The TED Trend: A look at TED and similar organizations Introduction and background Every day, countless forms of digital media compete for a single person’s attention. As technology advances and even the best products are improved, audiences are becoming increasingly difficult to intrigue. Yet, somehow, millions of people around the world have set aside these distractions to watch lectures about topics as diverse as education reform, pornography, malaria, and marine biology. These are TEDTalks and for a growing number of viewers, they represent the future of learning. In 1984, Richard Saul Wurman, an author dedicated to making information accessible, had the idea to hold a conference to bring together leaders in the worlds of Technology, Entertainment, and Design (TED). United by a commitment to sparking curiosity and thinking creatively, well-known speakers like Bill Gates, Jane Goodall, Al Gore, and Bono joined the roster and attracted an influential audience. Media entrepreneur Chris Anderson took over TED in 2001 and has enabled the nonprofit to remain true to its founding principles: “to seek out the most interesting people on earth and let them communicate what they are passionate about, untainted by corporate influence.”1 TED Conferences

Though TED has developed into a multi-faceted organization, its underlying mission,

“ideas worth spreading”, inspires each project. The basis of TED are the two annual conferences held in Long Beach, California in the spring and Edinburgh, Scotland in the summer. Both conferences take place over four days and include over 50 speakers. TED has become popular in large part due to the fact that it provides bite-sized learning experiences perfectly suited for the hyper-stimulated “Youtube generation”. Each speaker can present for no longer than 18 minutes. There are shorter sections for music, performance, and comedy interspersed among the talks. The idea behind the format is that knowledge should be accessible and inter-connected. Therefore, the curators of both events are committed to short presentations and interdisciplinary learning (the speakers are not organized by subject matter). As a whole, the conference aims to offer a birds-eye-view of the world of new ideas and the people who create them: “Every so often it makes sense to emerge from the trenches we dig for a living, and ascend to a 30,000-foot view, where we see, to our astonishment, an intricately interconnected whole.”2 Over 1,000 people come to the conference in Long Beach and those who cannot go to the actual event watch a live simulcast in Palm Springs, called TEDActive. The subjects discussed in California range from science, to business and the arts, while the conference in Edinburgh, named TEDGlobal, focuses on international issues.

1 TED: About TED, History. http://www.ted.com/pages/16 2 TED: About TED. http://www.ted.com/pages/about

Other components of TED These events are different from typical intellectual or academic conferences. First, there are no political, religious, or commercial agendas allowed and self-promotion is prohibited. TED is proud of its commitment to bias-free learning. Additionally, with a cost of $3,750 for a ticket to TEDActive and $7,500 for one to the actual conferences, these events attract a wealthy, distinguished crowd, many of whom are every bit as exceptional as the speakers themselves. TED recognizes this in the form of TED University, which are talks given by members of the audiences before the main conference begins. Attendees are invited to consider whether they have something to contribute to the program and those chosen prepare demos, presentations, or performances to give onstage for 2-9 minutes. Stemming from TED’s focus on big ideas that change the world, the organization awards the TED Prize every year. Designed to leverage the TED community’s exceptional array of talent and resources, the $100,000 prize is awarded annually to an individual or an idea. The individual or group winner/s are charged with the task of preparing their “One Wish to Change the World”, which is revealed at a ceremony during the TED Conference. These wishes have led to many collaborative initiatives with far-reaching impact. This year, the prize was awarded to City 2.0, a project that focuses on saving our urban environments. Ted.com

Hailed as an opportunity to “watch the future, live”3 and the “tech antidote to our current

pessimism”4, TED has acquired a solid fan base that believes wholeheartedly in its mission, a large part of which is to make information accessible to a wider audience than the star-studded crowd at the conferences. Launched in 2007, TED.com is self-described as “a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world’s most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other.”5 TED.com currently offers 1,100 videos of the best TEDTalks free of charge and around the time of the conferences, they are a big online presence: “At around this time of year, it seems the Internet is 35 percent TEDTalks. TED is a funny phenomenon, though. On the one hand, getting the YouTube generation to sit down and watch lectures seems a counter-intuitive proposition. But there's something about these videos that seems to have captured the Web's shiny, aspirational spirit,” remarked a reviewer from a Toronto publication.”6

In an attempt to be more inclusive, TED launched the Open Translation project, which is one of the most comprehensive attempts to subtitle and index online video content. Sponsored by Nokia, every TEDTalk posted on TED.com has English subtitles and a time-coded, interactive transcript that allows users to play the videos from selected phrases. The videos have currently been translated into 40 different languages. All of the videos are all fully indexable by search engines and licensed with Creative Commons, so they can be shared and re-posted freely on other sites.

3 Sullivan, Matt. “TEDTalks You Don’t Have to Wait For.” Esquire, Feb. 5, 2009. 4 “Time to Reinvent the Web (and save Wall Street).” Wall Street Journal. Feb. 9, 2009. 5 TED: About TED. http://www.ted.com/pages/about 6 Toronto Globe and Mail. March 19, 2009. http://www.ted.com/pages/43

TED.com is also home to TED Conversations. This is an online component that enables anyone to register for free on the website and share their thoughts. There are three ways to engage: ideas, questions, and debates. Users can start new conversations, add to ongoing ones, and browse discussions by topics. Users can also link to TED Conversations to share with friends on other sites.

Outreach programs

TED is also committed to growing its international reach and communal impact. TED

Fellows, which began at the TEDAfrica conference in 2007, is a program designed to bring together the 20-somethings of the world who have shown unusual accomplishment and courage. The program targets people from Asia and the Pacific region, Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, and the Middle East, though anyone 18 and older can apply. TEDx is the community outreach branch of the organization (the “x” stands for “independently organized event”). TEDx was developed to give communities the opportunity to create local franchises of TED conferences to stimulate dialogue through the already tested format. TEDx events feature a screening of TEDTalks videos or a combination with live presenters. All events are fully planned on a community-by-community basis. In January 2012, 125 TEDx events took place in 43 different countries around the world.

Responses and critiques

Despite TED’s various attempts at accessibility, the main criticism of the organization

remains that it is elitist and inaccessible to people without thousands of dollars to spare: TED conferences are not events for the rough, unlearned hoi polloi. Unless you have six thousand dollars to spare or did something worthy of an invitation, you will never attend one. To their credit, the people behind TED have put a large number of TED Talks on iTunes as podcasts, but this action just underlines my point: you may learn from TED, but you may not learn at TED. This is the very definition of elitism, and those who attend and speak at TED are very much the elite—high-powered scientists and educators, celebrity journalists, millionaires, billionaires, former heads of state. They remind one of the philosopher kings of Plato’s Republic. The world is theirs to shape.7

TED is aware of this criticism and even devotes an entire section of TED.com to the question “Is TED elitist?” Most mainstream publications have supported TED, arguing that it is not elitist because it empowers lesser known entrepreneurs, artists, academics, and scientists. Esquire called it “inspirational intellectualism, often from the curiously unfamous”. According to CBS News, TED is not snobbery: “Instead, imagine a gathering peppered with dozens of futurists, artists, CEOs, and scientists -- plus a few more folks who defy categorization. They get all together for several days to listen to mind-blowing talks about everything from population trends to sea creatures. It is an intellectual Mardi Gras.”8

7 O’Gara, Jacob. “In TED We Trust.” Ethos Magazine, July 8, 2011. 8 Sielberg, Daniel. “Meet TED – The Intellectual Mardi Gras.” CBS News. Feb. 11, 2009.

Similar Organizations The Do Lectures

The Do Lectures, which began four years ago in Wales, are as much about inciting action as they are about cutting-edge ideas. Hosted twice a year (in Wales in the spring and a U.S. location in the fall), these conferences operate by the idea that “Ideas + Energy = Change”. Like TED, they promote inter-disciplinary learning by inviting speakers from diverse fields, including business, environmental subjects, technology, sports, design, food, and well-being. At The Do Lectures, the focus is on sustainable living and getting people to “go do”:

The idea is a simple one— that people who Do things can inspire the rest of us to go and Do things, too. So each year we invite a set of people down here to come and tell us what they Do. They can be small Do’s or big Do’s or just extraordinary Do’s. But when you listen to their stories, they light a fire in your belly to go and Do your thing, your passion, the thing that sits in the back of your head each day, just waiting, and waiting for you to follow your heart.9

Described as “TED meets Burning Man (an experimental art community in Nevada)

meets Where the Wild Things Are”10, The Do Lectures are more intimate than TED conferences. Held in fforest Farm in Cilgerran,Wales, the tranquil setting is a main attraction. The eighty invited attendees and thirty speakers sleep in furnished tents on raised wooden decks, with space to sit outside and “take in the view”. The fforest Lodge provides a communal space where everyone eats fresh, local food, relaxes, and listens to live music. The Guardian’s Digital Content Blog, PDA, wrote, “Maybe it was inevitable that the ‘unconference’ trend would combine with staycation and the unstoppable rise of the low-key festival, but that is exactly the cross section that meets where The Do Lectures happens.”11

Like the audience at TED conferences, the people who can actually attend The Do Lectures are an affluent bunch. The cost of a ticket to The Do Lectures is £1,500. Individuals can apply for a ticket or nominate others for selection through the website. In an attempt to be more inclusive, especially to students, the organization offers the “giving chair” program, which allows a business to pay for a student to go to one of the conferences. An artist then paints the chair the student will sit in with the business’s name to publicize what company paid for their ticket. After the conference, the chair is sold at an auction to raise money for The Do Lectures and the student holds a session at the donating business to tell them about what they learned.12

The Do Lectures also has a strong video and online component. Like the TEDTalks, the lectures are posted online for free viewing and reflect the public expectation that “we want to learn, be involved, talk, share ideas and generally have a two-way exchange with people we meet.”13 In this vein, the organization maintains a trendy blog called The Do Village that gives

9 The Do Lectures: About. http://dolectures.com/about/ 10 The Guardian. PDA: Digital Content Blog. “The Do Lectures and the new wave of unconferences.” http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2011/apr/05/the-do-lectures 11 Ibid. 12 The ‘giving chair’. http://blog.thedolectures.co.uk/2012/01/the-giving-chair/#more-1347 13 The Guardian. “The Do Lectures and the new wave of unconferences.”

the public more access to the information and the programs the organization offers. The Do Lectures is a non-profit, so to help pay for costs, it also sells fanfare online, including innovative posters and inspirational books. Aspen Ideas Festival The Aspen Ideas Festival (AIF), presented by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic, is an extension of the Institute’s mission to create opportunities for deep dialogue. Like TED, AIF is intended to be an “invigorating celebration of some of the liveliest minds on the stage today”14 and attracts an equally distinguished roster of presenters, including provocative writers, public officials, artists, scientists, business executives, scholars, economists, foreign policy specialists, and entrepreneurs.

The main difference between AIF and TED is that AIF is organized much more like school—attendees are encouraged to think of the event as “a week-long summer university for the mind” with some 300 speakers on the Institute’s campus in Aspen, Colorado.15 Divided into two overlapping four-day sessions in June and July every year, AIF offers three “plenary sessions” a day (panels, one-on-one interviews, and presentations); two “concurrent tutorial sessions” a day (where attendees choose from a menu of discussions); and many casual conversations, book signings, and “action-oriented discussions” between attendees and speakers. These sessions are designed around a series of “tracks”, which each have a variety of discussions and presentations relevant to a certain topic area. (For example, two different tracks for the 2012 program are “World Affairs: Democracy on Trial” and “Arts and Culture: Art Matters”)16. Attendees decide whether they would like to focus on a particular area of interest during their time or cover a lot of ground across a number of topics. There are also plenty of “Evening Exchanges” and other nightly events in the town of Aspen, like conversations with prominent journalists and speakers, film screenings, and performances. Like TED and many of the other idea conferences, AIF has been criticized for its exclusivity. While it does publish videos of the speakers online and viewers can subscribe to the AIF TV to watch the talks, a ticket to the festival costs $1,375 for students and anywhere from $2,750-$8,000 for other attendees. Viewers can also watch handpicked videos on the organization’s blog, AIF Blog. AIF is also more politically charged than TED and has been attacked by conservatives as an unsubstantial “annual orgy of techno-triumphalism and political self-seriousness.”17 International Festival of Arts and Ideas The International Festival of Arts & Ideas was established in 1996 by Anne Calabresi, Jean Handley and Roslyn Meyer. The founders envisioned an annual celebration in New Haven, Connecticut that differentiated itself from established arts festivals by its fusion of ideas and events. Their aim was to gather world-class artists and pre-eminent thinkers from around the

14 Aspen Ideas Festival: History and Highlights. http://www.aifestival.org/festival/about 15 Ibid. 16 AIF Program Tracks. http://www.aifestival.org/festival/tracks 17 Petersen, Charles. “Search and Destroy.” Bookforum. April-May 2011. http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/018_01/7325

world to highlight New Haven as a major arts destination. Over eighteen days in June, the festival, with its “signature inclination for brilliance, controversy, social cohesion, and fun”,18 brings internationally recognized names from over 75 countries, like Savion Glover, Little Richard, Michael Feinstein, Salman Rushdie, and lesser known artists. Like TED, the festival highlights its most exceptional speakers annually. The Visionary Leadership Award is given to honor visionary leaders whose trailblazing work has deep impact on the world. The festival has different goals than TED conferences, The Do Lectures, or AIF. While it does attract thinkers from various fields, it is much more focused on artistic expression and performance. Additionally, the festival is not concerned with every attendee having the same experience, like TED. An individual chooses what kind of performances he or she would like to experience, like an evening of opera on the New Haven Green, a traditional rendition of a Shakespeare tragedy, or an edgy slam poetry session by up-and-coming inner-city artists. However, the most striking difference is how seriously the festival takes its mission of engaging a diverse audience. There is no overall price for a ticket to the festival and 80% of the performances and talks are free (and those that are not are very reasonably priced). With a commitment to celebrating the local community and promoting economic development, the Festival is able to keep costs low because of generous donations from AT&T, Bank of America, and smaller New Haven businesses. The Festival’s digital component is also very accessible. The website has an animated, interactive feature called DAISY that enables visitors to customize their experience. Users choose a topic they would like to learn about, say “Civil Liberties” or “Literature”. DAISY will then map out smaller categories within that topic—like “free”, “online video”, or specific speakers—that users can click on and be directed to certain events, videos, or websites. The Festival also maintains a blog called The Blogfest that offers up-to-date news about upcoming artists and events.

The Festival’s fellowship program for high school sophomores and juniors also works to engage a younger, more diverse audience. It is a five-month program for at-risk students from public schools around New Haven designed to improve creative writing, communication, and critical thinking skills through weekly classroom sessions. From January 31st-June 30th, fellows go to performances and exhibits, write reviews, interview artists, create blogs, and analyze other media, like films. They also receive individual instruction throughout the program. During the festival, the fellows attend a number of events together (free of charge) and blog about their individual experiences. The Festival also offers Master Classes in the arts for adults all year long that are free of charge. Bristol Festival of Ideas The Bristol Festival of Ideas is called a festival, but it is not defined to a couple weeks. It aims to “stimulate people’s minds and passions with an inspiring program of discussion and debate throughout the year”.19 An initiative of the Bristol Creative Projects, the festival began in 2005 when the city of Bristol began its bid to be the Capital of Culture in 2008. Though it did not win the title, the Festival has enabled different organizations in Bristol to work together to build their community. The festival offers over 150 literary, arts, and science events throughout the

18 International Festival of Arts and Ideas: History. http://artidea.org/view_page.php?id=40 19 Bristol Festival of Ideas: About. http://www.ideasfestival.co.uk/?page_id=2

year and culminates in a concentrated week-long festival of debate and discussion in May (70 separate events are organized for the week in May). Committed to approaching controversial issues head-on and engaging widely in the city, sessions are hosted in historic venues all around Bristol. Broad themes are chosen each year for the festival (for example, the themes for 2010 were paranoia, animal rights, and inequality). Like New Haven’s International Festival of Arts and Ideas, the events for the Bristol Festival are priced separately and much more reasonably than TED, The Do Lectures, or AIF. A small selection of the sessions are available on the festival’s website. The Bristol Festival has financial backing from Arts Council England, Bristol City Council and Bristol’s business community.

The festival is also very adamant about their freedom of speech policy: “We believe that it is better to challenge provocative statements and positions in open fora rather than ban them, although notorious mavericks will not be invited simply in the name of controversy and debate. Fears or complaints that someone may be offensive will never be grounds for not inviting a speaker, or for banning a speaker once invited.”20 Like TED and the International Festival of Arts and Ideas, the Bristol Festival of Ideas awards outstanding participants. The festival partners with Foyles, the biggest independent bookseller in England, to host the Best Book of Ideas Prize, which is given to the author of any book that “presents new, important and challenging ideas, is rigorously argued, and is engaging and accessible.”21 Each year, the festival also runs the Bristol Genius series of events, which looks at the people and organizations working on breakthrough ideas in the local community. The Bristol Genius Award for the Best Bristol Idea is given to an idea in development or recently completed in Bristol. These ideas must have the potential to change the way people in Bristol live and think, provide new business opportunities, or transform culture, the environment, or justice. 22

20 Bristol Festival of Ideas: Freedom of Speech Policy. http://www.ideasfestival.co.uk/?page_id=43 21 Bristol Festival of Ideas: Book Prize. http://www.ideasfestival.co.uk/?page_id=40 22 Festival of Ideas launches the Bristol Genius Award for the Best Bristol Idea. http://www.ideasfestival.co.uk/?p=2674

Similar Organizations The Do Lectures

The Do Lectures, which began four years ago in Wales, are as much about inciting action as they are about cutting-edge ideas. Hosted twice a year (in Wales in the spring and a U.S. location in the fall), these conferences operate by the idea that “Ideas + Energy = Change”. Like TED, they promote inter-disciplinary learning by inviting speakers from diverse fields, including business, environmental subjects, technology, sports, design, food, and well-being. At The Do Lectures, the focus is on sustainable living and getting people to “go do”:

The idea is a simple one— that people who Do things can inspire the rest of us to go and Do things, too. So each year we invite a set of people down here to come and tell us what they Do. They can be small Do’s or big Do’s or just extraordinary Do’s. But when you listen to their stories, they light a fire in your belly to go and Do your thing, your passion, the thing that sits in the back of your head each day, just waiting, and waiting for you to follow your heart.23

Described as “TED meets Burning Man (an experimental art community in Nevada)

meets Where the Wild Things Are”24, The Do Lectures are more intimate than TED conferences. Held in fforest Farm in Cilgerran,Wales, the tranquil setting is a main attraction. The eighty invited attendees and thirty speakers sleep in furnished tents on raised wooden decks, with space to sit outside and “take in the view”. The fforest Lodge provides a communal space where everyone eats fresh, local food, relaxes, and listens to live music. The Guardian’s Digital Content Blog, PDA, wrote, “Maybe it was inevitable that the ‘unconference’ trend would combine with staycation and the unstoppable rise of the low-key festival, but that is exactly the cross section that meets where The Do Lectures happens.”25

Like the audience at TED conferences, the people who can actually attend The Do Lectures are an affluent bunch. The cost of a ticket to The Do Lectures is £1,500. Individuals can apply for a ticket or nominate others for selection through the website. In an attempt to be more inclusive, especially to students, the organization offers the “giving chair” program, which allows a business to pay for a student to go to one of the conferences. An artist then paints the chair the student will sit in with the business’s name to publicize what company paid for their ticket. After the conference, the chair is sold at an auction to raise money for The Do Lectures and the student holds a session at the donating business to tell them about what they learned.26

The Do Lectures also has a strong video and online component. Like the TEDTalks, the lectures are posted online for free viewing and reflect the public expectation that “we want to learn, be involved, talk, share ideas and generally have a two-way exchange with people we meet.”27 In this vein, the organization maintains a trendy blog called The Do Village that gives

23 The Do Lectures: About. http://dolectures.com/about/ 24 The Guardian. PDA: Digital Content Blog. “The Do Lectures and the new wave of unconferences.” http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2011/apr/05/the-do-lectures 25 Ibid. 26 The ‘giving chair’. http://blog.thedolectures.co.uk/2012/01/the-giving-chair/#more-1347 27 The Guardian. “The Do Lectures and the new wave of unconferences.”

the public more access to the information and the programs the organization offers. The Do Lectures is a non-profit, so to help pay for costs, it also sells fanfare online, including innovative posters and inspirational books. Aspen Ideas Festival The Aspen Ideas Festival (AIF), presented by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic, is an extension of the Institute’s mission to create opportunities for deep dialogue. Like TED, AIF is intended to be an “invigorating celebration of some of the liveliest minds on the stage today”28 and attracts an equally distinguished roster of presenters, including provocative writers, public officials, artists, scientists, business executives, scholars, economists, foreign policy specialists, and entrepreneurs.

The main difference between AIF and TED is that AIF is organized much more like school—attendees are encouraged to think of the event as “a week-long summer university for the mind” with some 300 speakers on the Institute’s campus in Aspen, Colorado.29 Divided into two overlapping four-day sessions in June and July every year, AIF offers three “plenary sessions” a day (panels, one-on-one interviews, and presentations); two “concurrent tutorial sessions” a day (where attendees choose from a menu of discussions); and many casual conversations, book signings, and “action-oriented discussions” between attendees and speakers. These sessions are designed around a series of “tracks”, which each have a variety of discussions and presentations relevant to a certain topic area. (For example, two different tracks for the 2012 program are “World Affairs: Democracy on Trial” and “Arts and Culture: Art Matters”)30. Attendees decide whether they would like to focus on a particular area of interest during their time or cover a lot of ground across a number of topics. There are also plenty of “Evening Exchanges” and other nightly events in the town of Aspen, like conversations with prominent journalists and speakers, film screenings, and performances. Like TED and many of the other idea conferences, AIF has been criticized for its exclusivity. While it does publish videos of the speakers online and viewers can subscribe to the AIF TV to watch the talks, a ticket to the festival costs $1,375 for students and anywhere from $2,750-$8,000 for other attendees. Viewers can also watch handpicked videos on the organization’s blog, AIF Blog. AIF is also more politically charged than TED and has been attacked by conservatives as an unsubstantial “annual orgy of techno-triumphalism and political self-seriousness.”31 International Festival of Arts and Ideas The International Festival of Arts & Ideas was established in 1996 by Anne Calabresi, Jean Handley and Roslyn Meyer. The founders envisioned an annual celebration in New Haven, Connecticut that differentiated itself from established arts festivals by its fusion of ideas and events. Their aim was to gather world-class artists and pre-eminent thinkers from around the

28 Aspen Ideas Festival: History and Highlights. http://www.aifestival.org/festival/about 29 Ibid. 30 AIF Program Tracks. http://www.aifestival.org/festival/tracks 31 Petersen, Charles. “Search and Destroy.” Bookforum. April-May 2011. http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/018_01/7325

world to highlight New Haven as a major arts destination. Over eighteen days in June, the festival, with its “signature inclination for brilliance, controversy, social cohesion, and fun”,32 brings internationally recognized names from over 75 countries, like Savion Glover, Little Richard, Michael Feinstein, Salman Rushdie, and lesser known artists. Like TED, the festival highlights its most exceptional speakers annually. The Visionary Leadership Award is given to honor visionary leaders whose trailblazing work has deep impact on the world. The festival has different goals than TED conferences, The Do Lectures, or AIF. While it does attract thinkers from various fields, it is much more focused on artistic expression and performance. Additionally, the festival is not concerned with every attendee having the same experience, like TED. An individual chooses what kind of performances he or she would like to experience, like an evening of opera on the New Haven Green, a traditional rendition of a Shakespeare tragedy, or an edgy slam poetry session by up-and-coming inner-city artists. However, the most striking difference is how seriously the festival takes its mission of engaging a diverse audience. There is no overall price for a ticket to the festival and 80% of the performances and talks are free (and those that are not are very reasonably priced). With a commitment to celebrating the local community and promoting economic development, the Festival is able to keep costs low because of generous donations from AT&T, Bank of America, and smaller New Haven businesses. The Festival’s digital component is also very accessible. The website has an animated, interactive feature called DAISY that enables visitors to customize their experience. Users choose a topic they would like to learn about, say “Civil Liberties” or “Literature”. DAISY will then map out smaller categories within that topic—like “free”, “online video”, or specific speakers—that users can click on and be directed to certain events, videos, or websites. The Festival also maintains a blog called The Blogfest that offers up-to-date news about upcoming artists and events.

The Festival’s fellowship program for high school sophomores and juniors also works to engage a younger, more diverse audience. It is a five-month program for at-risk students from public schools around New Haven designed to improve creative writing, communication, and critical thinking skills through weekly classroom sessions. From January 31st-June 30th, fellows go to performances and exhibits, write reviews, interview artists, create blogs, and analyze other media, like films. They also receive individual instruction throughout the program. During the festival, the fellows attend a number of events together (free of charge) and blog about their individual experiences. The Festival also offers Master Classes in the arts for adults all year long that are free of charge. Bristol Festival of Ideas The Bristol Festival of Ideas is called a festival, but it is not defined to a couple weeks. It aims to “stimulate people’s minds and passions with an inspiring program of discussion and debate throughout the year”.33 An initiative of the Bristol Creative Projects, the festival began in 2005 when the city of Bristol began its bid to be the Capital of Culture in 2008. Though it did not win the title, the Festival has enabled different organizations in Bristol to work together to build their community. The festival offers over 150 literary, arts, and science events throughout the

32 International Festival of Arts and Ideas: History. http://artidea.org/view_page.php?id=40 33 Bristol Festival of Ideas: About. http://www.ideasfestival.co.uk/?page_id=2

year and culminates in a concentrated week-long festival of debate and discussion in May (70 separate events are organized for the week in May). Committed to approaching controversial issues head-on and engaging widely in the city, sessions are hosted in historic venues all around Bristol. Broad themes are chosen each year for the festival (for example, the themes for 2010 were paranoia, animal rights, and inequality). Like New Haven’s International Festival of Arts and Ideas, the events for the Bristol Festival are priced separately and much more reasonably than TED, The Do Lectures, or AIF. A small selection of the sessions are available on the festival’s website. The Bristol Festival has financial backing from Arts Council England, Bristol City Council and Bristol’s business community.

The festival is also very adamant about their freedom of speech policy: “We believe that it is better to challenge provocative statements and positions in open fora rather than ban them, although notorious mavericks will not be invited simply in the name of controversy and debate. Fears or complaints that someone may be offensive will never be grounds for not inviting a speaker, or for banning a speaker once invited.”34 Like TED and the International Festival of Arts and Ideas, the Bristol Festival of Ideas awards outstanding participants. The festival partners with Foyles, the biggest independent bookseller in England, to host the Best Book of Ideas Prize, which is given to the author of any book that “presents new, important and challenging ideas, is rigorously argued, and is engaging and accessible.”35 Each year, the festival also runs the Bristol Genius series of events, which looks at the people and organizations working on breakthrough ideas in the local community. The Bristol Genius Award for the Best Bristol Idea is given to an idea in development or recently completed in Bristol. These ideas must have the potential to change the way people in Bristol live and think, provide new business opportunities, or transform culture, the environment, or justice. 36 !!!!!!!!!!!

34 Bristol Festival of Ideas: Freedom of Speech Policy. http://www.ideasfestival.co.uk/?page_id=43 35 Bristol Festival of Ideas: Book Prize. http://www.ideasfestival.co.uk/?page_id=40 36 Festival of Ideas launches the Bristol Genius Award for the Best Bristol Idea. http://www.ideasfestival.co.uk/?p=2674

"#$%&'()#*!+,&'-!