cc: a.minns date: Mon Jun 2 15:57:26 2003 from: Mike Hulme subject: Fwd: Winning Arguments event, 25 June 2003, Commonwealth Club to: shackley_Simon Simon, Frans has put this event together during social science week. I've been thinking of what Tyndall examples we could give of either "success" or "failure" form Tyndall work. I did wonder whether your work on area-based decarbonisation for the SDC might be seen as a success - some of your ideas did seem to be taken forward by the SDC. Do you think this is valid? And if so, would you be prepared to join the event in London on the evening of 25 June? If you don't think the story adds up to what Frans is after, do you have other ideas of successes or failures? Thanks, Mike To: "Mike Hulme" , "John Schellnhuber" , "Asher Minns" , "Kerry Turner" , "Jouni Paavola" , "Ken Peattie" , "Bob Lee" , "Paul Ekins" Cc: "Michelle Harris" Subject: Winning Arguments event, 25 June 2003, Commonwealth Club Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 18:18:54 +0100 X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000 From: F.Berkhout@sussex.ac.uk (Frans Berkhout) Dear all We have now put together an outline of the evening reception for ESRC Social Science Week. Our aims have been to create an event that gives an impression of the scope of ESRC investments in the area of environment and sustainability and which produces some interaction between people. We wanted to avoid lengthy expositions of what programme and centres were doing, but also wanted to give research leaders a change to pick out some research highlights. We wanted a mixture of short, informal interventions at the start, followed by a relaxed exchange of views over wine and canapes. The overall objectives are to signal to policymakers that there is a substantial social science research effort in this general area, to encourage some debate about how research can speak to policy more effectively, and to help create a few new contacts between people. The structure we have come up with is to have an exchange of topical 'war stories' about research interacting with and influencing policy at the start of the event (told by both researchers and policymakers), followed by an open discussion and then some informal and private networking. The capacity of the Commonwealth Club for this sort of event is 80 people, and I guess the ideal mix would be about 50 researchers and about 30 policy types. The Chief Executive of the ESRC, Ian Diamond, will start the event off, and I am still trying to line up a couple of senior DTI/DEFRA speakers. I am hoping that you will all be able to come up with short remarks describing either a success in communicating with policymakers (whether in the UK or elsewhere) or a failure (good research which you felt never found an interested audience) and to draw one or two lessons from this experience. Policymakers will be encouraged to talk about cases where they have drawn on research, or about others where the evidence base was missing. The idea is that the discussion that follows (probably moderated by Ian Diamond) will produce some ideas about what works and what doesn't. A rough order of play would be: 5.30-6.00 Arrival 6.00-6.45 Ian Diamond, 5 Programme and Centre Directors and 2 policymakers 6.45-7.15 Open discussion 7.15-8.00 Networking 8.00 Close The idea of the title is that it is eye-catching and has both pragmatic (how to?) and rhetorical (what is?)meanings. I would appreciate your feedback on this. In particular, I would be interested to know whether you are happy with the overall aims and programme, and whether you are willing to do one of the short talks at the beginning. I think the aim should be to say something pithy and fairly off-the-cuff to stimulate responses and discussion. We are planning to send out invitations this week and are assuming that most of the participants will be either London- or 'near London'-based. ESRC are being very helpful in providing lists of possible invitees from Westminster departments, and a number of you have provided lists of others. If you have lists of potential invitees to the event - especially researchers involved in your Programmes and Centres, that would be extremely helpful. We will be relying to some extent on the GEC database which is now a several years out of date. Hope to hear from you soon. Frans ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dr Frans Berkhout Director, ESRC Sustainable Technologies Programme SPRU-Science and Technology Policy Research Freeman Centre University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QE UK PLEASE NOTE CHANGED ADDRESS DETAILS t (direct): +44 1273 877 130 t (Michelle Harris): +44 1273 873 615 f: +44 1273 685 865 [1]www.sustainabletechnologies.ac.uk [2]www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/environment [3]www.sustainability-performance.org