Welcome to TEDxBradford!

June 22, 2011 //

Welcome to TEDxBradford, a home for our programme of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience.

Our next event, TEDxBradfordWomen: The Space Between on 1st December, coincides with TEDxWomen 2012, turning the spotlight on the ideas of women and girls who challenge and redefine the traditional rules and roles ascribed to women and men, girls and boys. As well as our live speakers, we’ll also be hosting a live simulcast from Washington DC.

Do check out talks from our previous TEDxBradford events, Life Online and This Is Where We Live.

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Khadijah Ibrahim

November 25, 2012 //

Khadijah Ibrahiim is of Jamaican parentage, born in the city of Leeds, England. Educated at the University of Leeds; she has a MA in Theatre Studies. She is the Artistic Director of Leeds Young Authors and the Producer of Leeds Youth poetry Slam festival. Peepal Tree press published her poetry collection Rootz Runnin in 2008 that same year she toured the USA with the Fwords Creative Freedom writers. As a delegate for the Art Council England (Yorkshire) she attended Calabash international Literature Festival in Jamaica. Recently, she became one of the first international writers to attend the El Gouna Writers Residency in Egypt, 2010.

She was a member the advisory group that organized some of the events, which marked the visit of Dr Nelson Mandela to the City of Leeds. Hailed as one of Yorkshire’s ‘most prolific’ poets by BBC Radio, she continues to make various stage appearances across Britain, the USA, the Caribbean and Africa. Peepal Tree Press will publish her latest collection of poems later this year.

You can find out more about Khadija at Badilisha Poetry.

Mary Clear

November 9, 2012 //

Mary is a dreamer and schemer; she sleeps like a baby as every day is filled with adventure. As a grandmother of eleven she worries what state we will leave the planet in for the next generation. Mary likes the saying “Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted”. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts & Manufacturing and was awarded the MBE in 2011 for services to the community of Todmorden. Recently Mary feels more energetic since she has had confirmation that the countries prisons are full. Mary is an Activist

The story of a small town’s efforts to create a kinder more sustainable future. Hear how it IS possible to reconnect people to the environment and develop learning opportunities for the next generation. This is the story of passionate people investing energy into their town to create new markets and new methods. Find out how far a vegetable dream can spread without an office or staff.

Find out more about Mary’s work at Incredible Edible and catch her recent talk The Peas & Love Revolution from TEDxHuddersfield.

Emma Bearman

November 4, 2012 //

Emma is the Chief of Play at Cultivate, developing and producing creative projects and helping clients to develop relationships and communities. Emma has variously worked to create a buzz at launches for heritage buildings, community hubs, galleries, museums, and cultural organisations, helping companies utilise collaborative technologies and social media to engage and connect with individuals and develop communities.

Emma is currently operating three public-facing projects…

The Culture Vulture A multi author website in the North. With other 30 regular writers, 2000+ posts & 17000 comments. We’ve led in developing a space for conversation & situating the arts within a broader cultural context. We are known for our integrity, honesty, friendliness & challenge.

Cultural Conversations is a method of bringing people together in a warm friendly space, to gain understanding of each other, share ideas, skills, identify opportunities & build trust. We have conducted 6 in Leeds and 3 in Teesside.

Playful Leeds is a project launched in 2012. It’s a multi layered adventure which looks at how we as citizens develop self permissions to be playful in society. Through a series of events we have investigated how we in Leeds can collectively realise our creative potential to the benefit of the wider public. We connect public, private & third sectors through the events we design. We seek to creatively co-design our city to imbue joy for residents and visitors alike.

Kaye Elling

November 4, 2012 //

Kaye has over twelve years of games industry experience, working as an artist, Lead Artist and Art Manager for Infogrames, Sony, Acclaim & Blitz Games.

Her title history includes diverse titles such as GTA2 (Take 2), the Premier Manager series (Gremlin), Colony Wars: Red Sun (Sony), Formula 1 (Sony) and most recently the Bratz series (THQ) and The Encleverment Experiment (Blitz), with experience in computer game development for the PS1, PS2, Dreamcast, GameCube, Xbox, Xbox360 consoles, the PC and the Wii.

Her skills lie in the creation of 2D and 3D graphics for game engines, particularly in character modelling and texturing in Maya and Photoshop, as well as many other aspects of game development and games as a cultural phenomenon.

She has a keen interest in the subject of Women in Games: This includes women as gamers, women as game developers and the portrayal of women in computer games; and an active campaigner for the recruitment of more women into technology and media careers.

Kaye’s paper The Virtual Toy Box was published at Dundee Abertay University in 2005 as part of the Women in Games conference, where she now part of the steering committee and organizing the WIG 2010 conference at the University of Bradford. Edge-online voted me to be one of the “100 Most Influential Women in Games” as well as #61 on their list of “Hot 100 Game Developers of 2007″.

Find out more about Kaye at scim.brad.ac.uk/staff/?u=klelling&p=f and on Twitter as @k_0.

Debs Gatenby

November 4, 2012 //

Debs Gatenby formerly trained at Manchester Polytechnic as an actress, she then began doing comedy and created a character called Twinkle – she enjoyed a good few years on the queer comedy cabaret scene as Twinkle and was the first ever performer on stage at the now legendary Duckies club in London, she hosted Duckies and was a regular performer at Tina C’s club in Soho,performed at several Prides and co- hosted Gay Talk on BBC Manchester.

She created several solo shows for Queer Up North. More recently she has been performing as herself, still comedy, but more like storytelling, playing with the themes of therapy, the happiness plateaux and what it is to be really honest.

Her new show is been created for Contact Theatre Short Cuts – The working title is Hi Anxiety – Me My Mum Our Mental Health.

Find out more about Debs at debsgatenby.co.uk and @debsgatenby

Anna Farmery

March 29, 2012 //

Anna has an interesting background – a law degree, a marketing MBA and a Chartered Accountant! After over 20 years of working as a corporate director for blue chip companies, she started The Engaging Brand to help businesses truly engage with the modern consumer.

Working with clients ranging from FTSE listed business to small startups, running training sessions and creativity workshops on how social media can help engage audiences and transform the traditional business model, she is also host to the five times nominated for best business podcast – The Engaging Brand and blogs on the intersection between social media, marketing and leadership.

As well as running a successful business she is also writing a PhD on how social media is changing the traditional business model.

You can find Anna on Twitter as @engagingbrand

Professor Paul Rogers

March 29, 2012 //

Paul Rogers is Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University. He worked originally in the biological and environmental sciences, including lecturing at Imperial College, London, but has worked for the past 30 years on international security. He is a consultant to Oxford
Research Group, an independent UK think tank, and also writes a weekly analysis of international security issues for www.opendemocracy.net/

The most recent of his 26 books are Global Security and the War on Terror: Elite Security and the Illusion of Control and the third edition of Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century.

He is a regular radio and TV commentator for international networks and can be found on Twitter as @profprogers.

Gwyneth Sutherlin

March 29, 2012 //

Gwyneth Sutherlin is a doctoral candidate in conflict resolution at the University of Bradford.

Her research examines the impact of cultural bias in ICT design on identity, participation, and information access. She has also written about the political implications surrounding the invisible dimension of translation.

Her research draws from experiences working as an intercultural mediator with programs such as the U.S. State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program as well as directing projects which use ICT’s to promote peace and democracy in Burma, Kenya, DRCongo, and Haiti.

Most recently, as a consultant for Search for Common Ground Morocco, she was instrumental in developing the organization’s first intercultural mediation project. Ms. Sutherlin has a degree in political science from Indiana University and speaks seven languages.

Gwyneth’s talk will explore Open Access or Silent Culture: ICT user experience in conflict and you can find her on Twitter as @gbsutherlin.

Dr Kieran Fenby-Hulse

March 20, 2012 //

Dr. Kieran Fenby-Hulse Dr Kieran Fenby-Hulse is a musicologist working in research support at the University of Bradford. His principal research interest lies with understanding the relationship between music and narrative and how music can tell stories through the use of gestural and conventional musical devices and allusion to literary ideas and dramatic genres and techniques.

Latterly, he has been exploring the way in which we engage and listen to music and how this has changed over the last 20 years. His talk – The Modern Mixtape: The Evolution of the Digital Playlist - will examines how the nature of music sharing has changed with the development of digital media from the cassette-based mixtape of the 1980s and 1990s, though the peer-to-peer track sharing and iTunes playlists, to the more recent developments of sharing music via applications such Spotify.

You can find out more about Kieran at kieranfenbyhulse.wordpress.com and on Twitter as @dr_k_fenbyhulse.

Mark Graham

March 14, 2012 //

Mark Graham’s research focuses on Internet and information geographies, and the overlaps between ICTs and economic development.

His research on Internet & Information Geographies examines how people and places are ever more defined by, and made visible through, not only their traditional physical locations and properties, but also their virtual attributes and digital shadows.

Specifically, he is interested in how ubiquitous electronic representations of urban environments that are made possible by services and platforms such as Google Maps, Twitter and Wikipedia have the power to redefine, reconfigure, and reorder the cities that they represent.

Of particular interest are the barriers to participation and the way that some people can lack voice and representation in online platforms. This work has been featured in over thirty media outlets around the world (including The Guardian, The New York Times, and Wired) and has been funded by the IDRC and the John Fell Fund. Some of his published academic work on this topic can be found on his website, while more recent work can be accessed on his zerogeography blog and the floatingsheep blog that he co-manages.

Find out more about Mark at the Oxford Internet Institute and as @geoplace on Twitter.