© 2024
Virginia's Public Radio
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

TEDxRVA: Artful 2016 Preview

The fourth annual TEDxRVA is happening this Friday in downtown Richmond.

TED Talks have risen in popularity over the past few years, but the organization’s concept has been around since 1984. It began as a one-time conference, then a yearly gathering in Vancouver. Andy Stefanovich is a speaker and author who had been attending Ted talks since their early years. He wanted to bring that idea to Richmond, where he lives.

“So we would do it in ways we could, and then TED formalized a really neat idea called TEDx. And TEDx is a licensed, local event where a community comes together, applies for a license, and says ‘we’d like to replicate the concept of TED in our community.’”

So four years ago, the first annual TEDxRichmond was held, with Stefanovich serving as curator. The first theme was Create, then Re…as in reimagine…then Uncommon. For this year, they went with Artful as the theme.

“And ‘Artful’ is one to capture a little bit of the zeitgeist of all that is artful in Richmond right now – in this region. Not only the arts and culture theme, but all that is artful in terms of people taking artful approaches to engineering, and people having great, artful outcomes from psychology. Or having a good artful process to industrial engineering.”

This year’slineup is certainly diverse - it includes a perfumer, an architectural historian, local musicians and community advocates, psychologists…

“We’re going to have Moxie LaBouche, a burlesque performer who’s going to talk about the history of burlesque and do a little bit of performing. So the range is just awesome, from educators to juvenile justice activists to musicians…”

There will be 18 speakers and 5 other acts throughout the day, happening from 9-5 this Friday at the Carpenter Theater.

Related Content