Matthew's RSA blog

Pro-social initiatives - they do work

In Manchester on Monday to talk about our project on pro-social behaviour. We are getting a good response as we go around the city and in the evening I was asked to speak to local government officers and members from the greater Manchester area. I began my talk by referring to two articles in Monday’s Manchester Evening News.

The page one lead was about the impeccable behaviour of Manchester City fans in the one minute’s silence to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Munich disaster. Six thousand, predominantly young, men had put aside a lifetime of hostility to United and not one of them had broken the pledge of City fans to respect the silence. Contrast this with the story on page two reporting that the North West is the worst region in the UK for attacks by gangs on fire crews attending emergency call outs.

The success of the minute’s silence was based on a sophisticated and concerted campaign. The way Manchester had responded as a city united in grief fifty years ago was constantly emphasised. There were many reminders that City had lost a former great – Frank Swift – in the crash so they could mourn for their own and not just United’s loss. City fans' websites hosted long debates and agreed amongst themselves that it would be letting City down not to respect the 'minute'. On the day United gave every fan a free scarf – with sky-blue scarves for the City fans. There was an iron fist inside the velvet glove: a proclamation from City that any fan seen disrupting the minute would get a life ban, but everyone knew this threat would have been unworkable if thousands had ignored it.

So it is possible to persuade people – even people resistant to authority – to do the right thing but it takes thought and effort. The day after the talk, the Head of Public Affairs at Canary Wharf, Howard Dawber, told me about an initiative in a nearby area, the Isle of Dogs. Fire crews facing false call outs and attacks on a local estate had explored the reasons for the problem. They had come to the conclusion that it was because the youngsters found fire engines and fire crews exciting. So they put together a set of activities which brought the fire engine into the community and provided youngsters with opportunities to ride in the engine, undertake an adapted form of the fire crew training and even wear an adapted uniform. The effect of all this was that not only did the false alarms and attacks virtually dry up but that the fire service had an unprecedented level of applications to join from youngsters on the area.

It takes effort, innovation, commitment but pro-social initiatives do work and the results can be spectacular.      

Collective consumption… and perhaps a lecture

I wrote last week about the success of RSA Screens, at which film makers discuss their work with an audience prior to it being shown on Channel Four.

On my way into Clapham Picture House last week I saw an advertisement for a series of screenings in which operas at New York's Metropolitan Opera are broadcast live to cinemas around the globe.

In the summer months BP and others sponsor big screen showings of ballet and opera in town squares across the UK.

By its nature going to the cinema is a collective experience, but there is a difference. Unlike just happening to sit next to a stranger at the Odeon, these events involve people using film as the focus for a group activity, or exchange, recognising that this adds something (beyond the size of the screen) not gained by watching the same material in your front room.

This desire for collective consumption will be vividly displayed tomorrow when millions of us choose to watch the Rugby World Cup final in noisy, crowded pubs and clubs.

A few years ago, in the face of falling cinema and live sport audiences, it was widely assumed we were on the road to the complete privatisation of leisure. As home entertainment options expanded and improved why would people bother with the effort and expense of going to see live performance?

But then things turned round. Film makers rediscovered the blockbuster and cinema developers went multi-screen. Sports clubs (football in particular) starting treating fans like paying customers deserving of comfort and safety; investors and sponsors saw that live sport could be good business.

The growth in collectivism goes further.

Every large town and city (and even some villages) seem to have a growing book, film, theatre or comedy festival. Then there is the expansion of the lecture circuit, the multiplication of rock festivals.

It seems we do like doing stuff together.

And something interesting is happening to our attention span. A TV executive told me the other day that it is getting harder and harder to hold viewers for longer than a few minutes. A fifty minute drama can't succeed with one pay off at the end. It must be full of sub-plots and mini-climaxes.

Similarly, we are apparently very intolerant of websites that aren't up to the minute, fully functional and speaking precisely to our interests.

Yet, we will sit in a muddy field and wait for hours to hear a band, watch a boring 0-0 and be delighted with a last minute winner, or listen to an author's lecture with only a small chance of being picked in the Q and A.

It seems we are willing to put up with things live and together, that we would never accept as individuals consuming bytes of access-anytime information.

Others I'm sure have written more eloquently and authoritatively on this subject, but I find these trends interesting and encouraging.

Is there something here that links to the RSA's broader 'pro-social' debate? I'd like to know what you think.

Then again you've probably stopped reading by now - maybe I'll have to do this post as a lecture instead.

Times a thousand

I'm rushed off my feet so I apologise for this shorter than usual entry. I will try and get another post up early next week hopefully.

Thanks to Amy and Karl for their gracious comments about last week's post.

The lack of triumphalism from (most) Derby fans means I already hope they stay up next season.

It's been another exciting week at the RSA with highlights including an excellent lecture by Amitai Etzioni on Monday, a fantastic two day conference on India at the end of the week and a really exciting new list of Fellows which arrived in my inbox today.

But my own highlight was a trip to Durham to meet the Regional Committee and activists of North East RSA.

I have to admit the group endeared themselves to me first by being enthusiastic about my talk. It turns out that my vision of the RSA Fellowship as a network of activists working to further our shared values through local, professional, issue-based initiatives is exactly what many in the region have already started doing.

For example, the group that meets every month in Durham has persuaded local doctors that their new health centre should be an eco-building. More than that, they took the doctor off for a day to meet experts in sustainable building so he could see exactly how to do it.

The group has lots of other ideas but they need support – and that's exactly where the broader Fellowship comes in.

I will say more in due course of our big ideas for a new more active, engaged, connected Fellowship but imagine what they are doing in Durham times a thousand and you'll get some idea.   

Small Kindnesses

My reader said last week's blog was a bit dull and wonky so this week I will speak from the heart.

It's only really today that I can bear to talk about it, but on Monday me and my two sons watched our beloved West Bromwich Albion lose to Derby in the Championship play-off final.

For those of you who don't know, this is a triple whammy: it means the whole the season has come to nothing, the club loses out on £50 million plus of TV and sponsorship revenue, and the team will almost certainly lose three or four of its best players to Premiership sides.

I wish I could say that it was still a great day out, after all Wembley is fantastic and we enjoyed the excellent hospitality of T-Mobile (a far sighted company which sponsors both West Brom and the RSA Coffeehouse Challenge). But I'm afraid whoever it was that said it is the taking part that matters never had a team in the play-offs!         

And yet in seeking comfort out of adversity there are insights to be had. My boys were completely distraught and so I had to be the grown up. As I said to them, "After you've lost this match the team can never hurt you as much again."

I have started going to Albion games with my friend Adrian Chiles. He is so emotionally tied up with West Brom, and has been all his life, that on bad days I always know there is someone suffering more than me. But there was something else - the reason I think all this is a suitable subject for my blog.

One of the Albion's favourite players over the years is a central defender called Darren Moore. His universal nick name is 'Big Dave' which is apparently a reference to an advertisement for chips from the 1980s.

Anyone who has seen his play can quickly see his strengths (power, size, experience, ability to score headed goals) but also his limitations (he is not exactly nippy and has the turning circle of a family estate car). But the reason fans love him is that he plays every game as if it was his last, is a committed team player and although he is tough and not afraid to give away free kicks there is not an ounce of malice in his huge frame.

Anyway, last season 'Dave' left us and went to Derby, and so on Monday he was on the wining team. At the final whistle Derby players were as elated as ours were deflated. They ran around like madmen, jumping on each other, punching the air and grabbing scarves and banners from the crowd.

All, that is, except one man. As the Albion players sank to the ground, many of them in tears, Big Dave was there to comfort each one of them in turn. He must have hugged our distraught left back Paul Robinson for a full 30 seconds (if that doesn't sound long try doing it with a consenting colleague). All this when he could have been lapping up the adoration of 33,000 of his own fans.

Watching this reminded me and my boys of a simple truth; like all sport (and life itself) football picks us up and knocks us down, we can't win every time, but it is in our power to be gracious in victory and philosophical in defeat.

More than that, in Big Dave's deliberate walk to the West Brom end I saw on Monday the incredible power of small acts of kindness.

So here is a challenge to our Fellows - why doesn't someone out there start a web site to celebrate small kindnesses (smallkindeness.com?). As a counter to the dystopian vision projected by the mainstream media, this could be place for us to record and celebrate the small things that strangers do to make our world better.

A place to thank or even get to know the person who helped us pick up our dropped shopping, or drew us a little map to get us to our tricky destination. And beyond the happy anecdotes (a good thing in itself) maybe we could find out more about why we do the right thing and how we might be encouraged to do it more.

So from West Brom back to my obsession with pro-social behaviour. I may be talking nonsense but if it helps me stop thinking about playing at Blackpool when we could have been going to Arsenal it's good enough for me.