On 3 December the School of Security Studies, King’s College London, collaborated with the Atlantic Council, the Munich Security Conference, Globsec and RUSI, to organize NATO Engages: Innovating the Alliance in partnership with the UK Government and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to mark the Alliance’s 70^th anniversary.

Directly preceding the NATO Leaders’ Meeting London 2019 on 3-4 December, the town hall-style, scene-setting event at Westminster Central Hall brought together 100s of policy makers, non-governmental security and defence specialists, academics and members of the public at Westminster Central Hall to encourage a broader public conversation about the relevance and importance of the Alliance. https://nato-engages.org/london-2019/

NATO Engages focused on the evolving role of NATO as an alliance and how it will need to innovate to address on-going and emerging challenges in a changing world be these hard security threats posed by hostile state and non-state actors and the impact of technological change in the space and the cyber realms, or climate change and natural disasters.

The event involved participants from over 80 countries and followed a dynamic format with speakers ranging from NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and heads of government including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg, to university and high school students.

During the event War Studies BA student Capucine Guillet presented on her experience the previous day at a Model NATO crisis simulation at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office organized by the British International Studies Association (BISA).

KCL Vice Principal International, and Professor for Security, Leadership and Development, ‘Funmi Olonisakin provided a King’s welcome and introduced UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace. Prof Olonisakin noted: "I'm encouraged to see such a strong turnout of young people in the audience... It will be you, the next generation that will have to live over the long-term with many of the decisions made." Later in the day Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau similarly noted that, "Young people need to know that they can and must actively shape the future by the things they do today – You are not leaders of tomorrow, you are leaders today."

Alexander Downer, Executive Chair of the International School for Government at King’s, spoke on NATO’s global partnerships with a particular focus on the Alliance’s relationship with Australia.

King’s contributed to setting the agenda for the event and lead the consortium’s work on next generation engagement with 50% of the final participants aged under 35, including university and high school students drawn from across Alliance member countries.

As part of the next generation outreach, the School of Security Studies collaborated with King’s Online and BISA to produce 9 short educational videos to help prepare next generation participants ahead of the event

Students, academics and professional services staff from the School of Security Studies worked with colleagues from the other consortium partners to organize the event. King’s provided 40 volunteers to ensure the smooth running of essential aspects including registration, communication, media liaison, speaker and VIP handling.

View the KCL educational videos and NATO Engages live stream here.