Beechen Cliff School in Bath has hosted an entirely student run, student led TEDx event. The event was inspired by the more widely known Ted Talks, where guest speakers perform and share their knowledge, skills or experiences with the community.
Beechen Cliff’s event, titled TEDxBeechenCliffSchool 2021, was based around the theme of ‘Let’s Look Forward’, focusing on what students and young people have to look forward to in their futures. “The past 18 months have been an immense source of uncertainty, stress and anxiety to young people across the country, yet we wanted to highlight that, despite Covid and everything we have all been through, our best days are still ahead of us and that we can be optimistic about our futures,” said Toby Hawkins, the Event Coordinator.
The live event attracted an audience of 100 attendees, including Deputy Mayor of Bath, Councillor Dr Yukteshwar Kumar and members of the Beechen Cliff community. A livestream also took place on the Beechen Cliff YouTube channel, allowed it to be a community event for students and local people. The link for the recording of the livestream is https://youtu.be/FFgrPOMY6H0.
The speakers of TEDxBeechenCliffSchool 2021 and their talks included:
Sophie Sullivan – A More Equal Society
Jasper Thompson – Helping Bristol’s Homeless
Klaus Riekemann – The Importance of Decisions
Dr Bill Wilkinson – The Challenge of Climate Change
Eddie Ilic – Eddie’s Street Cuts
Rupert Tobin – Freedom or Success
Attendees enjoyed drinks provided by the school’s PTA and an array of canapes, courtesy of the school chef, while the PTA also worked with the team to create a Beechen Cliff TEDx donations page on InvestMyCommunity.
“We decided to extend the donations deadline to further our ambition of ensuring that TEDxBeechenCliffSchool can become a truly sustainable super-curricular opportunity for future generations of students and to help lay the foundations for the new intake of Year 12 students to organise their own TEDx event at Beechen Cliff,” said Toby.
The feedback from the attendees of the event has been incredible, with a former Beechen Cliff student saying that the ‘excellent presenters kept me hooked!’, whilst others said ‘Impressive! Looking forward to the next one,’ and ‘Congratulations to the team and speakers for pulling all of this together, this is a brilliant show!’
The team would like to thank everyone who attended the event, either in-person or virtually, all those in the local community who supported them and members of staff from Beechen Cliff for their invaluable advice and guidance. They’d also like to wish the very best of luck to the next group of TEDxBeechenCliffSchool organisers and that they are very much ‘looking forward’ to the next event!