Blow the trumpet! “Research has shown that people who volunteer often live longer”, says Allen Klein. So in the interests of longevity, eternal youth, and the like… TimeBank is a national volunteering charity. It aims to support everyone to find rewarding volunteering, whether an individual, a big corporation or a small business. It does four [...]
In the last post, I wrote about peoplefund.it. From the same stable, there’s energyshare. It’s not really a crowd-funding site, more of a place for forming an online community of supporters for your energy project (come and support Exe Hydro!) and share experience with each other. But there is also the energyshare fund, which rewards [...]
We’re up to No.10 in our series of posts about how to simplify your lifestyle, and reach out to your neighbours and local community, so it’s time for a posting on the ‘big society’ in action: crowd-funding. First up is peoplefund.it, linked with one of our TEDxExeter speakers, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. This brings “good ideas that [...]
Rebecca Mayes is a Devon based singer/songwriter who rose to notoriety following her series of ‘song-reviews’ written for the gaming review website The Escapist. Each song is accompanied by a quirky video where Rebecca juxtaposes nu-folk music with subversive commentary on the latest blockbuster video-games. The result is the most charming and creative take on [...]
Chloe Goodchild is an international singer, pioneering music educator, recording artist, author, and director of The Naked Voice Foundation. For more than two decades, Chloe has helped thousands of people to express their truth through the power of spoken and sung voice. Her innovatory work promotes a method of communication, inspiring a new paradigm for [...]
Jackie Juno Bard of Exeter 2011-2012; stand-up poet, singer and artist. Jackie left the city and moved to Devon in 1982, gradually simplifying her way of life until she was living very simply off the land in a tipi for several years. This way of life became increasingly difficult with the implementation of the Criminal [...]
Based in Exeter, Kagemusha Taiko have a mission to enrich people’s lives through the experience of taiko drumming. The group creates and performs original taiko repertoire and through an extensive training programme enable people not only to enjoy taiko as a spectacle, but to take part in it as players themselves. Modern taiko is originally [...]
Bandi Mbubi was born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly Zaire. He spent the first 21 years of his life there, experiencing first hand the political unrest and oppression which have since worsened throughout the region. As a student activist, Bandi suffered persecution and fled, seeking political asylum in the UK. During the [...]
Lily Lapenna is the Founder and CEO of award winning UK social enterprise, MyBnk. Her non-profit organisation helps 11-25-year-olds in some of the poorest parts of London manage their money effectively and make enterprising choices. She’s created the county’s first FSA approved, independent, in-school and online youth-led banking scheme. From academies and supported housing to those [...]
Rob Hopkins is the co-founder of Transition Town Totnes and of the Transition Network. This grew out of many years experience in education, teaching permaculture and natural building, and setting up the first 2 year full-time permaculture course in the world, at Kinsale Further Education College in Ireland, as well as co-ordinating the first eco-village [...]
Antony Turner is co-founder of Carbon Visuals, a company that turns carbon footprint data into engaging images and films. He believes that a core reason for human society’s indifference to the climate challenge is that greenhouse gases are invisible. After a career spent launching engineering technologies he helped set up the Business & Sustainability programme [...]
Peter Cox is Professor of Climate System Dynamics and leader of the inter-disciplinary “Climate Change and Sustainable Futures” activity at the University of Exeter. His personal research has focussed on interactions between the biosphere and climate, including the first climate projections to include vegetation and the carbon cycle as interactive elements. These simulations demonstrated the [...]
Voted by the Ecologist as one of the “Worlds Top 10 Visionary Thinkers,” Polly advanced to the United Nations the proposal for Ecocide to be made a crime, the 5th Crime Against Peace, to sit alongside Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity, War Crimes and Crimes of Aggression. Polly has received various nominations and has been named [...]
Mike Dickson advises companies, ranging from private equity firms to fashion retailers, on how to develop effective and inspiring relationships with charities: partnerships that help to inspire employees, increase job satisfaction, improve internal communications and create a more intelligent business. Mike co-founded the successful children’s charity Whizz–Kidz which provides mobility equipment for disabled children. Since 1990 [...]
Andy Robertson is a videogame expert who specialises in family gaming. He edits the GeekDad blog for Wired.co.uk, has written for The Telegraph and BBC as well as contributing regularly to Radio 4’s You and Yours programme. He produces alternative responses to videogames on his Game People website. These take the form of songs, plays, [...]
Tony Juniper is an independent sustainability and environment adviser, including as a Senior Associate with the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership and as Special Advisor with the Prince’s Charities Foundation International Sustainability Unit. He advises international companies, both in a personal capacity and as a founder member of the Robertsbridge Group. He speaks [...]
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is widely known as a writer, broadcaster and campaigner for his uncompromising commitment to real food. His series for Channel 4, most recently River Cottage VEG Every Day, have earned him a huge popular following. The accompanying book of the same name was published by Bloomsbury in September 2011. His first book in [...]
Satish Kumar is an internationally renowned speaker on ecological and spiritual issues. When he was only nine years old, Satish renounced the world and joined the wandering brotherhood of Jain monks. He left the monastic order and became a campaigner for land reform, working to turn Gandhi’s vision of a peaceful world into reality, before undertaking [...]
Scilla Elworthy PhD founded Peace Direct in 2002 to fund, promote and learn from peace-builders in conflict area; awarded “Best New Charity” at the Charity Awards 2005. Previously she founded the Oxford Research Groupin 1982 to develop effective dialogue between nuclear weapons policy-makers worldwide and their critics. It is for this work that she was [...]
After a career in journalism, and publishing Chris Anderson became the Curator of the TED conference in 2002 and has developed it into a global platform for disseminating ideas worth spreading. Chris was born in rural Pakistan, and grew up in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, where his father worked as a missionary eye surgeon. He graduated from [...]
… and the anticipation is mounting. We’re in process of putting the finishing touches to the programme, giving it a couple of coats of eco-friendly varnish and a good polish. I’m also getting excited about the plans for the “Connections” stand in the Great Hall during the breaks. Watch this space!
Number nine in our series, and continuing the theme of lending and borrowing. Streetbank is simpler than Ecomodo and Bid & Borrow, featured in my last post. This may well be a benefit. There are no lending circles; you get to see people within one mile of you, and all their things. There is no [...]
I’ve written about Freecycle and LETS in earlier posts. Now, continuing with the series on sharing stuff and working together, I want to introduce you to Ecomodo. Ecomodo lets you “lend and borrow each other’s everyday objects, skills and spaces with confidence.” They’ve thought carefully about the “with confidence”: the borrower and the item are [...]
There will be about 460 people travelling to TEDxExeter in April, including speakers, performers, sponsors, delegates, volunteers and the organising team. There’s not much in the way of parking, but it’s quite possible that some will be starting from places close-by or en route. I think we’ve reached the seventh in our series of posts [...]
… is Susan Cain: The power of introverts. “In a culture where being social and outgoing are prized above all else, it can be difficult, even shameful, to be an introvert. But, as Susan Cain argues in this passionate talk, introverts bring extraordinary talents and abilities to the world, and should be encouraged and celebrated.” [...]
The sixth post in our series, again on forming connections and working together. PledgeBank allows users to set up pledges and then encourages other people to sign up to them. A pledge is a statement of the form ‘I will do something, if a certain number of people will help me do it’. The creator [...]
More and more websites are being developed that are enabling people to share and work together. And the best are bringing people together in real life too. In this fifth post in the series, I’m looking more at encouraging each other and working together on a common goal. “I’ve got this great idea, but I [...]
Photos taken by Benjamin Borley. More photos are available in his TEDxExeter collection.
