RSA Fellowship – matching supply to demand

September 16, 2009 by
Filed under: The RSA 

The demand is there, the supply could be too, but for the RSA Fellowship to be all it could we need new skills, a different culture and examples of good practice.

I’ve just come back from 24 hours in and around Birmingham. The trip started with the West Midlands Region AGM held at the RSA Academy in Tipton. I always enjoy my visits to the Academy and the pleasure is even greater after the incredibly impressive results the students achieved in GCSE exams this year. The new school is gradually rising out of the ground and there is a great sense of excitement and ambition about the place.

About twenty five hardy souls turned up for the AGM. I don’t think anyone who has been involved in the region in recent years would say it has had the easiest of times. Difference of strategy and style have led to resignations from the committee, projects have been started and not followed through and it has even been hard to engage the regional Fellowship with the great opportunity offered by the Birmingham Book Festival (supported by the RSA and run by Jonathan Davidson FRSA). The hard work of various committee members has led to a good programme of events but these haven’t generally resulted in further activities.

The remaining members of the committee are aware of these issues and at the AGM presented a vision for the future of the region which was more ambitious and outward looking. But this was delivered and received more in hope than expectation. The idea that the RSA Fellowship can be a positive force for change is accepted, the question is how and with what human and other resources?

Then today, after the happy interlude last night of watching West Brom win at the Hawthorns and enjoying a couple of pints of black country beer, I had really constructive meetings with key people from the Birmingham business community, with the team overseeing the development of the new Birmingham Central Library, and the vice chancellor of a West Midlands university. In all these meetings there was a great appetite to work with the RSA, and genuine enthusiasm for our way of looking at the world and our priorities for action.

So the demand for the RSA to be partners, bringing our values, our expertise and our networks is great. We know as well that we have the talent in the Fellowship to be able to respond to the demand. And we know that our Fellows are the kind of people who are inclined to respond positively when they are asked to do something useful. But yet it is still hard to join the dots.

As I say, this is partly about culture. The idea that we want to empower the Fellowship is still new and most of our Fellows were not asked to join on that basis. It is also about skills. The team here is great and has developed important new ideas, for example the Fellows newsletter, but now we will all need new skills: how to assess emerging projects, to explore what support is needed from the centre, to guide and help Fellows without taking the initiative away from them. And most of all we need examples of what this means in practice: real evidence of the difference the Fellowship can make.

Of the many challenges facing the RSA over the next year or so this is the biggest and the most exciting.

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7 Comments on RSA Fellowship – matching supply to demand

  1. RSA Fellowship – matching supply to demand Outward on Wed, 16th Sep 2009 6:07 pm

    2. [...] original here: RSA Fellowship – matching supply to demand By admin | category: outward | tags: academy, always-enjoy, fellowship, midlands, [...]

  2. James Horn on Thu, 17th Sep 2009 4:03 pm

    3. I wonder if part of a lack of engagement comes from simple communication (as always in fact). I’m based in Warwick, and was assigned to the West Midlands group when I joined a few months back, but have so far only received one communication from the network (about the AGM). I asked to be linked to the Oxford group shortly after joining and have received about six mails from them. As a consequence I will lean towards doing things with that group as I have some idea where they are going and what they are doing.

    This isn’t a criticism of the Birmingham group, it just illustrates how there can be Fellows wanting to be involved, but not really knowing how and when they can engage as the links aren’t built up yet. Hopefully, there will be notes circulated from the AGM (which I couldn’t attend for work reasons) and this will give me some further indications of how I can be involved…

  3. David Wilcox on Thu, 17th Sep 2009 9:20 pm

    4. Matthew – thanks for an open assessment of the difficulties of realising the potential of the Fellowship in achieving practical action for social benefit.
    One route as you suggest is to look for a better framework to support initiatives that match demand (external interests) and the possible supply of Fellowship skills. But we’ve been on that track for nearly two years … and perhaps we need a diversion to get some quick wins, good examples, fresh energy.
    Why not look to our internal customers before trying to satisfy our external ones? I’ve never understood why we have staff-led projects and (hoped for) Fellow-led projects. Let’s just have projects we work on together.
    To achieve that, why not ask internal RSA projects – which are interesting and ambitous – to draw up an offer of engagement to Fellows who can provide additional skills and/or help promote the lessons or results of the projects more widely?
    I know that might be a bit tough on staff who may just want to get on with (what they believe) is the job.
    But if we can’t develop the culture and practice of engagement and collaboration amongst ourselves, are we likely to provide the best service to external customers?
    Alternatively, in the spirit of empowered Fellowship, we could ask Fellows (as customers of RSA services) to choose those staff projects they think most promising, and invite them to make a pitch. I’m sure there’s some TV show format we could adapt … :-)
    Better still, how about convening a half day get-togeher with drinks at the end where enthusiastic Fellows, Project and Fellowship staff work up some ideas about how to tackle this.
    I know this is a bit processy, but in my experience, the most effective engagement is co-designed by those by those who need to collaborate.
    Time to give us the problem?

  4. Sue on Fri, 18th Sep 2009 8:29 am

    5. Matthew – Thanks for the inspiring talk you gave at the Birmingham Business Breakfast Club while you were in Birmingham. I went from being incorrectly aware of what RSA does to being very interested in joining in 15 minutes flat!

    I wanted to pass on a few comments & observations (perhaps slightly off track from the blog title).

    I thought RSA was focused just on the Arts because that is what the ‘A’ stood for when I positioned you in my mind. Does the RSA have a repositioning exercise to do for people like me? I am not sure an ‘Enlightened Now’ strapline is enough – that still would not help me re-position you correctly.

    To get examples of good engagement projects out does the RSA have an ‘Engagement/Involvement’ Manager/person who collects & promotes all the involvement opportunities for fellows/members? Do you ask fellows when they join (on the form) how they would like to get involved? Do you ask on the renewal form for uninvolved fellows to sign up and pledge to get involved in one volunteer opportunity next year? Many traditional membership associations don’t do this and promote a culture of involvement.

    As a membership specialist, I would like to get my head around the difference of what being a “fellow” v. “member” means.

    Finally I was delighted you mentioned about happiness in your talk. A while ago I came across the idea of measuring a countries happiness and think it is really interesting what they do in the Kingdom of Bhutan and how they take national decisions based on this (http://www.developments.org.uk/articles/bhutan-where-happiness-outranks-wealth/). We have a lot to learn from the East!

  5. Laura Billings on Tue, 22nd Sep 2009 11:07 am

    6. Hi Sue,

    i work in the Fellowship team here at the RSA, and glad that seeing Matthew speak about what we do made you interested in becoming a Fellow! I’d be happy to send you some information and a invitation to join – I’ll get one in the post to you today.

  6. David Wilcox on Fri, 25th Sep 2009 4:55 pm

    7. In an earlier comment I hoped for closer staff-Fellow relationship on projects, and wondered if project leaders might make clearer offers to engage Fellows. It’s really encouraging to see Sam McLean do just that on AGM day, appropriately enough through the Citizen Power participation project.
    I’m probably missing other ways in which this staff-Fellows engagement on projects is happening on the 7th or other times – is there a central place to find out?

  7. Realizing the Full Potential of an Engaged Fellowship RSA-US| RSA United States on Tue, 29th Sep 2009 9:47 am

    8. [...] this recent blog post, RSA Fellowship – matching supply to demand Matthew Taylor acknowledges the question and receives feedback from Fellows.  We want to hear [...]

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