Royal Society of Arts

The Royal Society of Arts was born in a coffeehouse in Covent Garden on March twenty-second, seventeen fifty-four. Eleven men gathered at Rawthmell’s Coffee House to form an organization dedicated to the betterment of society through human ingenuity. They sought to use pooled subscription funds to tackle social and industrial challenges that the government of the day ignored. From its inception, the society operated as a democracy where every member held a single vote, and women were permitted to join as members from the very beginning.