The first ever TEDxAlbertopolis will be held in the Royal Albert Hall.

Featuring a series of inspiring and engaging talks across a wide range of issues, this half-day event will be an unparalleled celebration of the artistic and scientific cultures which flourish in the South Kensington community. TEDx events are run under license from TED, a nonprofit formed to disseminate “ideas worth spreading" through a series of prestigious annual conferences and an extraordinary database of recorded talks.

Drawing on the rich history of Albertopolis, the event will take inspiration from the area's founding principle, led by Prince Albert and its origins in the Great Exhibition , that the arts and sciences should work side by side for the public good. It is deeply fitting that such an event will take place at the Royal Albert Hall, the world's most famous stage. Speakers from a wide range of disciplines will share their unique perspective on the space where art and science meet. 

Those appearing at this year's TEDxAlbertopolis include Professor Dame Sally Davies—the Chief Medical Officer for England—, David Braben FREng—computer game designer and co-founder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, and many more.

TEDxAlbertopolis is aimed at students and professionals, academics and non­academics, families and young people alike: if you have a curious mind, TEDxAlbertopolis will be for you.

Speakers include:

Max Barclay is a Collections Manager at the Natural History Museum, responsible for one of the largest, oldest and most important beetle collections in the world, comprising some 22,000 drawers of specimens dating back to Captain Cook’s ‘Endeavour’ voyages, and including collections made by Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, and countless other notable explorers of the 19th and 20th centuries. Max and his team strive to make this priceless resource as accessible as possible, and it is consulted by several hundred people a year, not just entomologists (insect specialists), but also climatologists, ecologists, biomimetics specialists and artists seeking inspiration from nature. With more than 400,000 named species, beetles comprise around 20% of known biodiversity; one in five living organisms is a beetle. The collection is still being enhanced, and Max has been on field trips to remote tropical rainforests and mountain ranges in many countries and has discovered a wealth of new species, 50 of which have been named in his honour by scientists around the world.

 Hannah Redler is currently Head of Media Space and Arts Programme at the Science Museum, London. As well as her Science Museum role in Albertopolis, Hannah has worked as a researcher and consultant with a number of UK arts organisations including Tate Modern, South Bank Centre, NESTA and Modern Art Oxford and as a reviewer for the Wellcome Trust and EPSRC. Hannah also co-founded and was Co-director of Studio Fish Digital Media between 1993 and 1998. She trained at Camberwell and Norwich schools of art, obtaining her BA (HONS) degree in Fine Art: Painting in 1991, and at the Royal College of Art, London, where in 1997 she achieved the MA (RCA) in Curating Contemporary Art.

 A designer and entrepreneur, Roland Lamb moved to a monastery in Japan at the age of eighteen to practice Zen Buddhism, and then traveled extensively, working as a visual artist and jazz musician. A passion for cross-cultural thought brought him to Harvard, where he concentrated on Classical Chinese and Sanskrit philosophy, before studying in the Design Products department at the RCA. Roland is the founder and CEO of ROLI, a technology startup, and inventor the patent-pending SEA Interface sensor technology, a disruptive platform hardware innovation that enables high-resolution pressure sensors to be shaped to any form factor. He also designed the first application of the SEA Interface—the Seaboard GRAND—a musical instrument that re-imagines the keyboard as a sensitive, soft three-dimensional surface that enables unprecedentedly intuitive manipulation of the fundamental characteristics of sound.

 "I was keen to speak at TEDxAlbertopolis because the invention I will speak about - a new musical instrument called the Seaboard - was developed at the Royal College of Art with the help of engineers at Imperial, and so I feel a special connection with the place. I can’t imagine a better context for sharing the story of inventing the Seaboard with a broad community."

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COMPETITION: Win 1x Pair of tickets to TED x Albertopolis on23 rd September- we have 2 pairs of seats in the circle to give away! To enter the competition, send an email to katie@run-riot.com with the correct answer in the ‘subject’ box. The winner will be randomly selected.

Q: The Great Exhibition took place in what year?

A: 1)1850 2)18513)1800 2)1805