This answer, written by our company founder, originally appeared on Quora. RedShift Writers is an organization fully dedicated to helping businesses and individuals master provoking thought and providing purpose for audiences of all kinds. Given our role as a central organizer of Ignite Houston, we do our best to spread the good word regarding speech innovation and entertainment. Hopefully, this piece will help professional speakers take the next step from mere proficiency to true greatness. Enjoy, and contact us if you have further questions at contact@redshiftwriters.com). You can see the original answer here.
Here’s how to guide an entertainment audience to a greater purpose.
There is a strong intersection of entertainment and a greater purpose to begin with. The arts themselves are about out humanity, our very will to live.
Recently, we relaunched Ignite Houston. If you have not heard of Ignite, the concept is simple: speeches must be five minutes, 20 slides, and 15 seconds per slide. Inidividual communities each have their own chapters. I am the Ignite Houston organizer.
Our relaunch went extremely well (recap here with video link at the bottom of the page: http://houstonbusinesswee
Our event drew a crowd of 160. The topics were engaging and enlightening to the tune of a higher purpose performance. We blended the two.
But our performance is simply a small example in a long great history of entertainment audiences leveraged for social progress. Bob Marley’s moment of fame joining the hands of the two leading politicians at the One Love Peace Concert during a Jamaican civil war stands out: http://en.wikipedia.org/w
Those people were definitely entertained. And he demonstrated in that moment as well that love, given the right opportunity, could override war.