TedxYouth@ISMonaco – an international success!

Thanks to the magic of live streaming, Monaco’s first-ever TEDx Youth event was hosted by ISM on February 13th.

As you may know, TEDx is an international community that organises TED-style speaker events around the world, celebrating locally-driven ideas and elevating them to a global stage. ISM’s 90-minute live event was watched by more than 100 viewers from the US, UK, Monaco and France and drew enthusiastic feedback and reviews. The topic was “Mistakes that change(d) the world”. Ten student speakers, aged 11 to 17, gave their own personal take on how errors, both big and small, can have huge, unforeseen consequences.

With the photogenic backdrop of Port Hercule behind the speakers, the event was broadcast live on Google Meet and animated by two student MCs, with musical breaks provided by ISM Voices under the direction of Ms. Colette Marx-Neilsen. The song lyrics “Better Than This,” originally recorded by Paloma Faith, were rewritten by Ms. Marx-Neilsen and carried a strong pro-environmental message. Special thanks to Mr. Matt Richards, an art teacher at ISM, for crafting our three-dimensional red and white logo structure. Lead organisers included Ms. Hannah Gettel (Assistant Head of Secondary School), and co-curators Emily Rameau (a Year 13 student) and Alicia Sedgwick, a corporate communications coach and three-time Master of Ceremonies for TEDxMonteCarlo, who also coached all 10 student speakers and the MCs both in person and online.

The ISM event was filmed and broadcast by Julien Geay and his team from Solid Rusk Production, who will now edit each of the talks to be uploaded to the global TEDx channel that has nearly 30 million subscribers.

After around 18 months in the making, due to the event being originally planned as an in-person event for last October but changed due to Covid restrictions, ISM is very proud of the combined efforts of students, teachers, the school administration and parents who made this online version of the event a success in spite of the global pandemic. We would like to particularly thank our event’s gold sponsors Hill Robinson Yacht Management, ICT Partners Monaco, and the ISM Parent Teacher Association as well as special support from Nike Monaco, TEDxMonteCarlo and Stars’n’Bars. Thank you to everyone who was involved in making this event possible!