The streak of Gold: TEDxMelbourne 2022 speakers on kintsugi

On 25 November, TEDxMelbourne is live once again at the Capitol Theatre in the heart of the city. The event features a stellar line up of speakers ready to inspire, motivate and provoke with ideas worth spreading. The 2022 theme is ‘Kintsugi - from broken to beautiful’, which centres around the Japanese art of repairing broken ceramics with gold lacquer. This TEDxMelbourne event will celebrate what it means to break, heal and repair, and the importance of accepting our flaws and vulnerabilities to become more beautiful.

In the lead up to the event, we asked some of our speakers what the art and philosophy of kintsugi means to them.

Acceptance of adversity

For media personality and mental health advocate Osher Günsberg, the philosophy of kintsugi invites us to reframe our approach to hardship. “If we see adversity as something to retreat from, we’ll never get where we’re going.” By experiencing hardship we develop ways to overcome, rebuild and repair, a skill which is a “gift that we can carry through with us as we continue through life.”

The idea of accepting hardship and learning and growing from it is shared by behavioral scientist and entrepreneur Patrycja Slawuta, who sees this process every day in her work with organisations. “It’s a process we all go through when we heal. It’s a process from hurting to healing and then to harnessing what we really are.”

The nature of imperfection

The philosophy of kintsugi invites us to accept and celebrate imperfection in ourselves and the world around us. Osher views imperfection as more “closely aligned with nature than the idea of perfection” because “no tree is symmetrical, every cell of new growth is an adaptation to its current environment. To be imperfect is to align with nature.”

For Patrycja, the process of accepting and learning to live with imperfection within ourselves also mirrors processes within nature. While hardship may fracture us as individuals and societies, just like in the natural world, we always have an opportunity to break down and come back to life.

Challenges into solutions

For Lord Mayor Sally Capp, kintsugi is all about “pirouetting from a challenge into something that has more value and meaning …The extreme nature of the pandemic and the hardship, the uncertainty, the anxiety and anguish” of the experience brought long standing social challenges in Melbourne, such as homelessness, into sharp relief. Despite the uncertainty, Sally believes focusing on the elements within her control was critical to transforming a challenge into an opportunity. “We all have a power within us” to create something from adversity. By taking this approach, the City of Melbourne was able to work together with key partners to bring about change for people experiencing homelessness. 

Lead campaigner for the Uluru Statement and Kaurareg Aboriginal and Kalkalgal, Erubamle Torres Strait Islander man, Thomas Mayo, sees kintsugi as an opportunity for Australia to acknowledge the impacts of colonisation as a nation. “Australia has imperfections. It has a dark past. The wonderful societies and culture of Indigenous Australians were shattered.” Kintsugi offers a lens to see how we as a collective people can come together to recognise and repair, and build a stronger, more beautiful community.

Join us to discover more of what kintsugi means to our amazing lineup of speakers on 25 November at the Capitol Theatre. Tickets are available here.

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