HUNDREDS of people gathered for Winchester's latest TEDx event and heard from a wide variety of speakers.
The fourth TEDx event in the city was held on Friday, June 14 at Winchester University's West Downs Campus.
The crowd heard from 11 speakers and was treated to a performance by the Winchester Ukrainian Cultural Association.
Each gave a fascinating talk around the theme of 'illuminate', covering topics such as business, art, healthcare, lighting and language.
The speakers were Tiffany St James, Pascal Matthias, Emily Monsell-Holden, Jennie Maizels, Mark Drury, Holly Budge, Richard Cheetham, Richard A Werner, Lesley Collier, James Poore and Maddy Thomson.
Maddy, consultant nurse in palliative medicine and clinical lead for end-of-life care at Winchester Hospice, spoke about society's attitude to death.
She said: “Why is it that we struggle to plan and treat our deaths as preciously as we treat our lives? How do we struggle to respect and provide consideration? We need to consider what really matters most to you sitting here today and I would suggest that we should be doing this within a compassionate community.
“When we get older, we have to think about making choices and that can be really difficult. We want to have control and plan our lives.” Maddy gave examples of caring for her father in the last days of his life.
Event organiser Jan Carlyle spoke about the theme for this year's event. She said: “Each year we choose a theme because we want to give the speakers something to frame their talks around.
"This year we chose Illuminate which we thought was a lovely way to highlight some of their ideas. Sometimes the audience can have a lightbulb moment when something sparks in their head and illuminates something.
"So we shared that with our designers and they thought it was a lovely theme to use. They used that idea in the design of all of the assets which was a new addition. Hopefully we're illuminating the speakers, their ideas and the community.”
For information about future events, visit tedxwinchester.com.
More than 230 people attended the event to see 12 speakers throughout the day.
The organisers thanked local partners for their support including Hampshire Chronicle, Dutton Gregory, the University of Winchester, We Mean This, Steadfast Collective, Rocket Launch, SBS Events and Curation.
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