The Beatbox Collective
With over 10 years of battling at the top level, performing and teaching worldwide and individually pioneering their art form. The Beatbox Collective is comprised of the leading beatbox artists in the UK Ball-Zee, Bass6, Bellatrix, BFG, Experimental, Hobbit and MC Zani. Each credited for their respective styles and statuses, they have merged to form incredibly high impact and energetic shows and were recently crowned as the official World Beatbox Champions in 2015. Ranging from live music production of all genres, physical theatrics and crowd participation, no two shows are ever the same!
Originally commissioned by Shambala festival in 2011 they formed to build an exclusive main stage performance and went on to have done the rounds of the festival circuit for 5 years now with Glastonbury, Boomtown Fair, Bestival, Lovebox, Secret Garden Party, Boom Bap and many more under their belt, including a self written and produced 5* show and sell out show at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2016.
Executive Director Translator Without Borders
Aimee Ansari is CEO of Translators Without Borders, and has worked in several humanitarian crises from the Tajik civil war to the earthquake in Haiti, the conflicts in the Balkans to the Syrian refugee crisis and the conflict in South Sudan.
As she says: "Clearly information in the right language at the right time in the right format is crucial. Illiteracy means that even if you have access to the internet and the wealth of knowledge available on-line, you can’t use it. If it’s not in your language than it’s even less useful. Unless you have good machine translation."
Anna Freeman
Anna Freeman is a novelist, a multiple poetry slam champion, a creative writing lecturer at Bath Spa University and a producer for Bristol Old Vic. Her work is funny, slightly twisted and explores personal and social neuroses.
It’s about the messy, ridiculous, glorious state of being human and the need to laugh at ourselves, often. Her first poetry collection, Gingering the World from the Inside, is published by Burning Eye Books. Anna’s first novel, The Fair Fight, is a pulsating historical adventure set within the world of female prize-fighters and their patrons in 18th century Bristol. The Fair Fight won The Tibor Jones Pageturner Prize 2013, is published by W&N in the UK and by Riverhead in the USA, and has been optioned for TV drama by the BBC.
Ashley Kolaya
Ashley is a Program Manager for TED-Ed, TED’s global youth and education initiative, whose mission is to spark and celebrate the ideas of youth and educators around the world. Working with the thousands of students in the TED-Ed Clubs program, Ashley has the honour of helping to develop and share the next generation of ideas worth spreading.
Ashley cut her teeth as a passionate advocate for youth voices during her time as a Senior Director for the YMCA’s national civic engagement program, Youth in Government. Prior to joining TED, Ashley served as Co-Founder and Managing Partner of HumanMomentum, a leadership and team development consultancy, where she worked with teams at GE, Etsy, and NYU to build stronger teams and organisational culture.
Ashley received a Master’s degree in Public Policy and Organisational Management at New York University.
Author and Vlogger
Charlie McDonnell is a Vlogger, Filmmaker and Musician from Bath, who currently resides in London. Charlieissocoollike currently has 2.3m subscribers and Charlie has 686k twitter followers, 201k on Instagram and 313k Facebook followers. Charlie, who started posting YouTube videos in 2007, became the first Video Blogger in the UK to reach one million YouTube subscribers. Beyond his own channel, Charlie has worked on many online video projects, notably "Science of Attraction," hosted by Derren Brown, and a vlog series from behind the scenes of Doctor Who for the BBC. He's also worked with many brands to produce videos for his own channel, including Microsoft, Pixar and Disney and is a regular participant in Radio 1's Internet Takeover show. Charlie's new book 'Fun Science' - A guide to life, the universe and why science is so awesome.
Explorer, founder of Raleigh International
Having organised and led over 100 expeditions, John Blashford-Snell has built up a reputation as one of the world’s most renowned and highly respected explorers.
In 1968 Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia invited the British Army to send a team to explore and make the first descent of the infamous Blue Nile. His ventures had strong environmental, medical and scientific objectives, which led to JBS and his colleagues forming the Scientific Exploration Society in 1969, their aim being to ‘foster and encourage scientific exploration worldwide’.
In 1978 JBS, with support of Prince Charles, launched Operation Raleigh and by 1992 over 10,000 young men and women from 50 nations had taken part in challenges and worthwhile expeditions all over the world, returning home as true young pioneers intent on putting something back into their own communities.
Ed Greig
Ed Greig is the Disruptor at Deloitte Digital, his team’s job is to look at new technology and work out how it can deliver value for clients. Deloitte Digital do this by working collaboratively and iteratively to build proofs of concept and minimum viable products that demonstrate tangible benefits, that can then be scaled into enterprise solutions. Virtual Reality is one of the most exciting and active areas that the team are investigating, with a number of projects underway and completed, addressing a variety of business uses. Ed’s current favourite things to do in VR are scaling Chinese cliffs in The Climb, landing at space ports in Elite Dangerous, spattering friends with paint in Rec Room and creating 3D musical paintings in TiltBrush.
BBC Security Correspondent
A fluent Arabic speaker, Frank Gardner chose Arabic & Islamic Studies and went on to live with the Bedouin in Jordan. His fascination with the region continues today.
In 2004 Frank and his cameraman Simon were ambushed by terrorists while filming in Saudi Arabia. Simon was killed and Frank survived with extensive injuries. Returning to work, he was awarded the OBE by HM The Queen in 2005 for services to journalism, awarded Honorary Doctorates of Laws by six British universities and voted Journalist of the Year in the European Diversity Awards.
Holly Tarquini
Holly Tarquini has spent the last 5 years increasing the profile of Bath Film Festival, helping to achieve the organisation’s aim of becoming an ‘outstanding film festival’. In 2014, Holly founded the F-Rating, a new feminist film rating that aims to highlight films made by and featuring women, which is now rolling out across the UK.
Imandeep Kaur
Immy Kaur is co-founder of ImpactHub Birmingham.
Impact Hub Birmingham is a network of citizens, makers, doers, entrepreneurs, activists and dreamers committed to building a better Birmingham and better world. Impact Hub Birmingham launched and successfully crowdfunded over £65,000 on Kickstarter, with more than 650 people backing the #EpicBrum campaign. It's part of a global association of more than 80 communities around the world in over 70 cities, with over 12,000 members all with a shared focus on creating positive impact.
Immy is Director of Project 00 [zero zero], and was one of the original founding team members that produced Birmingham’s first ever TEDx.
Jacob Dunne
Jessica Ridgers
Jess works for Designability, the new name of the Bath Institute of Medical Engineering. Her passion for human-centred design makes her the perfect designer to research the unmet needs of people with illnesses or disabilities that limit their independence. She is currently working on a device to prompt people with dementia through everyday tasks, a medication reminder for children and the controls of an autonomous vehicle for older people.
Maia Eyre-Morgan
Maia Eyre-Morgan won a competition set by TEDxYouth@Bath to give a talk at the 2016 event. Out of all the entrants, hers stood out the most. We expect great things from her!
Martin Bowman
Martin Bowman coordinates volunteers around the UK to harvest fruit and vegetables that otherwise would have been wasted on farms, and redistribute them to charities like FareShare and FoodCycle. From 2012-15, the Gleaning Network saved over 2 million portions of fruit and veg for charity with over 1000 volunteers, and was featured on Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall primetime shows, as well as in the Guardian, Independent and BBC Radio 4. Over the next three years From Farm to Fork, run jointly by Feedback and FoodCycle, will train more than 4,000 young people (18-24) to reclaim unharvested fruits and vegetables through gleaning, and to turn surplus food into delicious, nutritious three-course meals to be shared with vulnerable people.
Ronan Finnegan
At the age of just 21, Ronan Finnegan is creating charitable iPhone apps that incorporate donating into our daily lives. Ronan founded his company, orDonate, in October 2013 (whilst he was still a pupil at Beechen Cliff, Bath). He has grown up in Bath and lives in Marshfield just outside of the city. orDonate are creating iPhone apps that push users to donate when they usually would not.
orDonate’s first app, WAKEorDONATE is an iOS alarm clock app that makes users donate to their chosen charity if they decide to press ‘snooze’ rather than waking up on time in the morning! The app is live on Apple’s App Store, and has been very successful. Ronan has won TalkTalk’s fundraising digital hero award, and has been spoken about in media worldwide – he has even been the topic of conversation around Channel 4’s Come Dine With Me dining table!
Founder of Craftivist Collective
Sarah Corbett grew up in an activist family and has worked as a professional campaigner for 6 years most recently with Oxfam. She started doing craftivism (craft + activism) in 2008 as a reaction to traditional aggressive or quick forms of activism. Due to demand Sarah set up the global Craftivist Collective in 2009 which now has thousands of supporters across the world taking part in her craftivism projects. This hobby has turned her into one of the leading spokespeople in the craftivism movement and regularly gives talks & lectures around the world. Sarah works with art institutions such as V&A, Southbank & National Portrait Gallery as well as charities such as Save the Children & Unicef and has also collaborated with cult jewellers Tatty Devine & Secret Cinema amongst others. Sarah also sells products, delivers workshops & exhibits her own craftivism work around the world. Her book “A Little Book
Stephanie Millward
Paralympian
Steph Millward is one of the most experienced Para-Swimmers on the British team having won a total of 10 Paralympic medals including two gold. At the beginning of her career, she was on the fringes of the British international able-bodied team before being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when she was 17 years old - and fought back to make the Paralympic finals in Beijing, London and Rio.
Illustrator, author and cartoonist
Steven Appleby is an absurdist creator of comic strips for many newspapers, including The Guardian, The Observer, The Times and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. His other works include animated television series Captain Star; the musical play Crocs In Frocks; over 25 books, including Normal Sex and Miserable Families; the BBC Radio 4 series, Steven Appleby’s Normal Life, as well as paintings and drawings for numerous exhibitions. He contributed drawings to the sleeve of Pixies album Tromp Le Monde and illustrated The Good Inn, by Black Francis & Josh Frank. Steven lives, works and daydreams in London.
Will Sandry
Will became the Mayor of Bath in June 2015, and made mental health a key issue during his term in office. Will has campaigned with the Liberal Democrats in Oldfield ward for many years, and was first elected as a Councillor in May 2007.
Will has lived in Oldfield Park since 1997 and has lived on St Kilda’s Road since 1999.
Professionally, Will has worked as an engineer on the Combe Down Stone Mines Project, and then moved on to work with the Engineering and Construction division of Wessex Water; based at Claverton Down. He currently works in the field of Corporate Assurance for a FTSE 100 company.