RSA: Day of Inspiration (Royal Albert Hall, London) October 11, 2004

In the age of New Labour micro-management, and the triumph of policy over vision, the RSA’s Day of Inspiration, bringing together around 2,000 people in the Royal Albert Hall – including the largest ever gathering of its Fellows – was a breath of fresh air.

The Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, Manufacturing and Commerce (to give it its proper title) is celebrating its quarter-millennium. Founded by William Shipley and ten others at Rawthmell’s coffee house in Covent Garden, its anniversary events included a Coffeehouse Challenge – launched 250 years later to the day – in which over 2,000 people took part in discussions about how to address the RSA ‘manifesto challenges’: encouraging enterprise, moving toward a zero-waste society, fostering resilient communities, developing a capable population and advancing global citizenship.

These five themes provided the structure for the Day of Inspiration, chaired by journalist and broadcaster Michael Buerk, and presented ‘in the round’ at the Royal Albert Hall – the first conference I have ever attended where hiring a box was an option. Around thirty expert speakers – including Royal Academy of Engineering president and former IBM exec Lord Broers, former Commonwealth General Secretary Sir Shridath Ramphal, Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, Dulwich College head Nick Hewlett, and Atlantic College student Lowri Jenkins – presented short introductions but also stayed ‘in the ring’ to contribute to other discussions.

The event setting created the feeling of an intimate Ancient Greek agora – a phenomenon so inspirationally captured in one of BT’s more inspiring TV advertisements a few years back – but sadly the voice of the audience, including many RSA fellows, was barely audible. Instead, during the breaks the organisers identified people they would allow to ask questions, and fewer than ten were heard.

But, the organisers would argue, the Day was about the eminent speakers’ contributions and reflections. Fair enough. We certainly need to engage with substantive ideas. The speakers’ introductions were mapped around the manifesto challenges, which somewhat restricted and directed the discussion (a theme such as ‘toward a zero-waste society’ feels just a little prescriptive) but at least they enclosed a broad landscape.

‘Restricted’ and ‘directed’ did not, however, appear to be the watchwords for Michael Buerk. He does a fine job on BBC Radio 4’s Moral Maze, but in the rolling terrain of the Day of Inspiration he appeared to have lost his map and compass.

The session on ‘Moving towards a zero-waste society’, which included presentations by Sir Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, Broadcaster and Professor of Fertility Studies Lord Winston, and Baroness Warnock, was exemplary. Each presenter has their hobby horse. Rees argued that science is running ahead of human nature’s ability to manage it, and that, in the first century in which we can both change ourselves and our planet, we need to focus on the big risks – which may be realised malignly or in error – and reign in science for benign ends. Winston focused on the failure to effectively inform the public about science, create a debate about issues such as nuclear power, and listen to people’s concerns. He noted the danger of conflicts of interest with commerce, and argued that science under-graduates should be taught ethics, and the young enthused about science. Warnock concurred with Winston’s latter point and made a case for teaching non-science students about how science works, concluding that teaching morality is just as important as scientific knowledge.

In the discussion Buerk focused on who should decide how science is used, the difficulty of public decision-making, the lack of balanced discussion of science and the role of the media, and whether we were wasteful. This question was addressed to Peter Jones, external affairs director of waste management company Biffa, who unsurprisingly failed to rise above his subjective experience.

There was no mention, let alone discussion, of well-established themes such as risk consciousness or the precautionary principle. And the discussion was almost wholly free of historical context, theory, or quantitative evidence. What forces and dynamics have shaped our current situation and how might it be characterised? Why are we more apprehensive about the future when humanity appears to be more successful than ever? How did we effectively harness science in the past, when people were just as, if not more, uneducated about science? How can we explain the rise of anti-scientific thinking? Why have discussions on morality and ethics replaced political debates, and what have been the consequences? These questions might have helped establish the historical context and drawn out possible theories. To his credit, Buerk did find time for some historical reflection, when he noted that the RSA founders would not have recognised the conflict between morality and industry.

Did I mention that this session was entitled ‘Moving towards a zero-waste society’? If this had been the theme I would have had yet another set of questions for our esteemed broadcaster.

The closest we got to quantitative evidence, and discussion of the session theme, was Peter Jones’s statement that the amount of waste we create in the UK would fill the Albert Hall every hour – though he didn’t have data on how many discarded balls it would take. More importantly, he failed to put this dramatic statistic into any context. No enlightening responses came forth.

The combination of boundaries imposed by the manifesto challenges and the chairing excluded many interesting and important discussions, many of which have been debated in the regular RSA events programme. Not least facilitating productivity and innovation (issues close to the heart of Shipley), encouraging scientific research, the increasing interference of the state in private life and the decline of the democratic spirit, the denigration of knowledge, the undermining of the nation state or the greater preoccupation with terrorism.

The journalists in the esteemed company – Richard Tomkins, formerly at the Financial Times, and Management Today editor Matthew Gwyther – provided some critical commentary but it was characterised by cynicism, or agreement on objectives, for instance corporate social responsibility, followed by the observation that the change needed to be more thorough-going. Principled but positive criticism was all but absent. What discernable audience response there was tended to follow these patterns, though imbued with a little more optimism. Some useful points were made about the conflict between our audit culture and the need to trust creatives, and the trend towards managerialism in universities.

The Day of Inspiration concluded with the speakers invited to propose one course of action. Proposals ranged from the grand but uncontroversial – erase poverty, enable world literacy, remove unfair trade barriers, level technological competence – via education – value teachers more, less emphasis on testing, prevent students losing their ‘vision’, facilitate links to industry – to the misanthropic – minimise possible misuse of technology, create “no more labour saving devices that use more time”. Some proposals were more uplifting. Eden Project creator Tim Smit wanted people to “say what a great culture looks like and ask how we get there”, and Ian Livingstone, founder of computer games company EIDOS, volunteered taking more risk (particularly in business) and trusting in youth. Buerk concluded proceedings with Smit’s more corporeal insight that “environmental decay or decadence will get you in the end”.

The event literature notes that “the RSA has brought about change, and will continue to do so”, and that the Day of Inspiration was aimed at “realising the power of the individual to make a positive difference – and to add dynamism to that power by joining with other individuals committed to the same cause”. That those taking part shared the same cause is an assumption, and there was little real debate that might win people to a common cause grounded in objective evidence and theoretical understanding.

Nor was there any theorisation of the mechanisms of social change and the role of the individual in this process. And in an age of emotive, unreflective and often tokenistic action by individuals – epitomised by the modern terrorist – this is a critical discussion. It would also be useful to contrast the nature of the changes successfully initiated by the RSA in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century – a period characterised by large individuals, big ideas, and prior to big government and mass society – and consider whether its model of individual power fits our times. My instinct is that is doesn’t and that most attendees will not have gone away re-invigorated and with a clear plan of action.

The Day of Inspiration was laudably ambitious. It is inevitable that such an event will fall short of expectations. But the RSA’s approach of limiting the landscape for discussion, failure to enable questioning of received wisdom, inability to strategically manage debate, and naivety about models of change meant the opportunities presented by this event were largely lost.

Notes

Further information: RSA Day of Inspiration – Royal Albert Hall