TEDxKrakówCinema - a new initiative from TEDxKraków

We’ll be getting together to watch TEDTalks and TEDx talks and sharing the TED experience with Kraków

Each time we will focus on a different topic.

Why TEDTalks?

We’d like to create a comfortable space in Kraków for creative debates about the role of technology, education, human behaviour in creating a more harmonious future, where ideas are the source of intelligent and constructive collaboration rather than conflict.

This month

"Tell me what you eat and I'll tell you who you are" - this proverb is a good summary of the March edition TEDxKrakówCinema. Mindful of the upcoming Easter holidays, we chose a theme familiar to us all - food.

The event was hosted, by Ewa Spohn, TEDxKraków curator, who is a big fan of cooking and eating. The three TEDTalks that we watched led to an interesting discussion. We talked about the problem of nutrition over time in many countries around the world. The inspiration was provided by Carolyn Steel’s talk "How food shapes our cities?", during which she showed the everyday journey needed to provide food to a city like London, where every day, over 30 million meals are served. The topic moved on to how to transport food in ancient world shaped the way that the modern world developed. After TEDTalks we discussed whether and why we need to know where the food we eat comes from. Is there any point to knowing the people who supply your food? We wondered about the differences, and the circulation of food in rural and urban society. The discussion touched on farmers markets, the slow food movement, and bottom-up initiatives such as the Krakowska Kooperatywa Spożywcza (Krakow Food Cooperative).

We then we moved to the more contemporary problem of malnutrition in the United States and watched Jamie Oliver’s passionate presentation of this problem and his idea for how it can be fixed.

Our participants agreed that Poland doesn’t yet have as big a problem with obesity and poor nutrition as the U.S, but recognised that we must keep in mind the issue of healthy eating so that the next generation does not loose the ability to eat properly. This chef showed us how food is such an important part of our everyday lives.

We ended the evening on a positive note with Pam Warhurst’s brilliant demonstration that our urban landscape does not have to consist only of the aesthetic and purely functional aspects. It can also be used for educational and environmental purposes. Pam’s project led to the planting of edible plants – fruits, vegetables and herbs – on wasteland in her town of Todmorden in the north of England, creating an ‘edible Todmoden’. They did this all without seeing any permission, writing of reports or help from the local authorities. Along with the volunteers, she managed to transform areas of urban wasteland in vegetable gardens and Todmorden is now a town where the residents can enjoy as much of their new vegetation as possible, thereby changing the status and the issue of food in the English community.

The discussion ended at 20.30 to be allow us to move downstairs – as we do every month – to continue the discussion in Klub Pauza.