, are keen supporters of the Society. We would also like to support the planned development of IETT groups in Nottingham and Oxford.

See our project web offer at conversationsEAST here and contact us for more help, if we can.

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 Letting the imagination loose…

What a reservoir of intellectual curiosity and intelligent thought the TED Talks web site is. We would all aspire to be on that stage, in any city across the world, to deliver our magnum opus in those eighteen minutes or less.

Well, some of us would, we suspect?

Well now you can. TED have just called for video submissions for OpenTED, a new initiative that offers all, that is everyone, the chance to vent their idea to the world.

You have, in this case, just six minutes or less to give the world your idea. It might be a new social movement, political idea, artistic initiative or just a personal reflection on an aspect of your life.

Below is a contribution from the performer Tanya Davis, with the filming expertise and technology provided by film-maker Andrea Dorfman.

It is a poem and filmic art, about being alone. It is also a collaboration, to express the idea or commentary using a range of skills. Working together with others to express your idea.

You have until October 15th, 2015 to submit your video idea. It must be a video contribution, of course. It might be…

‘…an idea might offer a new, bold, big-picture way of looking at the world: a broad call for tolerance, a flipped view of human behavior, a breakthrough in the lab that will change our lives. Or it could offer a new way of thinking at micro scale — a new take on a small behavior we do every day, or a new way to get through the workday’. Source: OpenTEd

A small, personal idea, or big statement about an aspect of your life or community. The TED idea democratised. Now there’s an idea worth spreading.

interneticon  You can find the OpenTED small print here.

interneticon  Revisit the TED main web pages here for inspiration.

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The Future of Education in England

5 October 2015, 6pm – 9pm   –  The RSA, The Great Room, 8 John Adam Street, London, WC2N 6EZ

“Inequality in Education: The Future of Education in England – Organised by RSA London Inequality in Education Network hosted by Annette Smith, Education Consultant and member of Turning The Tide.

We are delighted to announce two great speakers: Diane Reay, Professor of Education at Cambridge University & Danny Dorling, Professor University of Oxford. Both speakers are passionate and informed critics of the current education system“.

The booking page on Eventbrite offers you full details of this interesting and informative event. On the booking page you can see the key questions that are to be addressed by Diane Reay and Danny Dorling, with an opportunity for you to tender your ideas and comments on the questions ahead of the event.

‘We are doing this because we think it unlikely that any significant changes will be made unless there is a strong social movement supporting progressive reform and we intend the meeting to be a contribution to the building of such a movement’.

eventbriteButton See more on this Eventbrite page here.

You can also review our last conversationsEAST article on Inequality in Education, about the previous group event. See more here.

Here both Pasi Sahlberg and Peter Mortimer gave relevant and commensurately challenging speeches about our emerging movement and ‘the state of the education nation’ in England.

See you on the evening of the 5th October?

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This new research report from the New Economics Foundation (NEF) is a refreshing look at our coastal communities and their economies.

It provides proposals for action, which are leavened through a recognition of history and localised specialist skills. The analysis is elevated beyond the ordinary ‘top down research’ by emphasising the need for socio-political and economic frameworks in coastal communities which re-connect people  with nature and the coastal landscape – a series of contours that are geographical, industrial and philosophical.

The report takes us out of the ivory tower and into the sand dunes.

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See your copy here…

pdfIcon4  You can view, print or download a pdf copy of this NEF report here…

Previous NEF research has already looked at how  a low-carbon economy can generate new jobs and economic entities,  that can offer secure, decently paid and satisfying work in a more equally distributed economic landscape. See more here…

The essence of the New Blue Deal is to build on existing initiatives and create a mixed framework of five changes and economic thematic deliveries, which are sustainable, inviting and inclusive to the communities of focus.

  • Ÿ Ÿsustainable fisheries and aquaculture
  • renewable energy
  • coastal tourism and related activities
  • Ÿ innovative approaches to coastal management
  • opportunities to re-connect people with nature

‘For the fishing industry, for example, NEF analysis  shows that restoring UK fish stocks to healthy levels and promoting lower carbon emissions through
quota allocation across the main UK fishing fleets would mean an extra 457,000 tonnes of fish landed each year, leading to an additional £268 million
GVA (Gross Value Added) and a 24% increase in employment, the equivalent of 4,922 new jobs’.

Source: Carpenter, G., Esteban, A. (2015) Managing EU fisheries in the public interest: Results from the Bio-Economic Model of European Fleets. New Economics Foundation. Results calculated using 2010-2012 performance. New jobs estimate is made up of fishing jobs (11%) andprocessing jobs (89%). Retrieved from: http://www.fisheriesmodel.eu/

The report looks at a variety of UK locations, with fishing being a key focus of course. However, other work is highlighted. Engagement and partnerships that work across responsible tourism, leisure and recreation.

From Anglesey Adventures, a business working in the outdoor leisure arena, to The Venus Company, working in its chain of cafes to ‘…balance customer needs with environmental and social considerations’. We particularly liked the feature on Learn to Sea, a ‘sea school’ project in South Devon. Using the coastal spaces as an educational resource which informs children and young people, but which also carries forward the ideas of sustainability, economic durability and environmental awareness into the next generation.

Here at conversationsEAST we are incredibly fond of the Suffolk coastline, for example. But we look at areas around communities like Great Yarmouth or Lowestoft, with their long tradition of fishing and livelihoods from the sea. Whilst we recognise that ‘Big Oil’ does provide jobs and technical advancement for some sectors of the community, without doubt, creating a recognisable  influx of highly specialised employees from external sources.

Whilst this fosters economic activity which is vital, it does not reposition those communities to explore, create and sustain their history with their coastline and enable them to encourage the growth of entry level and intermediate skilled work.

The New Blue Deal does.

You do not need to spend long with the NEF document to see, in your mind, how your favourite stretch of coast can become a thriving community – a nexus of education, social and community enterprise, ocean facing and non-exploitative at every level.

We commend this report to our readers. If you would like to explore and track the New Blue Deal there is a new NEF website available here. http://www.bluenewdeal.org/

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unlockinglocalcapacityPic-mIt has been a couple of years now since OPM published Rob Francis’s report Unlocking Local Capacity. However, with a new government and a fresh round of cuts in train, the content of the report around how and why unlocking potential is of interest to Local Authorities, remains highly topical.

The detail of the report looks at three key areas…

  • Unlocking individual capacity
  • Unlocking community capacity
  • Unlocking Council capacity

When looking at the individual the report examines the issues of trust, how both residents and elected members perceive each other and the veracity and effectiveness of creating new types of conversation in the local arena.

pdfIcon4 View, print or download this report here…

‘These questions are central to discussions about localism, empowerment and what central government calls the Big Society; but they are being asked with such urgency because acute financial pressures demand it’.

It is perhaps a sign of how difficult these issues are, in dealing with relationships with the local state, regardless of political tone, as much of the observations in the report can, to those of us with long memories, sound a long echo back to the heady days of the New Deal for Communities programmes. (This set of Wikipedia links make for an interesting historical narrative about community change…Ed.)

There is an interesting debate established in the report about the subject of ‘incentives’, or rather about the carrot or stick approach to behaviour change. This will always be a thorny issue to wrangle with, not least because with any positive reward programme some will be rewarded for establishing behaviours that others consider the norm.

Another issue is the perception of ‘deviance’, an uncomfortable psychological nomenclature, when used to describe residents who may have been disenfranchised socially and economically by the state for some period of time.

This video of a recent RSA lecture nicely bridges the first two chapters in the OPM report. Alienation, lack of reality and individual empowerment are all part of this reflection by Sir John Elvidge

See the movie on YouTubeThis RSA video freely available to all here…

The second chapter of the OPM report looks at collective responses through volunteering, in the context of changing landscapes with joint, collaborative action. We found it interesting, in revisiting this report, which makes much mention of the then current Big Society idea, that volunteering was seen as something new.

This despite a long, long history of community collective action through the charitable sector, arguably dating back to the early Victorian era two centuries ago now. Newness and efforts to stratify and comodify volunteering persist in the thinking of central government still, as seen in the refreshed election promises to incentivise the company volunteer.

The third sector of the report looks at how councils have and are changing in this redefined landscape. New sources of funding for community projects, new discussions with residents about core budget allocations as a means of establishing recognised community priorities and how to avoid ‘resource capture’. That is to say, those who shout loudest get the most!

‘This report makes the case that when it comes to local people doing more for themselves, it is not enough for councils to simply get out of the way; that capacity in most cases needs to be unlocked, not unleashed’.

This summation of the report is telling. It urges Councils to ‘…have a different conversation’. To shift the local authority debate away from ‘what do you need’ towards a focus on ‘what can we all do that would make things better?’

We particularly liked the urgency of the demand that Councils should ‘…keep hold of the boring stuff’. Governance and the workings of the committee are not everyone’s dream aspiration.

Where the tree will be planted, where the tea and cakes will be served and what colour should we paint the container…much more engaging questions in socio-political landscape change?

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Book your place here…

The Conference:

As the conference season gets under way, here is a key date for your Fellowship diary. Our Eastern regional conference is taking place athe UCS Waterside Building in Ipswich in Suffolk.

You can see the conference details and book your place on the Society’s usual Eventbrite pages here.

See more conference detail here.

Location: Waterfront building, University College Suffolk, Neptune Quay, Ipswich IP4 1QJ       

The Market Place:

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See more!

The Market Place forges connections among the regional Fellowship and has become a lively feature of the annual conference.

interneticon  Visit the dedicated Market Place web pages here.

If you are interested in having a stall/conversation point at conference please make contact with the Market Place team here..

emailIcon4  helpmarket (at) conversationseast.org

Stalls are set up for a variety of projects which fit well with the RSA mission. They may be community based or extend across the region but the common feature is that they are a great way to connect face-to-face with Fellows and others who are engaged with the Fellowship in pursuit of their social change and support aims.

Stallholders invariably have a passion for their project and are looking forward to showing how they are empowering people to apply their creativity to emerging opportunities and challenges.

The principal Market Place activity will be in the main Foyer (where lunch is also available) from 12.30 until 2.00, but conversations will be taking place with exhibitors all day we are sure.

So either avoid the initial queue for lunch or grab your lunch-bag and graze the stalls.

You’ll find plenty of highly nutritional ideas and stimuli in The Market Place.

See you there?

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The Cambridgeshire Timebanking Partnership are keen to ensure the sustainability of their Timebanks by diversifying their funding.

The Partnership have  decided on a development programme to institute a major raffle and an Auction of Promises. The Partnership  are looking to develop this ambitious campaign which can be run on an annual basis.

What is needed is someone with the skills and knowledge to act as a ‘raffle’ project mentor.

Ideally, the Partnership is looking for someone who has successfully run a major raffle in the past, who has knowledge of the process, paperwork and also advice on attracting prize donations and increasing ticket sales.

To provide support to the Partnership Project Manager, with an initial meeting for key development advice, and then the sharing of documents or telephone support if required.

If you are in the Fellowship network in the East of England, do you have ‘raffle’ expertise and the time to support The Partnership in this interesting funding development project?

The short video below gives you a flavour of the activities the Timebanking Partnership have been able to facilitate…

If you can help please contact Wendy Lansdown of the Community Engagement Team of Cambridgeshire County Council – see it on-line here on 0345 045 5200.

If you do help – thank you.

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Pasi Sahlberg addresses his audience…

A year has now passed since in April 2014 the Finnish educator Pasi Sahlberg – discover his work here… and Peter Mortimer – see a collection of his articles in the The Guardian, UK, ex-Director of the London Institute of Education, met to discuss with a London audience the testing subject of Inequality in English Education.

With an ever increasing press for change in social and economic inequality and the drive for more standardisation and accountability by test, the time is absolutely right, we would argue, to spread the work of the Equality in Education Network that emerged that day in April 2014.

The short film linked below, from the event, shows Pasi Sahlberg delivering a critique of  GERM, the Global Education Reform Movement. Although presented with a light touch, the argument bites deep. GERM offers no improvement in educational outputs overall, he argues.

See the movie on YouTube   You can see the original talk by Pasi Sahlberg on YouTube here…

‘Competition is seen as the right way, striving for pan-education standardisation and test based accountability is now the norm. Education is seen as an industry, a business opportunity…’ Pasi Sahlberg 2014

Pasi develops his argument by looking at two key themes. Inequality and equity. In the frst case, using Finnish data he argues that the Finnish system of tax distribution and social equality has had a profound performance effect on education in his country. In the affluent West, he argues, those nations that have the highest levels of inequality have the lowest quality educational outcomes.

In the second case, equity, the presenter’s data is used to analyse how international education systems serve all the children of a nation. What is the aggregate benefit to a nation by educational system? Here Pasi illustrates the dramatic journey of Finland again, tracking forty years of improving educational attainment . Often within the context of a turbulent socio-political landscape.

Mr. Sahlberg astonishes his audience by announcing that he has read all five volumes of the most recent PISA Report – find key OECD findings on-line here…, at five hundred pages a volume. He has discovered, despite the policy debate and process changes that recently emerged in the UK, two key PISA recommendations – found in the fourth volume.

  • School choice and competition are not related to performance.
  • Greater equity and autonomy over curricula and assessment seem to improve performance.

The speaker closes  his argument with five key recommendations about the delivery of a nation’s educational infrastructure. Although not revolutionary, they are seemingly perhaps counter intuitive at first,  when assessed against current UK policy and practice, we would argue.

  1. Co-operation is key – collaborative work should be the driving force across teaching, political activity, headships and governance in schooling.
  2. Place less stress on early learning, and much more focus on play.
  3. Be less confrontational, the key players in education should always strive for consensus.
  4. Achieve less accountability, but make, what systems there are, trust based.
  5. Have less school ‘choice‘ and strive always for a more equitable school system.

This is a telling case for Equality in Education.


Call to Action:

At conversationsEAST we would like to support the work of John Bayley and his colleagues in the nascent, London based, Equality in Education Network.

Is there an opportunity for a network group in the East of England?

Make contact with us through our ‘contact us’ slider above and we’ll let the Eastern Region team, and John, know of your interest. We should have an event in the region to revivify the discourse?


Other items of interest on this topic…

You can see and listen to Peter Mortimer’s talk, at the same event, on Inequality in English Education here. Again, delivered in gentle terms, but with a telling cutting edge about current policy.

See the movie on YouTube  See Peter Mortimer speak on Inequality in English Education here…

Finally, if the need to examine global inequality issues has grabbed you, it is well worth revisiting The Spirit Level. You can see Richard Wilkinson speaking  at TED below…

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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…

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Be the Change in Cambridge are holding a community event on Saturday 14th March, 2015. This is an opportunity to help ‘…facilitate the creation of ideas and bring the city together to make Cambridge greater than the sum of its parts‘.

Anglia Ruskin University
East Road
CB1 1PT Cambridge
United Kingdom
Saturday, March 14, 2015 from 12:00 PM to 6:00 PM (GMT)

This short video below helps explain their mission.

vimeoVideoButtonpic-mYou can see the original film on Vimeo here.

eventbriteButtonYou can book your free ticket on-line at Eventbrite here.

 

What Be the Change say about their event…

 

  • ‘This is a project to bring Cambridge’s many communities together to do more than just talk about our city’s future, but to decide what shared actions to take in order to shape it
  • We’re particularly encouraging young people – in particular those in further education – to take part. This is our response to research showing 18-24 year olds are least likely to vote as an age-cohort.
  • We’ll be asking everyone to commit to either a one-off small action, or a small behaviour change as a result of taking part. If dozens of us do that, our impact could be greater than the sum of our parts!’

If you are in the city on Saturday, March 14th this is a great opportunity to get along to Anglia Ruskin and contribute to the debate, to the generation of ideas and to the creation of community change.

See you there?


If you are a Fellow developing or leading a community change event or  project you can send copy, links and editorial contributions to the team at conversationsEAST.

We’ll be happy to feature your work, twitter our followers and generally spread the word.

If formally invited along, we’ll write a review and supporting article too. Tell us at editor (at) conversationseast.org. or use the drop down ‘contact us’ box on any of our web pages.

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Image credit:

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

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