CREATE. ENGAGE. DISCOVER. The Revival of Concord’s CED

When Leo He, an ex-Concord student (now studying PPE at Oxford) started ‘Create Engage Discover’, I was only in Form 4. My love for learning and my fascination with stories quickly drew me to the club and I thought it was a brilliant idea to bring the widely acclaimed ‘TED Talks’ home to Concord. Over the years, I watched CED decline due to Leo’s exit from Concord. Last year, I decided to revive the club to ensure that Concord teachers and students would once again have a platform to share their knowledge, passions and ideas. This led to the rebirth of ‘CED’ in 2017 and we have never looked back since then.

It has been an amazing journey so far. We have organised six talks on very different topics ranging from “How to improve your memory” to “Dolphin”. Our first and by far our most successful talk was “How to do well in your Oxbridge interviews” in which five students who received Oxbridge offers talked to about 60 Lower Sixth students regarding the process of a successful application to the prestigious universities. We were thrilled to see the Old Chapel filled with many driven and open minded Concord students.

In terms of organisation, firstly, we look for people who are interested in giving talks. Sometimes, people come to us and sometimes we ask specific individuals to talk. We then try to find a suitable date and time. In choosing this we consider the speaker’s timetable and we seek to attract as many people as possible. I think this is the hardest part because there is always so much going on at Concord and clashes with other clubs are inevitable. Next, we advertise the talk by sticking posters around the school and updating CED’s Instagram page.

Although I am no longer the ‘head’ of CED, I am very happy to have a team of 6.1s who are enthusiastic about continuing it after I leave. Mentoring and working with them has been a really lovely process and I wish them the best of luck! In the future, I hope that CED will become a bigger club with wider recognition at Concord. I also hope that it will continue to inspire people to learn and share their knowledge with others, as well as erasing the fear some people have – that they are not good enough to give a talk. No one is “not good enough!!!” If you have something that you really want to share with others, share it!

Heidi Vuong – 6.2