Big Ideas at the The Big Ned

On Friday 16 June we held our inaugural Big NED. It follows our ongoing series of Ned Talks – a fun speaker series against the clock by Alleyn’s pupils and staff on topics of their choice.

Modelled off the concept of Ted Talks, it has been a hugely enlightening and enjoyable series, so it made sense to expand and bring together our neighbouring schools JAGs and Dulwich College – hence the Big NED. We heard from several persuasive and articulate young speakers on a variety of topics from the power of language in shaping humanity, to saving the world one beaver at a time – and everything in between!

Assistant Head (Director of Studies) Aidan Sproat-Clements, who developed and championed the event, was thrilled with the outcome.

“It has been a real delight across the course of this year to see an increasing range of our own students develop in confidence and present really engaging academic talks on a wide variety of subjects – everything from special relativity to the cultural significance of tofu. It was a joy to welcome our sister schools into the fray, and to see what the students from DC and JAGS can do in our fun seven-minute format. All the students did an amazing job this evening and we look forward to continuing to develop public speaking across the foundation schools through this initiative next year.”