What if creativity could reconnect us to ourselves and each other? Eleanor Hawkridge shows how local art and culture can transform communities, inviting us to rediscover wonder in the everyday. Eleanor Hawkridge is a creative producer, curator and artist champion. A strong advocate for improving culture thorough arts engagement, she works to bring communities together for innovative moments of creative excellence that allow people to break free of the confines of the day-to-day and rediscover their own creative wonderland.Starting life as spreadsheets, her projects have led her to co-found several arts organisations and programmes including a digital creative agency in Marrakech, and a gallery, artist’s studios and creative social workspace supporting emerging artists in Liverpool. She has produced an annual arts festival creating a platform for the voices of artists with lived refugee experience, a Google ISD community-building project focussed on reducing hate crime through arts participation, and a VR experience exploring street art in Iran. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx