Radix Think Tank and Big Tent Foundation are merging to become Radix Big Tent, a non-partisan platform for convening the bold leadership and reform required for national renewal and local regeneration.
The move follows our success in delivering together the Big Tent Festival in Coventry earlier this year as part of the City of Culture, which brought together national & local leaders from around the UK including amongst others Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi, both Labour & Conservative Mayoral Candidates for the West Midlands, Liam Byrne MP and Mayor Andy Street and leading backbenchers Jess Phillips and Layla Moran, as well as policymakers & commentators.
The first combined Radix Big Tent event will be 2021 London Leaders’ Summit in Westminster on the 18th November, which will address the question “How do we move from buzzwords to effective regeneration?”. It will bring together politicians and policymakers, business-people and entrepreneurs, academics and leaders from the public and voluntary sectors.
Big Tent, founded by Conservative MP and now Minister for Science, Research and Innovation, George Freeman MP, has made its name hosting annual cross-party political festivals, attracting high profile national and international speakers from Stephen Fry to Michael Gove, Harriet Harman, John Bird, Michael Heseltine, Robert Peston, Daniel Hannon, Ayesha Hazarika and Rory Stewart.
Radix Thinktank was set up as a cross-party think-tank to challenge conventional thinking with new approaches from the radical centre. With former Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, and rising Labour thinker, Stephen Kinnock, on the Board we were the first think-tank to challenge the independence of central banks during quantitative easing and provided the initial thinking behind what became the Common Market 2.0 proposal.
“Bringing together Radix and Big Tent will combine Big Tent’s convening power with Radix’s ability to turn great conversations into radical policy”, comments Chief Executive, Ben Rich. “Our aim is to find innovative and creative solutions to the challenges we face, and ensure that they are heard by policymakers.”
Big Tent Founder, George Freeman MP, says, “This is an exciting and important step at a key moment in UK policymaking, given the need for national and local renewal through devolution, new models of economic regeneration and a new era of more sustainable investment and innovation-led growth. This requires bold new thinking and approaches to create transformational changes to the life chances of people and places left behind by Globalisation 1.0. Combining Radix & Big Tent creates a unique platform for harnessing a bold new era of innovative national policymaking and local enterprise for lasting renewal & regeneration.”
Stephen Kinnock MP agrees: “Radix Big Tent will engage with people of all political colours, and none. We want to work with people who are rooted in their community and know how to bring about the change it needs, and we’ll bring them together with people who can make change happen.”