The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, commonly known as the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), is a London-based organisation.
The RSA's mission expressed in the founding charter was to "embolden enterprise, enlarge science, refine art, improve our manufacturers and extend our commerce", but also of the need to alleviate poverty and secure full employment.
Anthony Clifford Grayling CBE FRSA FRSL (/ˈɡreɪlɪŋ/; born 3 April 1949) is a British philosopher and author. He was born in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and spent most of his childhood there and in Nyasaland (now Malawi). Until June 2011, he was Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London, where he taught from 1991. In 2011 he founded and became the first Master of New College of the Humanities (now Northeastern University London), an independent undergraduate college in London. He is also a supernumerary fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford, where he formerly taught.
Grayling is the author of about 30 books on philosophy, biography, history of ideas, human rights and ethics, including The Refutation of Scepticism (1985), The Future of Moral Values (1997), Wittgenstein (1992), What Is Good? (2000), The Meaning of Things (2001), The Good Book (2011), The God Argument (2013), The Age of Genius: The Seventeenth Century and the Birth of the Modern Mind (2016) and Democracy and its Crises (2017).
Sir Joseph Noel Paton FRSA (13 December 1821 – 26 December 1901) was a Scottish artist, illustrator and sculptor. He was also a poet and had an interest in, and knowledge of, Scottish folklore and Celtic legends.
Sir Terence Farrell CBE FRIBA FRSA FCSD (12 May 1938 – 28 September 2025) was a British architect and urban designer.
In 1980, after working for 15 years in partnership with Nicholas Grimshaw, Farrell founded his own firm, Farrells. He established his reputation with three completed projects in London in the late 1980s: Embankment Place, 125 London Wall and the SIS Building. He created contextual urban design schemes, as well as works of postmodernism such as the MI6 Building. In 1991, his practice opened an office in Hong Kong. In Asia his firm designed KK100 in Shenzhen and Guangzhou South railway station in Guangzhou.
David Ian Marquand FBA FRHistS FRSA FLSW (20 September 1934 – 23 April 2024) was a British academic and Labour Party Member of Parliament (MP).
William Hogarth FRSA (/ˈhoʊɡɑːrθ/; 10 November 1697 – 26 October 1764) was an English painter, engraver, satirist, cartoonist and writer. His work ranges from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects", and he is perhaps best known for his series A Harlot's Progress, A Rake's Progress and Marriage A-la-Mode. Familiarity with his work is so widespread that satirical political illustrations in this style are often referred to as "Hogarthian".
Hogarth was born in the City of London into a lower-middle-class family. In his youth he took up an apprenticeship with an engraver, but did not complete the apprenticeship. His father underwent periods of mixed fortune, and was at one time imprisoned in lieu of payment of outstanding debts, an event that is thought to have informed William's paintings and prints with a hard edge.
Richard Hugh Cavendish, Baron Cavendish of Furness FRSA DL (born 2 November 1941), is a British Conservative politician and landowner.
Lord Cavendish owns Holker Hall and its 17,000 acre estate overlooking Morecambe Bay in Cumbria. The property became part of this branch of the Cavendish family's inheritance via his grandfather, Lord Richard Cavendish CB.
Sir Alan Ayckbourn CBE FRSA (born 12 April 1939) is a prolific British playwright and director. As of 2025, he has written and produced 91 full-length plays in Scarborough and London and was, between 1972 and 2009, the artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, where all but four of his plays have received their first performance. More than 40 have subsequently been produced in the West End, at the Royal National Theatre or by the Royal Shakespeare Company since his first hit Relatively Speaking opened at the Duke of York's Theatre in 1967.
Major successes include Absurd Person Singular (1972), The Norman Conquests trilogy (1973), Absent Friends (1974), Bedroom Farce (1975), Just Between Ourselves (1976), A Chorus of Disapproval (1984), Woman in Mind (1985), A Small Family Business (1987), Man of the Moment (1988), House & Garden (1999) and Private Fears in Public Places (2004). His plays have won numerous awards, including seven London Evening Standard Awards. They have been translated into over 35 languages and are performed on stage and television throughout the world. Ten of his plays have been staged on Broadway, attracting two Tony nominations, and one Tony award.
Sir Carl Wilhelm Siemens FRS FRSA (4 April 1823 – 19 November 1883), anglicised to Charles William Siemens, was a German-British electrical engineer and businessman.
Joanne Kate Swinson CBE FRSA (born 5 February 1980) is a Scottish former politician who was Leader of the Liberal Democrats from July to December 2019. Swinson was Member of Parliament (MP) for East Dunbartonshire from 2005 to 2015 and 2017 to 2019. In September 2020, Swinson became Director of Partners for a New Economy (P4NE).
Swinson studied at the London School of Economics, and briefly worked in public relations, before being elected to the House of Commons aged 25, becoming the youngest MP at the time. She was a Liberal Democrat Spokesperson covering various portfolios, including Scotland, Women and Equalities, Communities and Local Government, and Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs.