How can we help bring the world the creative solutions it needs? Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship student, Ayesha Khatib, shares her learnings on how challenging conventional ideas and questioning embedded beliefs at LSE creates energy, compassion and facilitates much needed conversations towards innovative solutions.
The Message of the Inverted Globe
As you walk in and walk out of the buildings for lectures and seminars at LSE, the inverted globe or “The World Turned Upside Down” sculpture is simply hard to miss. Created by Mark Wallinger and installed at LSE in 2019, the upside-down world reminds students, teachers, researchers, and everyone connected to the LSE ecosystem of the value of seeing things eccentrically and creatively.
It is a relic that silently nourishes the idea of shifting perspectives and allowing oneself to see things from a different point of view. While practically, it may not be so easy because of the unconscious biases, beliefs, and convictions, one thing that really aids this process at LSE is its highly diverse student and teacher community.
Diversity at LSE
Students from over 140 countries belonging to different ethnic, cultural, racial, and religious backgrounds make their way to LSE every year. In addition, more than 40% of LSE staff is from outside of the UK.
Such a diverse representation makes every classroom at the campus a vibrant space, bustling with energy and compassion to listen and understand each other better and challenge conventional ideas, question embedded beliefs, and debate predisposed views based on personal knowledge and background.
These free-thinking, free-speech safe zones facilitate students to engage, debate and dialogue to shed off their coloured understanding and build up the brain muscle to see things differently following the spirit of the message of the inverted globe.
…diverse representation makes every classroom at the campus a vibrant space, bustling with energy and compassion to listen and understand each other better…
Diversity on my programme
As a student in the Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SIE) Programme at LSE, we made up a cohort of 46 people with 28 different nationalities this year. We came together to learn, understand, and help solve some of the most pressing issues communities worldwide face.
The programme made us go beyond our cultural differences, language barriers and ethnocentric views to work jointly and forge new friendships.
Our interactions, conversations and arguments have helped us enrich our experiences and understanding of many social and environmental issues with nuanced insights and contextual backgrounds.
Together we are discovering what creative solutions can we bring to the table and how they can be financed and sustained. We are pushing, nudging, and inspiring each other to rethink our assumptions, ideas and playbooks, assess them critically with new knowledge and open our minds – to see “the world upside down”.
LSE is simply a diversity hub. It is a place where different minds meet, infuse ideas, and create crossovers to bring the world creative solutions it needs. The mix of people and experiences we have in our classrooms allows us to expand our knowledge horizons and take them to another level while having fun discovering each other simultaneously.
LSE… is a place where different minds meet, infuse ideas, and create crossovers to bring the world creative solutions it needs.
LSE 2030
The LSE Strategy 2030 puts people as one of its three key priorities.
The School has committed to investing in resources to advance the diversity of its students and staff while addressing systemic inequalities.
An Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) committee work to champion the cause of diversity and inclusion within LSE. An overarching EDI policy has been laid out to guide student and teacher recruitment inclusive teaching and ensuring a school environment that promotes equality of respect and fair treatment towards all members of the LSE community.
The message of the inverted globe is genuinely inspirational, and the diversity one finds at LSE provides the perfect means to act on its message.
Each day, so many people with diverse backgrounds, thoughts and ideas come together to rehash and remould each other’s ways of viewing and thinking, nurturing individual knowledge, intellect, and creativity to look at things in new ways.
Learn more about the MSc Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship programme
