One of the major concerns about cities and societies generally is social mobility. There are fears that inequality is growing, that upward mobility is stagnating (even gone into reverse) and that cities are becoming places for the wealthy. Is this the case and, if so, what impact will this have on our cities in the future? Considerable work on social mobility has been done by the Resolution Foundation. Gavin Kelly, founder of the foundation and now chief executive of the Resolution Trust, joins Marvin Rees, director, amongst others, of a leadership programme encouraging social mobility in Bristol, and Lynsey Hanley, commentator and author of Estates: An Intimate History.

In association with Bristol Health Partners

Speaker biographies:

Lynsey Hanley is the author of Estates: An Intimate History and a visiting fellow in cultural studies at Liverpool John Moores University. She contributes commentary pieces, arts features and book reviews to the Guardian and the New Statesman, and has written for the Observer, the Times Literary Supplement and Prospect, among others. Her main areas of interest are social class; economic, social and spatial segregation; the British education system; public policy; built-up areas; mass media and popular culture. Through these themes she tries to examine how individuals interact with their physical, cultural and social environments. As well as being an Honorary Research Fellow at Lancaster University, she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a member of the Demos advisory council.

Gavin Kelly is Chief Executive of the Resolution Foundation. He joined the Foundation from No 10 Downing Street where he worked as Deputy Chief of Staff. He spent over a decade in Whitehall and was a member of the Council of Economic Advisors at HMT, the Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State at the Department for Education and the Department for Communities and Local Government, Deputy Head of the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, and a member of Tony Blair’s Policy Unit. He is a leading media commentator on politics and public policy, writing for the Guardian, FT, Prospect. He covers a wide range of issues spanning economic policy, low pay, welfare reform, public services and social mobility.

Marvin Rees works for NHS Bristol where he is part of a senior management team leading on partnerships and building city systems for better mental wellbeing and resilience. He is a former BBC journalist and radio presenter and a popular public speaker on issues of race, class, faith and social mobility. He is a graduate of Operation Black Vote, a national programme designed to support people from black minority ethnic backgrounds as they try to move into public leadership. He is founder of the Bristol Leadership Programme. Previously he was director of the Bristol Partnership. He stood for mayor of Bristol for the Labour Party in 2013 and will stand again in 2016.

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