Listening to Amdavad. Discovering its Ideas.
In classrooms, laboratories, design studios, workshops, hospitals, libraries, neighbourhoods, startups and countless everyday conversations.
They remain unseen because no one is actively looking for them.
So we set out across Amdavad to do exactly that.
an event.
a competition.
a speaker recruitment programme.
Conceptualised by TEDxThaltej Youth to continuously engage with the intellectual, cultural, social and innovative life of the community it serves: the city of Ahmedabad.
An idea may exist long before its author considers themselves a speaker: in a student’s question, a teacher’s experiment, a researcher’s discovery or a family’s lived experience.
Like the carved doors of the old city’s pols, every community in Ahmedabad opens onto its own world of ideas. AIS knocks on all of them, so that TEDxThaltej Youth never depends only on the voices that are easiest to find.
Ahmedabad became India’s first UNESCO World Heritage City. Its ideas have always lived in its pols, courtyards and conversations. We are going to where they already are.
Many meaningful ideas are still developing when they are first encountered. AIS creates space for them to mature through dialogue, research, reflection and constructive feedback. The objective is not to manufacture polished speakers, but to understand whether an idea has genuine substance, relevance and originality.
An Idea Steward is an individual or institution that helps identify and bring attention to meaningful ideas emerging within its own community. Through this network, AIS reaches communities that TEDxThaltej Youth might otherwise never reach.
Helps identify students or educators exploring questions worth pursuing.
Brings emerging research and interdisciplinary thinking into the Search.
Helps surface lived experiences and local solutions.
Helps identify discoveries that could contribute to broader public understanding.
Idea Stewards do not select TEDx speakers.
They help make ideas visible.
Language should be a bridge to an idea, not a barrier to discovering it.
A person’s ability to articulate an idea in English should not decide whether it deserves to be discovered. AIS welcomes conversations in Gujarati, Hindi and English, in whichever language people can express themselves most honestly.
Discovery through AIS does not constitute selection for a TEDx talk. Ideas identified through the Search remain subject to the independent curation, review and TEDx requirements that apply to TEDxThaltej Youth.
A TEDx event should not ask a community to come to its stage once a year. It should spend the year going into the community, listening to what is already being said, and discovering what deserves to be heard.
Our aspiration is not to build an event that could happen anywhere.
Not because of its venue, but because it is shaped by the people, the institutions, the cultures and the conversations that make Ahmedabad unlike any other city. A stage should never be the beginning of a conversation. It should be the place where conversations already growing within a community are finally given a voice.
From the TEDxThaltej Youth visionConceptualises and develops AIS, and connects it to the TEDx platform.
Long-term institutional stewardship is proposed under the Ahmedabad Centre for Research & Innovation, for continuity and governance oversight.
The framework through which ideas across the city are discovered and developed.
A TEDx event takes place on a particular day. Community discovery cannot. The annual event becomes one moment within a much longer process of listening.
Whether ideas that would once have remained invisible are discovered.
Whether relationships are built before speakers are sought.
Whether the communities of Ahmedabad recognise themselves in the ideas on our stage.
Whether unheard voices feel that this stage belongs to them.
Whether you have an idea, know someone who does, or lead an institution full of them, we would love to hear from you.
A question you keep returning to, an experiment, a discovery, a lived experience. Tell us about it, in any language.
Write to us →A teacher, a researcher, a neighbour, an artisan. Someone whose idea deserves to be heard, even if they would never apply.
Suggest a voice →Schools, universities, labs, studios and community groups: invite us for a conversation, a visit or a forum, or become an Idea Steward.
Open your doors →Ahmedabad Idea Search is an idea discovery framework, not an application to speak. Discovery through AIS does not constitute selection for a TEDx talk; all speakers are chosen through the independent TEDxThaltej Youth curation process.