The RSA is a British organisation that encourages education in the arts — not science in the school-subject sense — and also useful ideas for making things and for business. People say Royal Society of Arts, but the full name is the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. So trade and making sit beside painting, design, and public talks. It gives awards, holds lectures, and has fellows. It is not a school you simply apply to, and it is not a government ministry. In a British arts, design, or civic-ideas setting, RSA almost always means this society. The same letters are used for other famous things in other worlds, so the surrounding words matter.