Theme: Ctrl + Alt + Del

Our mission is to uncover, support and promote ideas worth spreading. With this in mind, TEDxWolverhampton 2021 will be exploring ‘control’ within society, ‘alternative ways’ of thinking and ideas, approaches and concepts that have been or need ‘deleting’ to enable us and our communities to grow and thrive.
At TEDxWolverhampton 2021 we’re exploring ideas that challenge, turn long held and accepted norms on their heads, challenge the status quo and reset and reboot our thinking.
So, get ready to challenge your old ways of thinking and open your mind to ideas worth sharing!

Arena Theatre
Wulfruna Street
Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, WV1 1SE
United Kingdom

Anne Scrimshaw

Engineer and Artist

Engineer, Artist, Ex-International Racing driver, Scrapheap Challenge star, avid collector of knowledge, and a maker of weird and wonderful things! She currently runs the Fab Lab at Sandwell College and loves to know how things work and that includes thehuman body!

Chris Burden

Teacher, Social Activist and Councillor

Chris is a proud Wulfrunian, and University of Birmingham and Wolverhampton alumnus. They are a teacher of Modern Foreign Languages and a social activist, campaigning for numerous issues including youth engagement in politics, LGBTQ+ liberation, and environmental causes. Chris is particularly interested in the voices of the largely unheard working-class voices in the debate around LGBTQ+ liberation, and wishes to bring their own experience of these issues to a wider audience.

Gina Patel

Disability Rights Activist, Personal Assistant and Young Combined Authority Portfolio Co-Lead for Skills & Digital

Gina Patel is passionate and proud to work for the NHS as a Personal Assistant at Health Education England and is Portfolio Co-Lead for Skills and Digital on the West Midlands Young Combined Authority. She is a young woman with Cerebral Palsy (Hemiplegia) and Epilepsy who is an ardent disability rights activist by wanting to use her voice for good. She inspires to be a positive role model for all people with disabilities to convey that anything is possible if you put your mind to it. She is strong-minded in ensuring no one goes through the same situations in life that she has personally gone through and continues to do so. She is committed to breaking down barriers through educating others on the disability perception and the need for inclusion as a whole!

Kupid Val-Essone

Youth Mentor and Recording and Performance Artist

Kupid is a Youth Mentor and International Recording & Performing Artist who specialises in engaging young people through improvisation, tailored activities and conversations around social & emotional wellbeing and personal development. He is passionate about challenging stereotypes, changing perceptions of young people, building relationships and promoting healthy mindsets through early intervention and restorative practice. Kupid prides himself in sharing an honest message through his music and extends his positive practices through every area of his life. Many of the young people and artists who Kupid has worked with have been affected by rejection and have found a variety of ways to overcome and/or avoid future rejection. In his talk, Kupid will explore the different ways we feel rejection, our cognitive reaction to it and what it sounds like at different stages of our life.

Lisa Burbidge-Brown

Lecturer and Entrepreneur

Lisa started her career in marketing for a multi-national company before reading BA (Hons) Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Wolverhampton. She then went on to complete a PGCE in Post-Compulsory Education and started her academic career in Further Education colleges teaching media, film and advertising, gaining QTLS status. After leaving the FE Sector in 2011, Lisa went on to become a freelance video producer and started her own small business in specialised event catering and management, developing a successful brand alongside writing and blogging. Lisa then went on to complete a postgraduate qualification in Enterprise Management from the University of Birmingham and a Certificate in Digital Marketing through the Open University. Lisa joined the University of Wolverhampton Business School in 2018 as a Lecturer in Digital Marketing and Enterprise and is currently working towards a Professional Doctorate in Education (Educational Enquiry)

Millie Gould

Activist

Putting the ACT in Activist

Nathan John

Entrepreneur and Author

Nathan John is a student turned teacher of self-motivation and personal development. From humble beginnings, born in Wolverhampton, and following 20 years’ experience in the British Army, degrees from Kings College London, Northumbria Business School and the Open University, Nathan is a natural entrepreneur and has built several businesses including a property portfolio and media company. His debut book, Decision Point: The First Book You Read if You Want To Succeed, it is a culmination of his personal development journey and a synthesis of his best lessons for success. Nathan has fused practical human psychology with his own research to support and develop colleagues and clients to achieve their own successes. Now mentor to others, Nathan loves nothing more than to support and empower others to realise and chart a path to life’s ultimate goal is – happiness.

Pamilerin Beckley

Storyteller

Pamilerin Beckley is a gifted communicator with an insatiable passion for storytelling. Be it a critically acclaimed documentary like Searching for Sugarman, Toni Morrison’s book The Bluest Eye or John Lewis’ forever touching Christmas campaigns, storytelling in all varieties, excite her. As the Architect of Stories of The Haven, Wolverhampton, she engages with various stakeholders to explore how their stories can be told, through digital mediums, as a catalyst for change.

Pranav Patel

Educator, Speaker and Author

Pranav Patel has 17 years of teaching experience working recently as an assistant principal. He has an exciting career in leadership; leading standards; behaviour; data; professional development, and curriculum. His NPQSL project was to lead whole-school coaching and has been a successful coach for over a decade. Pran has suffered from depression, anxiety and sleeplessness for much of his life; he firmly believes that we should accept and embrace these issues as illnesses. As such he firmly stands as a mental health advocate, he recently featured in the BBC documentary ‘Why teaching is making me ill’ and has spoken openly about the pressure of the education sector. As a man of colour, Pran ascribes as a member of the ‘Global Majority’. While at university in the year 2000 he started his journey on the anti-racist road. In his TEDx talk ‘Decolonise the Curriculum’ he describes the moment he realised that the world was tiered away from authentic truth, starting with school curriculums.

Rebecca Allen

Educator

Becca studied to be a primary school teacher. Since graduating, instead of teaching in the classroom, she has spent several years working in various countries across Europe and in Canada with children and young adults who have varying abilities and support needs. She aspires to one day either work in an outdoor school for physically disabled children, or live in a countryside cottage and write novels. Becca is passionate about inclusivity and driving change for acceptance, awareness and celebration of both those within the autistic community, and those who identify as “different”.