Why women should tell the stories of humanity | Jude Kelly
TED Talks Daily
TED
4.1 • 12.1K Ratings
🗓️ 24 October 2017
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For many centuries (and for many reasons) critically acclaimed creative genius has generally come from a male perspective. As theater director Jude Kelly points out in this passionately reasoned talk, that skew affects how we interpret even non-fictional women's stories and rights. She thinks there's a more useful, more inclusive way to look at the world, and she calls on artists -- women and men -- to paint, draw, write about, film and imagine a gender-equal society.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This TED Talk features theater director and producer Jude Kelly, recorded live at TED Women |
| 0:12.9 | 2016. |
| 0:16.9 | Why do we think that stories by men are deemed to be of universal importance, and stories by women are thought to be merely about women? |
| 0:31.1 | My grandmother left school when she was 12. She had 14 children. My mother left school when she was 15. She was a secretary. I graduated |
| 0:41.1 | from university to become a theatre director. And that progress is entirely to do with the fact that |
| 0:46.9 | people I'll never meet fought for women to have rights, get the vote, get education, have progress. |
| 0:53.8 | And I'm determined to do the same. |
| 0:55.4 | And obviously, you are too. |
| 0:57.8 | Why not? |
| 0:59.9 | So I started a festival called Wow, Women of the World, seven years ago, |
| 1:04.2 | and it's now in 20 countries across five continents. |
| 1:07.1 | And one of those countries is Somaliland in Africa. |
| 1:10.1 | So I traveled there last year, and part of the joy I had in going there was going to these caves. |
| 1:19.6 | The Del Gies caves. |
| 1:21.7 | Now, these caves contain some of the oldest cave paintings in the world. |
| 1:27.5 | These paintings are thought to be around about 9,000 to 11,000 years old. |
| 1:33.9 | Art, what humanity has done ever since it involved. |
| 1:39.1 | It's how we speak about ourselves, how we understand our identity, |
| 1:43.2 | how we look at our surroundings, who we find out |
| 1:46.3 | about each other because of the meaning of our lives. That's what art is for. So look at this |
| 1:53.7 | little picture. I think it's a little girl. I thought it was a bit like me when I was a little |
| 1:58.7 | girl. And I thought, well, who painted this joyful, youthful figure? |
... |
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