Ideas Worth Spreading

Theme: Transforming Traditions
Description: No one can doubt that we are currently experiencing one of the most rapidly transforming periods in human history. Many feel that the pace of change can only increase, with radical implications for every social institution in every culture. And yet there are also signs of strength in continuing traditions, too. This TEDxASB event highlights several traditional arts and practices in contemporary India that are being transformed in order for them to continue to be relevant to new generations of people. At the same time, these traditions are also transformative in the way that they continue to touch and inspire people who come into contact with them.
 

_Title: Rejuvenating government schools
Description: A lack of infrastructure, missing teachers and poor quality of education in government schools keep many parents from sending their children to school, especially girls. In rural Rajasthan, only 1 in 100 girls makes it to class 12 and only 15% of children can read a simple story. In her presentation Educate Girls founder Safeena Husain will demonstrate with practical, first-hand experience how she creates a sustainable environment for empowerment within the communities that will thus lead to systemic change in the Indian educational scenario.

_ Title: Not quite Avatar_
Description: How the discourse of transforming traditions looks at human beings very cosmetically.....we change superficially but not systemically .....how the 'global' template is actually a 'linear' template that is being imposed on other 'linear cultures' and the Indian cyclical culture....how this is cultural imperialism is institutionalized and so faceless....we do not even realize we are the imperialist....to demonstrate this the talk will show how the internet Avatar and the James Cameroon Avatar have nothing to do with the Hindu concept of Avatar...Vishnu is not Batman!....and yet that is the global assumption where the Indian view, which is the source, is gagged and mocked and comes across as aberration.
 

_Title: Transforming Perceptions of Classical
Description: A teacher's pain created new music.  The artists of Tālavya share the story of their maestro, teacher and composer - Pandit Divyang Vakil as he set to transform perceptions of Indian classical music and perform a segment of his work that emerged from the process.

 

__Title: Erosion of cultural identities
Description: In his presentation, Hinesh Jethwani will talk about how the world is slowly losing hold of age-old, cherished cultural practices due to rapid modernization and a increasingly prevalent self-centered perspective. The desire to surge ahead, no matter what the implications, is eroding cultural identities as we know it.
 
Hinesh talks about the importance of retaining cultural identities, and will describe his endeavor to retain the age-old craft of hand painted Bollywood movie posters. His two year old venture Indian Hippy, works with some of the last few surviving Bollywood movie poster artists in India with a core social responsibility and commitment towards breathing fresh life into this virtually extinct art form, and in doing so, provide a means of employment to the last surviving artists in the trade.