From the
TEDxGrantham desk.
Updates from the organising team: speaker reveals, behind-the-scenes notes, and longer-form pieces on ideas worth spreading.
How Grantham tests ideas and carries learning forward
Grantham tests ideas through systems people actually use rather than through headline-grabbing announcements. The Southern Relief Road — a 3.5 km, three-phase, £148 million scheme — is a public attempt to ease congestion, make the town centre safer and more accessible, cut noise and open space for growth, with a town-centre masterplan iterating through community engagement rather than as a single finished design. Learning continues through Grantham's long civic memory, from The King's School traced back to 1329 to Grantham College's part-time, full-time, online and free adult courses that fit study around work and family. Ideas in Grantham only matter when they move through everyday routines.
By TEDx Grantham Team
Digital inclusion and adult tech learning in Grantham
Digital inclusion in South Kesteven is broader than broadband coverage: the Lincolnshire Health and Care Digital Inclusion Strategy 2025-28 frames access, devices, skills and confidence alongside the choice of face-to-face routes for people who cannot or do not want to use digital services. Daily tasks — shopping, banking, GP bookings, council forms — now depend on online access, so exclusion narrows independence in a district split between Grantham, smaller towns and rural villages. Adult digital learning is available locally through Grantham College's Institute of Technology, which runs IT, digital and engineering courses with flexible part-time, full-time, short-course and online formats, while keeping in-person service options remains a practical safeguard rather than a nostalgic extra.
By TEDx Grantham Team
Engineering Grantham: the town’s habit of solving problems in the real world
Grantham’s engineering history, from Richard Hornsby & Sons to its wider civic systems, shows how practical thinking can turn ideas into workable solutions for transport, skills, enterprise and everyday public life.
By TEDx Grantham Team
Edith Smith and the everyday work of changing an institution
Edith Smith’s work in Grantham shows how institutional change becomes real through everyday authority, not titles alone, as Britain’s first female police officer with full arrest powers helped make women’s role in policing credible through practice.
By TEDx Grantham Team
TEDxGrantham, Edith Smith, and Grantham’s Case for Ideas Worth Spreading
The article explains why TEDxGrantham can draw strong ideas from a town rather than a capital, using Edith Smith’s policing in Grantham and local agri-food innovation as examples of how community history and practical change can shape wider thinking.
By TEDx Grantham Team
Grantham, Agriculture, and the Future of Resilience
The article explains how agriculture, especially soil management, is tied to resilience in Grantham. It shows how healthier soils can help farms cope with drought, flooding and climate stress, and why local land use, food systems and community planning all matter to future resilience.
By TEDx Grantham Team