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Tom Symons

@tomsymons.bsky.social
1.2K followers 1.5K following 12 posts

Head of Policy Insights at @thefea.bsky.social Education, innovation, government, tech, policy and the unrelenting woes of Southampton Football Club. May contain cats. All views my own.

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Reposted by Tom Symons
Tom Cox @dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
THREAD. A collection of photos I have taken of excellent cats I have met on walks. You will find the captions to the photos in the alt text.
A cat on a wall, ranting relatably to me about the way modern TV documentaries are so frantically, pathetically worried about losing the viewer’s attention, employ endless precaps and recaps, lazily emotionally manipulate the viewer with overplayed songs and talk to that viewer as if that viewer is a small child, rather than a fully grown human, or cat.
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Tom Symons @tomsymons.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Old enough to remember Healey's time as Housing Minister c09-10 & his reforms to the Housing Revenue Account. Housing finance is a dry topic but this drove greater local control + enabled councils to build council housing again. With devo and council houses on Burnham's agenda it's a nice call-back
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Tom Symons @tomsymons.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
Today we launched the final report for A Fairer Start Local - innovation partnerships with the brilliant Leeds, York, Stockport & GMCA. I wrote this for the LGC on the lessons we learnt on innovating well, hopefully useful for the emerging Opportunity Mission! www.lgcplus.com/services/chi...
lgcplus.com
Tom Symons: Six lessons for early years innovation | Local Government Chronicle (LGC)
True partnership between families, communities, professionals, policy makers, funders, researchers and innovators is needed, writes the deputy director of
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Reposted by Tom Symons
Robert Shrimsley @robertshrimsley.bsky.social · 06/03/2025
British politics - and Labour in particular - has not adjusted to how much the Trump crisis will change domestic politics and reshape the whole agenda www.ft.com/content/fc7a...
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Reposted by Tom Symons
gquaggiotto.bsky.social @gquaggiotto.bsky.social · 25/02/2025
[Hmm...] The Public Benefit Innovation Fund - $20M to catalyze AI innovation and digital infrastructure to improve equitable access to social services www.publicbenefitinnovationfund.org#our-work
publicbenefitinnovationfund.org
Public Benefit Innovation Fund – PBIF
The Public Benefit Innovation Fund is a philanthropic venture fund and R&D lab. We provide seed funding and technical support for researchers, nonprofits, academic labs, startups, and technologists wo...
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Reposted by Tom Symons
Karen Hao @karenhao.bsky.social · 27/01/2025
As someone who has reported on AI for 7 years and covered China tech as well, I think the biggest lesson to be drawn from DeepSeek is the huge cracks it illustrates with the current dominant paradigm of AI development. A long thread. 1/
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Nesta @nestauk.bsky.social · 23/01/2025
⚡ Join us for our free Future Signals event in London on 27 February. Learn more about the tech & trends that could transform 2025, hear from the experts who curated them, and connect with industry leaders shaping the future at our immersive, interactive event. Register: bit.ly/42mtNtH
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Tom Symons @tomsymons.bsky.social · 23/01/2025
Excellent to see MPs like @tomhayesmp.bsky.social starting to talk more seriously about the role of play in a good childhood. Providing another opportunity to plug nesta's 2025 Signal www.nesta.org.uk/feature/futu... (next week we'll have more on our work on play in Leeds too!)
nesta.org.uk
Play renaissance: this is the year play gets serious
After a decade in the wilderness, play is about to rocket up the political and policy agenda in England
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Tom Symons @tomsymons.bsky.social · 06/01/2025
I was lucky enough to write one of nesta's 2025 Signals - had a lot of fun writing about how this could/should be the year policymakers in England take heed of the grassroots social movement in children's play and with a policy commitment to good play in childhood www.nesta.org.uk/feature/futu...
nesta.org.uk
Play renaissance: this is the year play gets serious
After a decade in the wilderness, play is about to rocket up the political and policy agenda in England
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Reposted by Tom Symons
Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 15/11/2024
Right - EPC reform! You know those energy performance certificates that you see on Rightmove? They’re terrible, everyone in the energy sector hates them. But actually reforming them is tricky. My colleague @tomleach.bsky.social tries to chart a way forward www.nesta.org.uk/blog/epcs-ne...
nesta.org.uk
EPCs need radical reform - here’s four ways how
The system has become too complicated. It's time to make EPCs useful.
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Reposted by Tom Symons
James Plunkett @jamestplunkett.bsky.social · 27/08/2024
Failed to resist jumping into the debate about dashboards, nerve centres, and missions in government. Inspired by @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social and others medium.com/@jamestplunk... (I'm trying a new era of not posting this on Twitter at all, so grateful for RTs to help me hold out!)
medium.com
Dashboards or not
I’ve been mulling the question of whether or not we like dashboards, and how we should think about data in the context of missions.
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