TEDxBrighton 2013 speaker line-up unveiled

The full programme for the sold-out TEDxBrighton conference of ideas is announced, and this year’s speaker line-up welcomes a blend of broadcasters, environmentalists, rapper comedians and entrepreneurs.

Highlight speakers set to explore this year’s theme ‘pass it on’, include award-winning architect, University of Brighton lecturer and environmental campaigner, Duncan Baker-Brown. Baker-Brown designed ‘The House That Kevin Built’ with Kevin McCloud in 2008, the UK’s first prefabricated house made almost entirely of organic ‘compostable’ material. He is currently working with the Faculty of Art, City College Brighton and Hove, Mears and Brighton & Hove City College, on the UK’s first building made almost entirely of waste & surplus material – the Brighton Waste House.

Other speakers include Xuē Xīnrán, a British-Chinese journalist and founder of The Mother’s Bridge of Love (MBL), which reaches out to Chinese children in all corners of the world by creating a bridge of understanding between China and the West. MBL also wants to help bridge the huge poverty gap, which still exists in many parts of China. The MBL book for adoptive families also came third in TIME magazine’s list of the top ten children’s books of 2007.

Konrad Brits is the founder and managing director of Falcon Coffees, a UK based green coffee trading company. Over the last 20 years Brits has worked throughout sub Saharan Africa and Central America, seeking to build collaborative supply chains between rural coffee farmers and roasting companies around the world.

Choreographer, dancer and educator, Subathra Subramaniam, will also take to the podium to explore her role as co-director of the Youth Programme for Cape Farewell, a project which brings together young people, artists, scientists and educators to raise awareness about climate change through dance.

Head of McCann Pioneers at McCann Worldgroup, Nikki Crumpton has engineered some of the most recognisable ad campaigns on modern television, from the Shreddies’ ‘Knitting Nanas’’ to Bisto’s ‘Aahh night’. She’ll discuss how families, and the cultural attitudes that surround them, help develop strong cultural connections in advertising.

Mick Taylor, a former teacher of mathematics with a PhD in mathematical epidemiology, will tackle the way human systems and the design of our money supply impact on all aspects of human life. Mick is also the founder of OurFest, a not-for-profit festival with a flat organisational hierarchy.

TEDxBrighton will feature live speakers from a range of backgrounds, interests, disciplines and perspectives, combined with some classic TEDTalks.