PSFK Good Ideas Salon London Speaker: Sophie Howarth

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January 6, 2009

Sophie Howarth, Founding Director of The School of Life, will be speaking on our “Collaboration & Creative Evolution” panel at the PSFK Good Ideas Salon London. Along with Jeremy Ettinghausen of Penguin, Pat Connor of BBC, and moderator Colin Nagy of PSFK / Attention, the panel will discuss how collaborative creation results in better businesses and ideas.

First, who are you and what do you do?

Based in a small shop between Bloomsbury and King’s Cross, The School of Life is a new social enterprise offering good ideas for everyday living. We draw on a variety of ideas – from philosophy to literature, psychology to the visual arts – in ways that tickle, exercise and expand your mind encouraging you to think rigorously but also playfully about the art of living. Described as both “completely bonkers and strangely sane” the project has been heralded by British and International press as one of the freshest cultural innovations in recent years. In fact there is nothing new about it at all; Plato ran an academy where people came to debate the all-important question of how to live over 2000 years ago. The main difference is that he set up in a Bucolic corner of leafy Athens, whereas we are next to a cafe advertising ham and mushroom pasta in “red, white or pink sauce”

You’ll be sharing your ideas in our Collaboration session. In one paragraph, can you explain what themes and ideas you hope to touch upon during the discussion/how it relates to School of Life?

I’m interested in the all-important question ‘how should we live? and in creative forms of real-world education that probe this deeply from political and personal perspectives.

Specifically I’m interested in how we can harness the history of ideas from different cultures, times and places to broaden our thinking about ways of living wisely and well today.

Five links to sites that provide you with inspiration: