Roundtable – From Big Society to Social Productivity, 24 June 2011 8.30am

Invitation only event

This roundtable discussion will mark the establishment of the 2020 Public Services Hub (2020PSH) at the RSA and the publication of our launch paper “From Big Society to Social Productivity”. The event will be an opportunity for policy makers and practitioners to reflect on public service reform, civic capacity and the Big Society in the context of policy and political change. 

We are delighted to announce the following panel for the roundtable;

Catherine Howarth, Chief Executive, Fair Pensions, will speak about social responsibility and the role of business
Steve Moore, Chief Executive, Big Society Network, will give his impressions on the current state of the Big Society debate
Councillor Steve Reed, Leader of Lambeth Council, will present on the Co-operative Council model
Sam McLean, Director of Public Participation, RSA, will speak about experiences ‘on the ground’ from the Citizen Power Project in Peterborough
Ben Lucas, Principal Partner, 2020PSH, will chair the event.

The discussion will focus on some of the practical and conceptual problems with which the Big Society must contend and explore where some of the answers to these may lie.  It takes as its starting point the final report of the Commission on 2020 Public Services, which argued for a new emphasis on social productivity as a way in which public services could respond to the social, fiscal and demographic challenges of the 2010s.  Social productivity is the process by which public services, citizens and local social institutions can jointly create better social value.

Some of the questions we hope to explore in our work and which the discussion will focus on include:

• What should be the role of the central state and government in developing social productivity or the Big Society?
• What should be the role of business and what are the implications for the economy and local enterprise of a greater emphasis on social purpose?
• What should be the role of local democracy, how can local civic leadership co-ordinate and catalyse community resilience and the development of new sources of economic growth?
• What to do about unequal capacity, capability and resource and how to manage the downside  risks of developing a different model for achieving social outcomes?