TEDxEuston 2012 announces Livestream around the world!

Dear TEDxEuston community, 

The 500 tickets for this year's TEDxEuston at the beautiful MERMAID events center on the bank of the River Thames in London are now nearly sold out. 

However - we are offering you another opportunity to watch from anywhere in the world with an internet connection - via livestream! 

http://www.livestream.com/tedxeuston

Please bookmark now and add to you calendar.  

Start times
London - 10 am
Lagos - 11 am
Johannesburg - 12 noon
New York - 5 am 
For all other time zone conversions - check here

You will be able to join the conversation with twitter and facebook while watching live! 

See you on the 1st!

Students Tickets sell out at TEDxEuston 2012

Our ticket prices at TEDxEuston are the barest minimum we need to charge, combined with what we are able to raise from sponsorship in order to bring you the event. As you know - it is organised on a completely not-for-profit basis. This year, having moved to a beautiful new venue - The Mermaid, and all but one of our speakers coming from outside Europe, we struggled to offer students a further discount - a decision that would hurt - as we know that a lot of our attendees come from the vibrant community of African students in various UK universities.

Last year, a couple from Germany, Sevket and Christiana attended TEDxEuston. It was their first time at our event. However, Sevket had previously attended the main TED conference a few times and was in Tanzania at the seminal TED Global conference that inspired TEDxEuston. After attending our event, he declared that he would not bother attending any other conferences in the next year, as he had found all the inspiration he needed!

When we opened up registration this year, he asked why we did not have any students tickets, and we explained our dilemma. By the time we had concluded our conversation, he had offered to help enable us to offer 50 tickets at a discounted rate to students! This is 10% of all available TEDxEuston tickets. This was only possible thanks to Sevket's intervention.

We have not warned him that we are sharing this story, as we know that his immediate reaction would be to object. We share it not to win him any brownie points, as he sure does not need any, but to show, with one example how the TEDxEuston community makes this event so special.

This sort of experience is what keeps us going. As we move into the last week of preparations, the TEDxEuston team thanks our community for engaging in all sorts of special ways. You are the reason we do this...the only reason!

1 week to go! 

Ayanda De First is back at TEDxEuston 2012

Ayanda De First.....what a guy!  He is back....at TEDxEuston 2012!

The original member of the Master Drummers of Africa and the founder of the Oduduwa Talking Drummers Orchestra Ayan DeFirst was born to a family of drummers and started his career as an apprentice by performing with his dad and uncles at the early stage of five. His dad kept changing the size of his drums as he grows until the age of 18 years old when he could choose his drum by himself. Ayan DeFirst initial ambition was to become a medical doctor or a pharmacist but this was disturbed by the talent he has on drumming. Ayan DeFirst now has his own group called Oduduwa Talking Drummers and has  worked with over 500 community and private schools within the UK delivering educational workshops on African Arts and music. Visit www.ayanthefirst.com for more information.

Silhouettez in the Dark performs at TEDxEuson

Something exciting is happening with music and dance all over the continent and its offspring. Silhouettez in the Dark epitomizes all that! But we are not going to give it away! This one will be special.....as will the rest of TEDxEuston - you will have to see it for yourself.

Silhouettez in the Dark is an Arts Alliance made up of four multi-talented individual female artists. Through the medium of Combined Arts; Theatre, Dance and Poetry, S.I.T.D present “truthful” information free from society’s over-censorship and media inflated ideals, promoting a culture of independent thought and taking a direct stand against the harmful effects of censored thought. Silhouettez aim to Edu-create. DK Fashola founded the company in 2008, since then S.I.T.D have performed across London, and toured all over the U.K. S.I.T.D are currently working on BROKENSQUARE; A London2Lagos Scheme which enables a connection and collaboration of performance artisits of Nigerian descent throught the medium of Theatre. WWW.DKFASH.COM/BROKENSQUARE

Inua Ellams performs at TEDxEuston

At TEDxEuston we will have some amazing artists including Inua Ellams. Inua will challenging convention wisdom on your perception of poetry. Inua is an award winning poet and performer, a writer with a style influenced by classic literature and hip hop, by Keats as it is by MosDef. Rooted in a love for rhythm and language, he crosses 18th century romanticism and traditional story telling with contemporary diction, loose rhythm and rhyme. 

Inua Ellams was born in Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria in 1984. He works as a poet, playwright, performer and graphic designer/artist. He has seven books published including ‘Thirteen Fairy Negro Tales’ (Poetry, Flipped Eye, 2005) ‘The 14th Tale’ (Play, Flipped Eye, 2009) - which was commissioned by the Battersea Arts Centre and awarded a Fringe First at the Edinburgh Festival, before a sold out run at The National Theatre in London. His third theatre piece, ‘Black T-Shirt Collection’ (Play, Oberon, 2012) also ran at the National Theatre this year and will be touring this autumn. His poems were included in anthologies: Generation Txt (Penned in the Margins, 2006), City State (Penned in the Margins, 2009), The Salt Book of Younger Poets (Salt, 2011), The Shuffle Anthology (Shuffle, 2011 Press). His second pamphlet of poetry Candy Coated Unicorns and Converse All Stars (Flipped Eye, 2011) came out last November and he is currently working on a Radio play for the BBC about a dysfunctional Nigerian werewolf family, living in South London. None of these things really say much about Inua’s personality, but he he promises he is a nice guy. ‘Trust me…’ he says ‘… I’m Nigerian’.

Get one of the last tickets HERE. 

Introducing TEDxEuston 2012 Speakers - Alcinda Honwana

Alcinda Honwana was born in Mozambique, has traveled most parts of the continent and now lives in New York. She does not take on the simple issues. From child soldiers to the Arab Spring, Alcinda examines the increasing agitation by the youth in Africa and beyond for a better future. She has spent the last few years exploring why African youth are restless on the continent and how these energies can be channeled to create a better future for all of us. If change will come to Africa, it will probably be driven by young people, described by George Ayittey in his famous TED talk as the 'Cheetah' generation, as opposed to the 'Hippo' generation that has led the politics in Africa up to now.

Alcinda will bring a great new perspective to the debate and will be our first ever speaker from Mozambique!

Alcinda Honwana is currently a visiting professor in anthropology and international development at the Open University (OU) in the UK. Before joining the Open University, Honwana worked for the Social Science Research Council in New York where she directed the Children and Armed Conflict Program and the Africa Program. She also worked for the United Nations as research coordinator in the Office of the Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict. Honwana was the coordinator of the International Research Network on Children and Armed Conflict from 2001 to 2005. Born in Mozambique, Alcinda Honwana has written extensively on the links between political conflict and culture and the impacts of violent conflict on young people, conducting research in Mozambique, DRC, Angola, Colombia and Sri Lanka. In 2007 she was awarded the prestigious Prince Claus Chair for Development and Equity in Holland by the Institute of Social Studies and University of Utrecht.

Introducing TEDxEuston 2012 Speakers - Chimamanda Adichie

"The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” 

When Chimamanda Adichie said this as part of her amazing TED talk in 2010, I wonder if she knew that it will be watched over 3.5 million times,  be the subject of conversations from the dinner table to inter-cultural conferences and re-define how people viewed themselves and others. With her eagerly anticipated new novel; Americanah out soon, anticipation is sky high on how she will explore the immigration story, the way only she can. The context for her new book appears to be around the millions of Nigerian immigrants to the West and the complexity of the lives they create. Chimamanda has stuck to her childhood love for books and made a beautiful life out of bringing to life stories that touch the heart - leaving you somewhere in between smiles and tears. She does it so naturally that you can neither put down her books, nor turn away when she speaks.

There are just a few tickets left for TEDxEuston 2012!

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie a renowned Nigerian novelist was born in Nigeria in 1977. She grew up in the university town of Nsukka, Enugu State where she attended primary and secondary schools, and briefly studied Medicine and Pharmacy. She then moved to the United States to attend college, graduating summa cum laude from Eastern Connecticut State University with a major in Communication and a minor in Political Science. She holds a Masters degree in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins and a Masters degree in African Studies from Yale University. She was a 2005-2006 Hodder Fellow at Princeton, where she taught introductory fiction. Chimamanda is the author of Half of a Yellow Sun, which won the 2007 Orange Prize For Fiction; and Purple Hibiscus, which won the 2005 Best First Book Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the 2004 Debut Fiction Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. In 2009, her collection of short stories, The Thing around Your Neck was published. She was named one of the twenty most important fiction writers today under 40 years old by The New Yorker and was recently the guest speaker at the 2012 annual commonwealth lecture. She featured in the April 2012 edition of Time Magazine, celebrated as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. She currently divides her time between the United States and Nigeria.