Talks, Panels + Podcasts

Living Change: Lessons from innovative changemakers | RSA

Opening the RSA Living Change season, a panel of innovators and changemakers gather to share experiences, insights and lessons learned from the last year. Joining us to tell their stories of community collaboration, frontline innovation, and system re-design are: Ruth Ibegbuna founder of RECLAIM, The Roots Programme and Rekindle school; Cassie Robinson, Deputy Director of Funding Strategy at The National Lottery Community Fund; and Kaisa Heino, Deputy Mayor of Imatra, Finland. These are stories of crisis response, recovery and renewal, of thinking systemically and acting entrepreneurially. Stories of Living Change.

Social Innovation Foresight #1 on Social Imagination

Welcome to the launch of the Forum for Social Innovation Sweden’s new series, Social Innovation Foresight. Social Innovation Foresight #1 will take us on a journey into social imagination. Together we will reflect and learn how we can find new paths to social imagination.

Sir Geoff Mulgan, Professor of Collective Intelligence, Public Policy and Social Innovation at University College London (UCL), will start with a keynote followed by a talk with Cassie Robinson, Strategic Designer now working with Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and Roope Mokka, Co-founder of Demos Helsinki, a futurist and urbanist with focus on social transformations.

CogX2021 Ethics & Society: imagination: Making and imagining alternatives

Innovation happens all around us all the time- in the ways we live our lives, solve problems, and make use of tools and technology. When we centre “innovation practice” in labs and start-ups, who and what do we miss out? How can innovation be a collective endeavour, and who will be included and represented if we start in a different place and invest in different people? Our panel of experts share their journey from collective imagination to creating real-world change in innovative, iterative, and inclusive ways.

Imandeep Kaur - Co-founder | Director - Civic Square, Cassie Robinson - Deputy Director, Funding Strategy - National Lottery Community Fund, Rachel Coldicutt - Director - Careful Industries (Moderator)

Applying an (Eco)system Approach to Funding — Experiences from Foundations and Philanthropies

The webinar tackled the issue that traditional funding models in international development (and beyond) based on siloed interventions and a projectized logic, rigid log-frames and short-term frameworks are not a good fit to foster societal transformations required for the world to meet the Sustainable Development Goals. In the webinar, three distinguished speakers from major foundations shared their experiences with rethinking funding and financial instruments to better align with and support systems transformation.

The speakers were: Erin Sines — MacArthur Foundation: Erin is Co-Director of the On Nigeria initiative at MacArthur Foundation. With her co-director she leads the Foundation’s team responsible for investments to reduce corruption and promote accountability in Nigeria. Cassie Robinson — National Lottery Community Fund. Cassie is the Deputy Director of Funding Strategy at The National Lottery Community Fund where she is responsible for Innovation, Policy and Practice. Gautam John — Nilekani Philanthropies. Gautam is the Director of Strategy at Nilekani Philanthropies.

States of Change - Slowdown and the future of living.

“Just as nature is slowly reclaiming the streets and the skies outside the window, suggesting what our environment could be, the dreamlike psychological state of forced slowdown may be a loose sketch of what new forms of a community could be, what our economy could be, of other currents running deep.” (Dan Hill, From Lockdown to Slowdown, April 2020) How is the Covid-19 crisis changing our perspective on our ways of living? Is it enabling us to recreate our future living and in what ways?

We are delighted to be joined by Dan Hill, Head of Strategic Design at Vinnova, Charlie Leadbeater, Author and public innovation thinker, and Cassie Robinson, Senior Head, TNL Community Fund & co-founder of the Point People.

Launch event for the Uncertain Times tools with Cassie Robinson, Ella Saltmarshe, Kiran, CEO of Girl Dreamer, Alysha of Gal-dem, and Kira from the Young Women’s Trust.

Skoll World Forum Panel - Building Imagination Infrastructure to Shape Better Futures.

Seeding and growing an imagination infrastructure from the roots of communities is one way we can close the distance between the global challenges we face and the equitable and regenerative world we know is possible. Through the Emerging Futures Fund, imaginative seeds have been planted across the UK. We'll share what we're learning about what's needed to equip communities to sense, imagine and shape better futures. In the session you'll get to meet some of the initiatives patterning new hope and showing the power of community-led, collective imagination with their practices, their rigour, and their creativity.

Envisioning a new public together - New Public Festival.

This event pulls together different perspectives on how communities can make a meaningful contribution to the post-COVID recovery, and discuss how funders can collaborate with the wider community sector to help them thrive.

Speakers include Katherine Trebeck, co-founder of the Wellbeing Economy Alliance and Cassie Robinson from The National Lottery Community Fund.