TEDxLIPA

Inspirational figures from film, music, sport, literature and politics collaborate for a virtual TEDx event this month, hosted by two students from the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts.

TEDxLIPA is a single-day conference that hosts a series of speakers, each presenting a TEDx talk to an audience. Since 1984, TED has provided a platform devoted to spreading ideas, with speakers such as Bill Gates, Jane Goodall, Elizabeth Gilbert, David Byrne, Chris Hadfield, Sir Richard Branson and Nandan Nilekani.

In the same spirit of conceptualising and creating, TED later developed the TEDx program which helps communities and individuals produce similar events at a local level.

TEDxLIPA has been organised by LIPA students Molly Glinn and Keeley MacDonald. The event aims to set the stage for a day where innovators from technology, entertainment and design can share ideas and gain new insights to make their ideas stronger and more global.

Chelcee Grimes manages to juggle a career as a Grammy nominated singer-songwriter with playing football for Tranmere Rovers and presenting MOTDx on BBC television.

The first TEDxLIPA event of 2021 was originally scheduled to take place in the Paul McCartney Auditorium at LIPA, but will now go online. Speakers at the event come from a wide variety of backgrounds and fields.

Liverpool-born Chelcee Grimes manages to juggle a career as a Grammy nominated singer-songwriter with playing football for Tranmere Rovers and presenting MOTDx on BBC television. Chelcee played for Liverpool ladies from the age of 10 and since then has played for Everton, Tottenham Hotspur and Fulham. As well as recording and performing her own music, she’s written songs for Kylie, Olly Murs and Jonas Blue and received a Grammy nomination for her work with Dua Lipa.

In 1994, Trevor Gibson managed to persuade Bruce Dickinson to perform a series of concerts in the middle of the Bosnian war. Gibson is probably best known for his involvement in the subsequent documentary Scream for Me Sarajevo, but he’s also an independent record producer who won a Grammy in 2015 for his work on the English language version of I Am Malala. On top of that, he’s a fully qualified barrister and solicitor.

Malik Al Nasir had a difficult start in life but his fortune turned around after meeting legendary poet and civil rights activist Gil Scott-Heron, who mentored him from semi-literacy to a master’s degree through poetry. Malik’s work Ordinary Guy was published in 2004 under his former name ‘Mark T. Watson’ and dedicated to Gil, with a foreword by Jalal Nuriddin. Malik has produced and appeared in several factual documentaries with Gil Scott-Heron, The Last Poets, Benjamin Zephaniah, Public Enemy, and many other luminaries of the spoken word.

Other key speakers at TEDxLIPA include the actor Amy Jackson, paralympic athlete James Roberts, entrepreneur Kate Stewart and singer songwriter JC Stewart.

TEDxLIPA will be livestreamed, with full timings released to attendees prior to the event.