Amy Hughes, a 4th year International Relations student, is this year’s TEDxUoN’s president. Being in the “uni-bubble”, we often forget that there are important issues and ideas that need to be discussed. TEDx gives students opportunities to hear about these issues and ideas with the involvement of the local community, guest speakers at their big events and other students. Having come back from her year abroad, Amy also shares her experiences and how this has impacted her views on education.
What is TED?
TED, itself, started in Canada as a big conference that puts on people who are high up in their fields to be able to talk in an accessible basis and be able to kind of share ideas. I mean, the tagline itself is “Ideas Worth Spreading”. So, it’s all about getting people up who have interesting things to say and providing a platform. But TEDx is what we are. We’re not officially affiliated with them so we have our own autonomy in terms of being able to choose the speakers we want and things like that, so it’s slightly different.
What do you think are the benefits of being part of a society like TEDx?
I love it for its pure ability to give you the opportunity to meet really interesting people in the local community and getting them to speak in a public domain. And getting people inspired, that’s what I love about it so much. And there’s the organisation side of it as well – it gives you so many life skills like organising a team. And the people you meet are just fantastic and the experience is just so much fun!
TED has helped bring attention to a lot of current issues and ideas. What would you say has been the most important or eye opening concept that TED has taught you?
Oh that’s a tricky one! Last year, I worked with a social enterprise called Pulp Friction. A woman whose daughter had learning disabilities basically set it up and her daughter wanted a job, to work. So this was set up so they could sell smoothies on bikes (and by that, I mean, pedal-powered smoothie bar!) and they made this into a business model. They went from markets to markets doing this and it’s just a fantastic project! We were lucky enough to have them at our TED event last year and have this woman, who helped this get off the ground, and talk to us about this. That, for me, was very eye opening but we’ve had incredible speakers. Just last year, we had Sir Peter Mansfield! It was such a pleasure to have him as well at our big event. But I think it’s the variety of speakers that’s really great with organisation and societies like this.
If you could do a talk, what would your topic be and why?
I actually did my own mini-TED talk last Wednesday! As a society, we do a talk every week and someone leads it but it’s not necessarily a TED talk. I did mine on
education and new paradigm shifts that we need. Ken Robinson, Geoff Canada and a few other people who have really gone out looking for new solutions and what we can do now instead of looking at the future massively inspire me. That was really interesting because I also spent 2 months in Thailand over the summer teaching in a school. It was such a fantastic experience! And not just culturally but also in terms of education, it gave me so much autonomy! It was so much fun and I was seeing results from being active.
Why did you choose to go to Thailand?
I chose Thailand cause I had spent the year in Malaysia studying. I travelled from Malaysia to Thailand and just fell in love with the place. I had a few friends there so I just thought it would be a great opportunity to teach! And to do it with the British Council as well was just a fantastic experience!
Is there any other place you’d want to go to?
Everywhere! I think that’s the problem with studying International Relations, you just end up wanting to go everywhere (laughs)! But I definitely want to go to South America. I think that’s next on my bucket list. Obviously, I want to also go back to Southeast Asia but I think I might challenge myself by going further away!
I’ve heard that there are many upcoming events that students should look forward to. Can you tell us about some of them?
Obviously, we have our weekly meetings that are always great fun. They are student-led and anyone can get involved with that. It’s always a great debate and discussions so definitely give that a go! But our big event coming up this term is on the 6th November and it’s going to be on the theme fusion of science and arts. We have people from the local community, people from the University of Nottingham itself as well as Nottingham Trent. We’ll hopefully have some performance acts too and we’re still building it up! It’s going to be a really exciting evening!