ToMax Edinburgh - Inspiring futures

Outside of the box 16th November 2011

Melody McIndoe on ToMax Talks and the options for alternative student pastimes

 So, you’ve just finished a hard day’s studying. You come home in dire need of relaxation but find there are only so many Misfits episodes on 4oD and only so much mindless gossip you can have over a pint. You want something mentally stimulating and educational, but are too drained to sit through a monotonous lecture or intense debate, and besides, you want to socialise while you’re at it. So what are your options?

This was the dilemma faced by Tom and Max less than a year ago in London, and it was this dilemma which lead to the creation of ToMax Talks (no prizes for guessing where the name came from), a brand which has now been expanded to Edinburgh for the first time by two of their friends, Sophie Tunstall-Behrens and Blaise Boulton, both third year students at the university.

The idea is a fairly simple one. A topic is set for the evening, a casual venue chosen and three individuals with knowledge in the subject area recruited to each give a 20 minute talk on their personal viewpoint, with questions from the audience to follow. The final result is not a debate but rather a presentation of ideas supported by anecdotes from those who have experienced the topic first-hand, intended to alter, question or affirm how we perceive the subject matter.

The format sounds original, so I arranged to meet the organisers the day before the first Edinburgh event in order to discover if there really was a difference between this concept and your average lecture

I was met by two women, who though slightly stressed at the prospect of being responsible for the impending talk, (“We only confirmed our last speaker a day ago”) seemed to be true embodiments of the ToMax spirit - laid back yet intelligent - and, in addition, clearly passionate about the project. They explained to me that the idea of ToMax was essentially “an inspiring talk in a pub environment as a good format for networking and having a relaxed beer.”

That key word, networking, already seems to be an incentive to attend which appeals especially to students. So far this appeared to be a brand that, though open to all, was primarily aimed at students. Surely, though, the additional benefit of networking is a lot easier to implement in London, where so many of the big names are based? Tom and Max would be able to bring the networking element, the unique facet of their brand, into their evenings a lot more easily in London than would be possible in Edinburgh.

However, there are other reasons for spreading the brand to students at universities further north. “We thought that Edinburgh lacks that kind of student activism compared to somewhere like Sussex,” Blaise explained. “Students here don’t seem to be as politically involved and so we wanted a format where people can begin to be more interested in current affairs.”

We move on to discuss the specifics of the first talk, which was to take place the following evening at the Outhouse, off Broughton Street in New Town. The title of this inaugural talk was ‘Inspiring Futures’ – aiming to explore what society is doing for young people today. “We realised that a lot of people our age had been affected by the London riots – that our parents had all been saying that the rioters should be locked up while we saw the motives behind their actions.”

They continued to describe the alternative elements of their format. Unlike other events of this nature, the three speakers invited to present at the evening are not asked to state a blunt, factual point-of-view, but instead are selected for their charismatic ability to not only convey what they think, but also to demonstrate to an audience how they reached that conclusion, and, hopefully, to therefore provide them not just with a personal opinion, but also with an apparatus for forming and expanding their own. Intrigued as to what the result of these ideals would be, I agreed to attend.

The next evening I make the trek to The Outhouse. ‘Trek’ is perhaps an exaggeration, but if you live in Old Town, as many students do, the venue is not exactly next-door, a distance which seemed an odd choice on the part of the organisers – after all, surely the more convenient the location is, the more likely they are to get a large turn-out? I was greeted upon arrival by a small, yet elegant looking pub, the entrance to which can only be found by venturing down a charming, cobbled alley-way.

The upstairs room had been booked for the event. It has its own bar and a space was cleared at the head of the room for the speakers to occupy. The rest of the room was scattered full of chairs and candle-lit tables, accompanied by tempting nibbles, strategically placed. The atmosphere can only be described as ‘cosy’, the polar-opposite of the usual formal environment one might associate with an academic event.

The speakers began. The first was Lucy Moorehead – an ex-teacher and coordinator at ‘Jamie’s Farm’, where a combination of farming, family and therapy is used to transform the lives of hard-to-reach children. Her tone was calm, but her words experienced, clear and passionate – that teachers need the freedom to get to know the children they are dealing with, that civic teaching needs to be reintroduced in schools and that short-term jail sentences for young offenders are not effective.

The second was Karyn McCluskey, who, unlike her predecessor, became highly animated in her story-telling. A ‘gangbuster’ in Strathclyde police, she and her force deals with 71 murders a year and countless assaults. She was highly engaging in her tales, explaining that violence among young people should be treated as a disease model and that empathy is the glue which keeps society together.

Finally, after a short break for more drinks (a perk which you wouldn’t get in your average lecture) Aamer Anwar took the stand. A left-wing human rights lawyer, Anwar does not work among the young but was once a radical, politically active student and recounted tales of protests and run-ins with the police. His point, that the student voice of change is a necessary one, was ardent and assertive.

After each speaker had had their say, the informal atmosphere of the room left no one hesitant to ask the questions which they had considered over the course of the speeches. Far from it – the comfortable and approachable style meant that there was no fear in the audience to raise any queries.

As I enjoyed one more drink before heading home, I discussed the talk with my fellow attendees and compared feedback, but the whole room was buzzing with conversation. It was difficult to find a group which was not engaged in exchanging ideas about the subjects brought to light during the talks; or a person not exclaiming how eye-opening the tales of the speakers had been.

Though perhaps slightly sceptical as to the originality of the concept of the brand beforehand, on attending a ToMax Talk it became clear that such an environment does not exist elsewhere. The distance to the venue now seemed to have been intentional on the part of the organisers, completely separating the event, more than stylistically, but also geographically, from life at university. The talks had provided easy talking points among strangers and with the speakers, and rather than being forced to choose a side on an issue, I felt informed.

I made the journey back to Old Town thinking that, while academic facts surely provide knowledge, empirical experience of a theory in practice is perhaps the most rational foundation on which to base opinion.

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