About 
is Exeter’s Festival of Ideas, devoted to spreading great ideas and inspiring new connections and positive actions in our community.
We maximise the impact and reach of our speakers’ ideas by releasing films of their talks freely online on the TEDxYoutube channel. TEDxExeter talks are translated in up to 35 languages by volunteer translators and have been viewed over 24 million times by a truly global audience.
TEDxExeter is recognised globally as a leading TEDx event and has been ranked the 4thTEDx in the world for talks with 1 million + views on TED.com (after TEDx events in Boston, Washington and Sydney).
Our events
We provide a unique platform in Exeter which brings together influential thinkers, policymakers and a diverse audience at our main annual conference and at smaller events throughout the year.
We think about the major challenges facing us all and invite speakers whose work and vision are making a real difference to share their ideas with us. We also work with young people to think about intergenerational equity and the most important ideas they want to share with us.
There is a real hunger here for our events, 900 tickets for our main annual conference sell out in minutes. To meet demand, we organise free viewing events of our livestream. In 2018 over 34,000 people in 35 countries registered their interest to watch the day live.
The TEDxExeter team works to include a diverse audience at events: half of our tickets are concessions with many young people and members of community groups in the audience. We invite the deaf community and the whole day is signed in BSL.
The talks inform, challenge and entertain, and we encourage the audience to connect with each other, reflect on the day and turn inspiration to action. To make it easy for our community to find out more and get involved we invite change makers and activists, whose work chimes with the speaker’s themes, to come along on the day to help create real change.
Each year we focus attention on particular areas of impact, for example in 2018 bringing the NCA Invisible People exhibition about modern slavery to Exeter and focusing on refusing single use plastics.
In addition to our main events we run Salons and Adventures, opportunities for our audience to grapple more deeply with some of our speakers’ ideas and work.
Here is a short film about our events
About 
TED is a non-profit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. Started as a four-day conference in California 30 years ago, TED has grown to support its mission with multiple initiatives. The two annual TED Conferences invite the world’s leading thinkers and doers to speak for 18 minutes or less. Many of these talks are then made available, free, at TED.com. TED speakers have included Bill Gates, Jane Goodall, Elizabeth Gilbert, Sir Richard Branson, Nandan Nilekani, Philippe Starck, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Sal Khan and Daniel Kahneman.
Follow TED on Twitter at http://twitter.com/TEDTalks, or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/TED.
About 
In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TED Talks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized. (Subject to certain rules and regulations.)Since TEDx was launched in 2009 there have been almost 30,000 TEDx events around the world, in local communities and workplaces, in schools and libraries, from Kibera, the largest slum in Kenya, to NASA, at the Houses of Parliament and at the UN. The idea is to empower communities everywhere to organise events that connect people, spread ideas, and inspire positive impact.
Team
Claire Kennedy
Curator and Licensee
After an undergraduate law degree and student activism, I spent time as a UK delegate at the European Youth Parliament, an experience which crystallised my commitment to social justice. Following an LLM in Law at the London School of Economics, I worked as a refugee lawyer, leading a specialist team which represented survivors of torture and unaccompanied refugee children who were claiming asylum in the UK. I was part of the team which founded the specialist Refugee Legal Centre, and a trustee of a therapy centre for refugees.
Through that work I met inspiring people whose stories offered powerful reminders of our interconnectedness. Stories and interconnection are key still.
For the past five years, I’ve worked with the wonderful TEDxExeter team to grow TEDx here from the germ of an idea to a flourishing reality. With Bandi Mbubi, a former refugee client, I co-founded Congo Calling, a campaign for the development of fairtrade technology which uses ethically-sourced, conflict-free minerals from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The Core Team
TEDxExeter is run by a small team of volunteers, all passionate about the power of ideas.
Ellen Maloney
Transcription Lead
Lucy Sainsbury
Comms Team
Catherine Wolfgang
Volunteer Team
Abigail Leighton-Boyce
Comms Team
Dominic Course
Design Partner
Bernard Allen
Comms Team
Rosie Hawkins
Event Organiser
Lorna Wilson
Livestream Lead
Sally Hedge
Partnership
Ed Bird
Alumni Auditorium Host
Rich Belcher
Production
Rose Elliott
Partnership
Stacey Hedge
Comms Team
Sarah Bailey
Admin
Caroline Lamb
Comms Team
Gordon Richardson
Comms Team
Oriana Ascanio
Speaker slide support
Sara Gibbs
Speaker Team
Danielle Krage
Speaker Team
Here are some of the reasons they are involved:
TEDxExeter is a fantastic experience that allows us to step away from the day job and spend the day being educated and inspired in a completely immersive way.
TEDxExeter is such an amazing event. It’s a day rammed full of inspirational speakers, who speak from the heart, are leaders in their field and provoke tough, interesting conversations. I’m honoured to be part of it.
TEDxExeter is an amazing event which spreads ideas from Exeter to every corner of the world. It’s fun to be part of the wonderful team of people who make it happen.
The chance to be involved with a brilliant community of people who are actively engaging with life-changing ideas.
