Verde Valley School, a private school in VOC founded in 1946, is opening its doors to the community on Saturday, Sept. 21, when its rambling campus near Cathedral Rock will host a slate of influential thinkers and creators for the inaugural year of what is planned to be an annual “ideas festival,” Verde Valley Ideas. 

Verde Valley Ideas takes inspiration from festivals like TED, Chicago Ideas Week, South By Southwest and other gatherings where innovators from a wide range of fields are brought together in one place for interactions with other thinkers and members of the public. Lauren Kelley, the director of experiential education at VVS and organizer of Verde Valley Ideas, has managed to recruit a diverse line-up of nationally recognized people from a range of fields, including politics, education, music, science and human rights.

Kelley said that the school’s vision for Verde Valley Ideas is to create moments of substantive, face-to-face discussion between expert presenters and the public.
The activities at Verde Valley Ideas are designed to take participation beyond attendees listening to experts expound on their areas of experience. Kelley hopes the event will produce more meaningful and intimate exchanges of ideas. She saw a model for this ideal while attending Chicago Ideas Week in 2018.

“You had a plumber talking to professor,” Kelley said of the interactions at Chicago Ideas. She wants to cultivate a similar ethos of interaction at Verde Valley Ideas.

• Chrissie Monaghan, an educator and human rights activist based at New York University, will be among the speakers on the Verde Valley Ideas stage. She said she is hoping for “honest open dialogue and discussion and connections across people spanning different areas of work and ages.”

• Dave Mochel, a mindfulness guru, will be on the stage and leading a morning workshop. 
• “One of my favorite feelings is learning something new that shifts my view of the world,” he said. “When I was invited to speak at Verde Valley, I jumped at the chance to be part of an event that is based on ideas. On top of all of that, being in Sedona in the fall is magical.” Some of the participants at the festival will have contrasting views on issues. 

Conservative New York Times columnist Bret Stephens and Tucson-based slam poet and author Logan Phillips have written thought pieces about immigration and the southern border from very different perspectives.  At Verde Valley Ideas, they will be mingling together and maybe sharing a glass of wine.

“I kind of hope it gets heated,” Kelley confesses, “because that’s what this is about.”

Tickets to the various activities are sold a la carte, so visitors can tailor their participation to their own interest-level. In the morning, there will be 10 different small-group workshops, many offered by the innovators presenting later on the main stage, for attendees to choose from. Each workshop runs for three hours and costs $30. In the afternoon, participants gather together at the VVS’ Brady Hall for the Ideas on Stage program. This part of the festival will feel a lot like a TED conference. Eleven invited speakers, including some who have given TED talks, will give brief talks relating to the festival’s theme of “Ever wonder …?”

“The stage is sort of the closest thing to a TED event, whereby we have speakers coming from all over the world, really” Kelley said. “They’re all giving a Ted talk-length piece, like a 9-12 minute talk.

But then we also have performances. We have slam poetry, an aerial silks artist, modern dance, live music.”
The final event of the festival gathers speakers and attendees together for a family style farm-to-table dinner made by local chefs from food grown in the Verde Valley and the school’s garden. The feast, which costs $150 and benefits the Verde Valley School, allows innovators and community members to “rub elbows” and discuss the day’s ideas in a casual and intimate setting.

“The farm always has been about bringing community together and serving the community,” Kelley said, “and so it really made sense to marry these two events because this is all about community and then this is the final opportunity to gather around a table and share ideas.”

Kelley hopes the Sedona community uses the Verde Valley Ideas festival to get better acquainted with the innovative boarding school.
“VVS seems to be this best kept secret down the road. People who’ve lived in Sedona for decades still don’t even know we exist, which is a little bit absurd, but … we’re tucked at the end of the road, we all work really hard and put our heads down in this little valley.”

For tickets or more information about Verde Valley Ideas, including the complete line-up for talks and workshops, visit verdevalleyideas.org.

Scott Shumaker can be reached at 282-7795 ext 117 or email sshumaker@larsonnewspapers.com