The government needs to set up "big society adult education" courses if the prime minister's cherished but much derided idea is to take off, according to the Royal Society of Arts.

In advance of an attempt by some of David Cameron's staff to return to his guiding philosophy, the society today calls for the big society to be "refashioned" as a longer term project, but warns that some people will have to have a change in mindset if the idea is to work, a change which can be achieved through formal and informal adult education.

Cameron has pushed his concept for the six years he has been Conservative leaderbut since he entering office it has had to relaunched four times, with even the minister responsible, Francis Maude, conceding that the government mght have failed to explain what exactly is the big society and what it might entail to realise it.

The insight claims that the development of social justice by the centralised state has been exhausted, and that instead social aims may be as well improved by individuals and their friends taking on greater responsibility. Critics of such a platform say that it was too abstract to have been placed so centrally in the Conservatives' 2010 election victory.

Cameron's close adviser Steve Hilton, deputy chief of staff Kate Fall, director of strategy Andrew Cooper, and his head of communications Craig Oliver, have now been asked to draw up a creative strategy for the second half of this parliament which raises the Conservative agenda beyond merely the economics of deficit reduction.

They are expected to try once again to knit the myriad of Cameron's various other initiatives back into the single rubric of the big society.

The Royal Society of Arts welcomes this news, but it wants the big society's time horizon and pitch to be amended. It writes: "The idea of the big society is at its weakest when it is presented as a partisan technical solution to acute socio-economic problems, and at its strongest when viewed as a non-partisan long-term adaptive challenge to enrich our social and human capital.

"From this perspective, the big society should be viewed as a process of long-term cultural change, driven by social participation for social productivity and social solidarity."

One thinktank, ResPublica, has suggested that doubling "the civic core" of those people in the UK who regularly participate in volunteering, from 30% of the population to 60%, should be a principal aim, but the the society urges the government to try to explain the big society in qualitative terms, not quantitative ones, and show how and wny the big society could improve people's quality of life.

Included in its report is a concern the society has that, for the concept to succeed in taking flgiht, many more sections of the population need to be equipped to participate in it.

Since having a big society requires placing trust in relative strangers, and volunteering and taking part in activities which many pollsters show majorities of people do not initially believe to be their responsibility, the society's authors argue that there is a significant job to be done in persuading people it is worth joining in.

If this can be done, the authors show that there are gains to be made in economic growth and national well being.

To this end they recommend "formal and informal adult education", including courses through the Open University, to begin to develop in the population better developed notions of solidarity, responsibility and autonomy.

The authors write: "Acquiring the relevant competencies is a developmental challenge that requires a level of mental complexity ... Available evidence suggests this level of mental complexity is not currently widespread in the adult population.

"This is a major cultural challenge. Levels of participation in Britain have remained static despite government initiatives. Values surveys suggest that British people are relatively fearful of strangers and relatively authoritarian in outlook, so the culture change demanded requires a reframing of our relationships to ourselves, to each other and to the state."For the big society to take root, we need to invest more time and energy making sure that the forms of participation and engagement called for as part of the big sAllociety are

supported by formal and informal adult education. Social productivity requires that people are both supported and challenged."