Minister and Harvard Thought Leader Launch New St Mary's Centre to Educate, Research and Support Public Leaders and Change-makers in the Post Brexit World at Lambeth Palace

At an event attended by Ministers, Peers, Mayors and Council Leaders, leading academics, civic innovators and policy influencers who had travelled from several countries, St Mary’s University, Twickenham launched its ground breaking new Centre for Social Innovation and Global Public Service. 

Hosted in Lambeth Palace with the support of Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy’s (CIPFA) new consultancy C.co, the event featured a key note lecture from Director of the Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School of Government Bloomberg City Leadership Initiative Prof Jorrit De Jonge. De Jonge reflected on the capabilities of public leadership including his recent work with 40 of the worlds city Mayors – including Manchester, Merseyside, Teeside and Bristol. Piali Das Gupta, Head of Policy at the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives, was in the chair.

The Centre for Global Public Service and Social Innovation will focus on public leadership and social innovation broadly defined and most especially the skills, networks, challenges, innovations and opportunities that those seeking to build more inclusive and just societies will need in the coming decades.

Ahead of its launch, the Centre has already begun working with local authorities and central government departments in the UK, the Catholic University of Ukraine to support its work building a national social enterprise platform, with Birmingham University and City University New York on ‘leadership’ and has a formal partnership with the award winning South Asian network Social, Entrepreneurship and Equity Development (SEED) focused on communities at the bottom of the economic pyramid.

The evening also saw addresses from Minister of State for Disabled People, Work and Health Penny Mordaunt, Lord Shinkwin, and Assistant CEO of London Borough of Newham Tony Clements.

Director of the Centre Prof Francis Davis also addressed attendees on some of the Centre’s flagship plans, whilst Visiting Professor in the Centre Prof Faraz Khan outlined his vision for the partnership SEED and St Mary’s.

St Mary’s Vice Chancellor Prof Francis Campbell said of the Centre “The new Centre for Social Innovation Global Public Service is a flagship addition to St Mary’s contribution to the generation of new research, consultancy and innovative education which has practical implications in the building up of the common good. I am sure under Prof Francis Davis’s experienced leadership, and with the support of the University, no less than six of our professors are members, and partners at home and abroad, this new centre will make a real impact on both the academy and the public sphere.”

Prof Francis Davis added, “The Centre is born from a conviction that this generation - and the emerging generations - of ‘public servants’ will need to be more creative than ever before, more innovative than ever before, more inter-disciplinary than ever before, more able to cross boundaries of class, space and formal power than ever before, and be more agile than ever before in identifying needs, mobilising opportunities and managing change. This vision of ‘public service’ includes and cherishes the public sector but is not confined to it and becomes all the more pressing as new spaces emerge in the international system and Britain and Europe seek to reinvent themselves after Brexit closer to home”