TED is coming to Stowe and Waterbury.
No, not the foul-mouthed teddy bear made famous in Seth MacFarlane’s 2012 buddy comedy, but a series of speakers with knowledge to share with local communities.
Stowe’s Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center and Harwood Union High School will host the short, TED-inspired talks in April.
TED talks are part of the TED Institute, established in 1984. The name stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design. Today TED talks, which last no longer than 18 minutes, cover all topics in more than 100 languages.
The TEDx program allows independent organizers to bring TED-style talks to their communities.
Tessa Rawson and her husband, Alex, are bringing TEDx to Stowe and Harwood Union High School. The couple worked together to put on two TEDx events in Basel, Switzerland, where they lived for a time.
“Between the two of us, we thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to do a full TEDx event?’” said Tessa, who’s originally from Scotland.
“The first event in Switzerland was amazing. We could have sold out about 10 times over. We did a big event 18 months after that and the response we got was amazing. It was so fun to meet people in the city who you would never come across doing these amazing things. When we moved here, we joked, ‘Oh, we should do a TEDxStowe.’ The more we thought about it, we thought there’s a space here for something like that,” Tessa said.
There will be eight speakers at the Stowe event who will talk for 10 minutes each; one performer will also get 10 minutes of stage time.
Tessa won’t release the speakers’ names for another two weeks when tickets to the event go on sale.
The Stowe event will feature two high school speakers, who will talk for three minutes each. Tessa is running a contest for students at Stowe and Peoples Academy high schools; the winners will speak at TEDxStowe.
To find speakers, Tessa did research on people in Vermont with ideas to share. She asked for recommendations, too.
“I’m just asking a lot of people, ‘Who would you like to hear from? Who do you know that’s doing something innovative or unique or that’s made a difference in whatever area?’ That’s the great thing about TED, it can be about anything,” she said.
She ended up with a list of about 80 people, and narrowed it down from there after doing her own research. One speaker is from Stowe; the rest are from Burlington, Barre, Elmore, Waitsfield and other Vermont towns.
“I want it to be a window into Vermont today,” Tessa said. “We’ve managed to achieve that with our speakers.”
The theme of TEDxStowe is community. Several of the speakers are teachers, one will talk about agriculture, and several will relate the topic to business, she said.
“The wider the scope, the more interesting the range that we can find,” she said.
TEDxHarwood
Harwood Union High School’s event will feature all student speakers, according to Alex, a math and science teacher at the school.
Harwood is the only high school to host a TEDxYouth event this year, Alex said.
Six students will speak for 10 minutes or less. They’re chosen from the 15 kids who are part of the TEDx club at Harwood, which Alex founded.
Topics will include how to improve situations for transgender students, art therapy, adaptive sports in Vermont, and a talk on “optimistic nihilism,” Alex said.
Students will begin writing rough drafts soon, Alex said. As a teacher, he’ll have more of a hands-on role helping them cultivate their speeches than Tessa will with the adult speakers at TEDxStowe.
Alex wanted students to know that they, too, have knowledge to share with the community.
“At Harwood, student voice is a very big theme of this school. They really try to get the students involved as much as they can. TED is shown in so many classrooms. The kids see TED all the time. I wanted them to consider the idea that it’s not this lofty, inaccessible podium. We can bring TED to Harwood. We can bring TED to local communities,” Alex said.
Other high school students, such as a group from U-32 High School, have reached out to Alex, asking if they could participate in TEDxHarwoodUnionHighSchool, but due to licensing, only students from Harwood can participate, he said. He hopes other high schools in the area see that putting on a TEDxYouth event is valuable and fun.
Harwood’s event is April 28.
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