Makings of an Alternative System
The RSA (Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures & Commerce) was funded to continue and deepen two existing enquiries - one on ‘the makings of an alternative system through our response to COVID-19’, and the other on their Future Change Framework.
They have explored peoples’ responses - both past and present - to the crises of 2020, and their future aspirations arising from these responses. They wanted to understand what stories of resilience, challenge and imagination had arisen amongst communities from the pandemic. To this end, they conducted interviews, considered broader global trends and third-party research, and explored insights from scholars, writers, workers and citizens, and hosted eight online events - four with communities across the UK, and four with national system change communities. This work has revealed the ways in which diverse people have experienced the same crisis in different ways - ‘same storm, different boats’.
In order to amplify this diversity of experience, the RSA has launched a series of webpages, visually mapping the terrain of experiences and inviting the public to reflect and respond, building the collective narrative for what an alternative future might be.
The RSA also undertook a polling exercise as part of this community enquiry, resulting in a briefing detailing the impacts of the pandemic on those from underrepresented ethnic backgrounds, including difficulty accessing financial support, discrimination in accessing services, and vaccine hesitancy based on low levels of trust in some institutions. They also found that for these communities, better, clearer information and accountability were crucial for fostering better decision-making in their local areas.
Without the ability to understand how things have been and are, it is difficult to imagine how they might be otherwise. By creating the space for people to reflect on the pandemic, the RSA’s work is doing vital work for enabling imagination for the future. In sharing the work and the conversations more widely, they hope to inspire a desire to carve out new systems and ways of organising that address the needs the pandemic has exposed.
You can find out more about the RSA’s EFF work here and download their Future Change Framework here. You can see their map of the terrain here and download the Crisis, Communities, Change briefing here.