CONNECTED: On Relationships, Trust, Community and Belonging

Alex Smith

RIGHTS AVAILABLE: World English, Translation, Film/TV and all other rights handled by the bks Agency

We live in a disconnected age. Loneliness and polarisation are rife. Intergenerational division is deepening. A fast-moving, unfair economy, dominant technology, a depletion of neighbourliness, and now a pandemic have put distance between people and created attitudinal clefts and a diminishing of empathy across difference.

These issues have fundamentally changed Western cultures. Individualism, corporatism, managerialism, and an obsession with economic growth have overturned social contracts and led us to prioritise what’s efficient over what’s important, and our separation is now being exacerbated by filter bubbles, and so-called ‘culture wars’ and ‘cancel cultures’ which are deepening societal fragmentation.

Over forty years, Alex Smith has lived these separations with implications for his relational and mental health and asked questions about the meaning of belonging in a rapidly changing world.

This book is a personal journey through an era of change and a powerful call to action – for people to build meaningful relationships with their neighbours, to experience the richness in difference, and, through the power of the ripple effect, to spark a more connected future after the pandemic.

‘Big hearted...Alex Smith is helping seniors fight loneliness in the UK through a mix of old and new technology’ ~ Barack Obama

‘Inspirational’ ~ Keir Starmer

‘Combating…one of the great public health challenges of our time’ ~ Theresa May

‘Imaginative… has helped transform lives’ ~ Owen Jones

‘One of the most inspirational men in public life’ ~ Jennette Arnold

‘Leading the way in the battle against loneliness’ ~ David Lammy

‘Inspiring… helping people to work in their communities to break down divides’ ~ Ed Miliband  

‘Leads brilliant work to combat loneliness in the UK’ ~ Rachel Reeves 

‘Alex Smith’s brilliant idea could inspire a new agenda for the left but it’s also natural territory for the right. His idea is that kith-and-kin relationships matter at least as much as our contractual relationships with the state and market’ ~ Tim Montgomerie

One of twenty people selected from 21,000 applicants around the world, inaugural Obama Fellow Alex Smith has spent ten years building solutions to help people ‘find connection in a disconnected age’ – to reduce loneliness and polarisation and build authentic community and a ‘larger us’ in times of change.

Alex has written for The Guardian, The Times, Prospect Magazine, and The Huffington Post and his ideas have featured in The Economist, The Financial Times, The Independent, The Daily Mail, The Telegraph, The Metro, The New Statesman, Time Out, BBC, ITV, Sky, and Channel 4 News, as well as in The Chicago Tribune, The Hill, The Sydney Morning Herald and media in France, Germany, and Japan.

Alex has won three UK social enterprise awards, is an Encore Fellow in the United States, as well as a global Obama Fellow, and was named amongst the Evening Standard’s 1,000 most influential Londoners in 2015.