TEDx Marvila 2026 – the many colours of love
Text & Photos: Chris Graeme
I was only able to stay for the first half (so, apologies to the many speakers I have left out), but from what I saw and felt at the second edition of TEDx Marvila on Sunday left me energised and inspired to hope that despite what’s going on in the world right now there are good people and there is hope for a brighter future.
People who in their own unique ways are striving to make a difference, make things better, and show how they do that on a daily basis through their own actions, efforts and work.
I know citing the Beatles song ‘All You Need is Love’ is a cliché, but if we each showed more caring, empathy and understanding towards our fellow men and women, surely the world would be a better place.
The event was split into four parts: House of Feelings, House of Emotions, House of Actions and House of Illusions, and the type of love that moves some is feelings and emotions while for others it is action or illusions and dreams.
The speakers, from all professions and walks of life, conveyed sometimes impassioned, sometimes simple, but always noble examples of ‘What is Love’ – this year’s theme of TEDx Marvila which built very much on last year’s theme ‘The Art of Being Human’.
I arrived early at 9.30 am to secure a place near the front, and over the next hour or so until the event began at 11, chatted with people I had never met before, and immediately discovered connections through family members, belief systems, and professional life with the people to my left and right.
A coincidence or is it?
It was the Law of Resonance in action. The idea put forward by Carl Jung that ‘You never meet anyone by chance’ , capturing that timeless intuition that human encounters carry meaning beyond coincidence.
A dear friend of mine had just got back from Tuscany where she had participated in a Family Constellation Therapy retreat while the lady to my left had flown in from London especially for the event and was a Family Constellation Therapy proponent and had links with a leading light of the movement in Italy. My brother-in-law’s daughter Paola runs such groups near Parma. Three links – three people who had been strangers to that point had found a common thread.
The conversation turned to the importance of colour in creating moods, atmosphere, and impact in everything from interior design to dress. Low and behold the second lady to my left was Valerie Corcias, a pioneer in emotional colour intelligence who immediately joined the conversation.
One of the speakers at the event, Valerie (pictured above) introduced me to Dominique Kelly. They are co-founders of mycoocoon, wanathé & brainbo and have spent over 20 years researching using the emotions that are linked to colour.
Valerie Corcias and Dominique Kelly journey with colour began in 2000, when they obtained the Pantone license for 3D consumer goods spanning fashion, stationery, and accessories.
More than a decade developing the commercial universe of Pantone marked the start of a deep fascination that has gone far beyond aesthetics, leading to the development the tools to feel, decode and create a new narrative tailored to a client’s needs.
Through their work, Val and Dom have come to understand colour as a foundation for wellbeing, consumer engagement, and a framework for decoding human emotions and behaviour.
Magical thinking, coincidence, or something more? I’ll let you decide. But it doesn’t really matter, does it?
What matters is that people from different walks of life came together across just five seats in the second row of an event who didn’t know each other and found connections; things in common that united them, and that was a very moving experience.
You drew from the speakers what you wanted or needed to take, and the most overwhelming take-away from TEDx Marvila – which this year was actually held at Pateo Galé in Lisbon’s Terreiro do Paço Square in the city centre, and not Marvila – was that love is so much more profound than a bunch of chemicals in the brain that create that feel-good euphoria we feel when we are attracted to someone and fall in infatuation.
A force to make things happen
So, what does love mean for the lineup of 17 national and international speakers and performers who appeared at this year’s TEDx Marvila?
TEDx Marvila licence holder and organiser, Anel Imanbay, (above), a business consultant, creative producer, public and speaker, told Essential Business, “I believe, first of all, that love is the greatest force and power that exists in the world to make things happen.
“It’s something that moves us, empowers us, and it’s something we see less in today’s world. This year’s theme ‘What is Love’ is as beautiful continuation of the theme we had last year. ‘The Art of Being Human’ and I don’t think we can be humane if have never experienced love in our life.”
“I like the Divine Comedy by Dante, and his last piece ‘Paradiso’ ends with the ‘The Love that moves the Sun and All Other Stars’, so, that’s the love I’m talking about,” she said.
Portuguese actor and performer, Ricardo Pereira who opened the event looked at the audience and said, “we’re all different here, but we are gathered here under one roof to ask a very simple question: ‘What is love?’”
Too many options?
For Miguel Moreira da Cruz, (pictured below), CEO, founder and mentor of Eight, a video-first love app that helps people find love by meeting people not profiles, pointed out that having so many options in life don’t make us free, they make us unsure.
“The great irony of this generation is that we have access to more potential partners than ever before in human history, and yet we’ve never felt lonelier.
“Love is a motivation system not an emotion. Love isn’t a feeling, it’s a drive, like hunger or thirst but couples that last longer maintain at least five positive interactions for every negative one; it’s a smile during a disagreement, a hug when stressed, a “tell me more” rather than just reaching for your mobile to scroll,” he said.
Ari Peralta, a neuroscientist and sensory designer talked about over-stimulation. “I travel for work, and no matter where I go, regardless of culture, age or gender, I’m witnessing children unable to sit at a meal without a screen in front of them, conversations between adults incapable of having conversations without notifications getting in the way, and people struggling to sit through a movie.”
“This is the world we are designing today, with over 60% of people living in cities experiencing over-stimulation, always on the go, and sensory wellness is about reframing how we design the world around us, other be kinder, softer and more loving to our nervous system. We need to get back to principles, to find a balance between the information that’s on the outside and the information that gets processed within,” he said.
Lips stick together! Beauty through friendship
But love can be about beauty too. A tender, personal touch for a dear friend, perhaps the very last and most personal gesture that can we make for that friend.
Take Beatriz de Souza Viegas, pictured below) the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Oncoglam, Portugal’s only magazine dedicated to cancer, lifestyle, beauty and fashion.
“My friend had a special request for me. She wanted me to do her makeup for her funeral. So there we were. Two friends, left in an open room with an open casket – a Solomon moment, a chance to say goodbye quietly.
“We were there to honour her final request. So with lipstick ready, super red, the kind that enters the room before you do, and eyeliner in hand, and 80s music playing ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’, we did her makeup,” in a final act of love and friendship.
And Caroline Deslandes, a Portuguese singer/songwriter and mother of four continued with the theme of why friendships are true love stories.
“Having children made me realise how much of my life is built around my friendships with women, and how much of my identity is built around those friendships and how precious they are to me.”
“Friendships are true love stories, and we are made to believe that if we don’t find romantic love, our love lives have failed, and I believe that’s the biggest lie we’ve ever heard in our lives,” she said.
Love is not attachment or possession but transformation
Award-winning Iranian-American poet, writer, and librettist Sholeh Wolpe whose acclaimed translations of 12th-century Sufi mystic Attar, including The Conference of the Birds and The Invisible Sun – Attar (long-listed for the 2026 PEN Poetry Translation Award), have been called “stunning” by Literary Hub spoke about what love meant to Attar.
“For Attar, love was not attachment or possession. Love was transformation and isn’t transformation what we desperately need today in our politics, our society, and ourselves?”
“For years I searched for transformation, of the world, of myself. What could I do in a broken world? Then I turned to Attar, who Rumi called his master”.
Using the ‘Conference of the Birds’ (which she translated into English) she shared what Attar taught her about love.
It is that the beloved does not reside outside of you. The beloved appears only when the self disappears. We don’t need more love, we need less of what prevents it. What remains does not demand love, it is love.”
Stephan de Moraes, co-founder of Indico Capital Partners, reminded that we are raising the first generation of children in history with unparalleled access to information, yet there was a clear declining capacity for deep thinking.
It concerned him that we are entering into a post-literate society where transmission of information is no longer done in a written form.
“If you only watch short videos, if you do not read extensively, you do not write, think deeply, there is no way you can create structured knowledge”, he observed.
And warned: “We must decide as a society whether we want to remain a civilization of thinkers or accept that we are becoming and will become a society of puppets.”
For him love meant ensuring that our children are able to give proper thought to complex issues and that their options, freedoms, and opportunities are not curtailed by what is happening now (on the world stage).
And that brings me back to colour. The 1970s and 1980s R&B singer Teena Marie in her 1980 funk/soul album Lady T rounded off her work with a short and touching spoken interlude by legendary singer Minnie Ripperton’s daughter Maya Rudolph who asks: “Teena, what would the world be like if everyone saw with their hearts instead of their eyes?”
“Well, I guess it would be like your smile, Maya – innocent and pure and a colour that I love.”
