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The Heywood lecture: Challenges, choices and reimagined big bets
Hybird event
An ageing society absorbing an ever-larger proportion of taxpayer funds; a climate that demands costly adaptation even as immediate cost of living pressures squeeze households; deep-rooted regional inequalities but where every choice on redistribution carries sharp trade-offs. These are not problems requiring policy tweaks but seemingly intractable national conundrums that demand collective imagination, big ideas, shared choices and long horizons.
In this lecture, Lucy Smith, Heywood Fellow at the School, will explore what reforms are needed for the UK to practise long-term national strategy-making: to confront the biggest challenges, contest real options, and hold to collective decisions across political cycles. This lecture launches the National Strategy Playbook, a radically practical framework to enable government, politics, business and society to act together on the nation’s future.
The lecture is followed by a Q&A moderated by Ciaran Martin, Professor of Practice in the Management of Public Organisations.
A drinks reception will follow the event.
Date:
27 October 2025, 17:00
Venue:
Blavatnik School of Government, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter OX2 6GG
Venue Details:
In person and online
Speaker:
Lucy Smith (Heywood Fellow 2024-25, Blavatnik School of Government)
Organising department:
Blavatnik School of Government
Organiser:
Blavatnik School of Government (University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address:
events@bsg.ox.ac.uk
Booking required?:
Required
Booking url:
https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/events/heywood-lecture-challenges-choices-and-reimagined-big-bets
Cost:
This event is free - please register at the above link
Audience:
Public
Editor:
Anna Ulshofer
