Learn

Empowering conversations

As an educational charity and social enterprise, our programme of activities aims to work with young people from diverse backgrounds, in the UK and internationally, to understand the causes and impacts of social division, and to promote more inclusive and just societies.

Our approach is interactive, reflexive, and explores practical strategies underpinned by the latest research in the field. As future leaders and change makers in their communities, we support and equip young people with the skills, networks, perspective and confidence to question, challenge and understand our complex social world.

Through facilitating peer to peer learning, as well as providing insight from leading influencers, policy makers and practitioners from across different sectors, we want young people to lead the conversation on challenging questions such as: re-imagining democracy; strengthening the rule of law; understanding shifting values across generations; and debating freedom of expression, religion and belief.

Disagreeing well

Dialogue and debate is at the heart of what we do. We argue, we disagree, but we aim to disagree well. To do this, we offer space and time for ‘difficult conversations’, deep thinking and reflection, using the Chatham House Rule at many of our events. While our approach is centred on face-to-face learning we support our programmes with a library of online resources for both public use and to accompany specific programme activities.

When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed.

Chatham House

Ethical leadership

Underpinning all the work that we do is the development of ethical leadership skills, encouraging young people, and ourselves, to think about what a ‘good’ society might look like and how we might create it. Our Exploring Ethics sessions are key to this process, providing participants with the support to reflect critically on the moral, cultural and intergenerational dimensions of our contemporary social worlds.

Through this educational programme, we aim to build an intergenerational movement working towards a less polarised, more equal world, one conversation at a time.

Our Programme

The Cumberland Lodge Programme Team delivers a range of workshops, conferences, training sessions and digital content. These are designed to explore the causes and impacts of social division in order to promote more inclusive and just societies.

The Cumberland Lodge Programme Team in front of the Tapestry Hall doors.