Our TEDxGosport speakers surprised us with a joint speech of thanks on our celebration night, 15th September. We just had to share their words with you… Enjoy.
Vikki
Think of the person whose face…lit up on that stage!
You did that. Thirteen strangers you’d never met a few months ago, who you’ve now heard from or seen almost every day since. Remember that first awkward social…It would have been easy for you to decide who we were then, file our face under the scripts lady, the trolley guy, the tree man, the villager, the grandpa. You didn’t do that.
Every time one of us struggled, wobbled or had any self-doubt, you looked again.
You didn’t file us each away. You looked again, and made us stay.
Jodie
Two months ago, the thirteen of us didn’t know each other, and we didn’t know you.
On Saturday, we stood on a big red dot and did something amazing. Some of us did it for personal reasons, some because we had an important idea to share. Some for the challenge and some because it was a dream. We all put on a performance…
There is a hidden cost to performing. I still perform sometimes… and now I don’t do it as much as I want to! The TEDx stage gave me a different way to perform.
The first time our idea was shared, it wasn’t from the stage. It was to a panel and you said “yes”. You didn’t say yes to the polished performance but to something that you saw in all of us. It was acceptance and it made all of this possible.
You made the hardest part feel light, our masks came off under the spotlight.
Julian
What will your story be?
You brought us together in our stories, cultivating our narratives and nurturing our confidence to enable a legacy for friends, communities, families and, indeed, generations. You reached out, touched and embraced us, making one of thirteen and thirteen in one. Our past together will prove a secure bedrock of future possibility.
You gave us gifts of care and experience, how rich shall be the ensuing inheritance.
Yemi
We celebrate the courage it takes to start over. But we rarely talk about what we lose every time we do.
And perhaps that is one of the greatest gifts you gave us: we never had to keep starting over. Every rehearsal built on the one before it. Every note, every conversation, every bit of encouragement carried something forward. You remembered our ideas, our nerves, our breakthroughs and sometimes the words we had forgotten ourselves.
By the time we stepped onto that red dot, we weren’t thirteen people starting from scratch. We were standing on everything you had helped us build.
You held the thread from start to end, so none of us had to begin again
Anna
Whose script is this?
For me and I expect for many others in the room, for years, the answer was somebody else’s: the teacher’s, the company’s, a version of good that we didn’t choose.
Although you literally helped us with our talk scripts, none of you handed us somebody else’s idea of what a good talk looks like. You gave us space to write our own success scripts and supported us every step of the way.
You never once told us how to succeed, you just made room for whatever we’d need.
Jimmy
Adulting is tough but as you know, my advice is to climb a tree.
All those years ago my dad hung a rope for me and you did the same job. By the time I walked out onto that stage, all I needed to do was climb. When I got up my TED Tree, I found my 12 fellow TEDx talkers and a whole team of people than enabled our success. Once again I found that connection doesn’t always show up where you expect it to.
You hung that rope so that we wouldn’t fall, you helped climb it so we could all stand tall.
Emma
As you know, I am a gold digger
My whole method comes down to two things. Name the rock. Then find the gold.
That is what you have done for us and oh boy, did you enable us to find the gold. Every one of us handed you a rock at some point. A partly formed idea, a dodgy draft, some nerves or self doubt. But you never once just left it there. You kept digging.
You looked past the rock, calm and bold. You made us dig until we hit gold.
Aditi
What kind of villager am I?
I spent years waiting for my village to find me but never did. So I stopped waiting and built one instead. That’s exactly what all of you did for us. You built our village out of thirteen strangers and a red dot one favour and one late night at a time. You were the architects of our success.
You didn’t wait for the village to arrive, you built us one, and kept it alive.
Jen
Everything you want is on the other side of the unknown
Every one of us walked into the unknown for the chance to get up on that stage. First the audition, and a tantrum, a million revisions and rehearsals in the medium of song, then actually standing there under the lights in front of an expectant audience.
None of us knew what we were doing, we were just finding our way but you walked in right alongside us, and we couldn’t have done it without you.
You walked into the unknown right beside us too, and never once let our fear show through.
Pete
Who are you, when it all goes quiet?
Teams are a funny old thing, I have been part of quite a few. The prep for this TedX talk turned out to be its own kind of intense summit push. The loud and noisy build up, the self-doubt, the exposed feeling right before you go and the strange quiet both during and after.
I didn’t expect to find a rope team holding me in months, weeks and days leading up stepping on stage. Your hugs, and I love a hug, your advice and your cheerleading, I couldn’t have walked on that stage with the same feeling of support, without you, the people who crossed the glacier the days before with me.
A rope team nobody saw in sight, holding the line, and holding it tight.
Laura
Connections that you can’t see?
We were not alone, we were an ecosystem held together by something invisible. No, not by microbes, by all of you. Up on that red dot no one felt alone, the audience couldn’t see it because you were our hidden world
You were the connection that stayed invisible, and it was you that made standing up there possible.
Andy
What standard do you accept?
The thing about standards is…when they are low, people notice. They may not do anything, but they notice. When they are impeccable, when they are perfect it often goes unnoticed because it looks easy. It is not luck, but it is a discipline that nobody claps you for.
Our experience was flawless and we have noticed your standards.
You made sure our standard was impeccable, and you made the invisible work entirely respectable.
Beth
What if this could change the course of a life?
I wonder what my Nain would say? “I told you Beth, you can do anything you put your mind to. It’s not bloody rocket science!” Mrs Rosser isn’t part of this story, she believed in us, made us feel capable, made us feel seen. That is what you have done. Annelies, Adele, Zoe, Hannah, Adie, Freya, Jodie, Duke, Jess, Joe, Vicky, Charlotte, Paula, Ian and all of the sponsors and helpers…
You gave us a chance, and believed we could take it, / and never once doubted that we’d make it
A standard. A mask. A rope. A look. A bit of quiet. A thread. An ecosystem. A conversation. A villager. A triangle. A rock, and the gold within it.
13 different ways of saying the same thing…Connection
Thank you.