Four Themes Unite Us All For SXSW EDU 2025

Only a few short weeks since the kickoff of the 2025 season and we’re already in the midst of ideas flowing into PanelPicker®. Last week, we celebrated SXSW EDU founder Ron Reed’s 15 years of impact as he embarks on his next journey. Now, we set the stage for the program that awaits.

As has been our tradition since 2018, the SXSW EDU team collectively thinks about the guiding principles that will unite us as a community in the coming year. This is always a profound moment because it forces us to think broadly about what is impacting the learning ecosystem and how education is shaping the world around us.

This year’s themes illustrate the power of the greater community at large and the importance of investing in the future. We are lucky enough to sit at the intersection of all of the powerful partners who care about learning, innovation, and impact. We asked Advisory Board members to share their thoughts on a theme for 2025 and this is what follows. How do these themes resonate with you? Let us know here what these themes mean to you. We want to know how you believe these themes apply to the state of education right now.

Belong

Belonging speaks to the importance of feeling connected to each other and the issues we care about. But it’s more than that. It also reflects SXSW EDU’s emphasis on creating a space where we all feel safe to explore the individual and collective roles we play in celebrating our commonalities and differences.

“I think belonging in education is all about finding and making meaning through experiences and learning. When we truly learn, we are searching for a connected relevance of what we already know and how, if at all, new information is relevant to our lives.”

-Julie Dierberger
Chief Engagement Officer and Paul Sather Distinguished Director of the Service Learning Academy,
University of Nebraska at Omaha

Invest

We don’t just believe in listening, we believe in engaging. By putting our time, energy, and care into supporting the people and ideas that makeup SXSW EDU, we are setting the groundwork for tangible change.

“As a Chief Program Officer of a not-for-profit grantmaking organization committed to bringing equity in music education, our existence is based on the act of INVESTING in education. It is unfortunate that a foundation like ourselves has to exist in the first place because there are so many inequities in education such as funding discrepancies to requiring families to invest in order to participate in educational activities such as music programs like band, orchestra, and music technology programs and sports. We believe that every student has a right to make music in schools regardless of income level and where they attend school. It is important that we keep investing so that students have access to every education activity that should be afforded to them.”

-Chiho Feindler
Chief Program Officer,
Save The Music Foundation

Transcend

When we come together as a community, we can build on our expertise, co-create solutions, and elevate the importance of education to a new level. Each person who is part of the SXSW EDU community brings their skills and passion to education issues and elevates the importance and impact that we can make to a whole new level.

“Why is change in education so painfully slow? The most overlooked reason is that, for each of us, school is intimately personal. What we see when we look at ‘what we should fix in school’ is shaped by the wonderful and terrible experiences each of us has had or is having in education. Many of us are simply not open to other ways of schooling than the way we know it. This is what we need to transcend. Sir Ken Robinson, in one of his iconic TED talks, called it the ‘tyranny of common sense.’ Paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln, Robinson reminds us that ‘the dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.’ To improve the system, we need to transcend our own biases and assumptions about school. It starts with you and me.”

-Mike Kleba
HS Teacher,
North Shore Schools

Energize

By fostering community, taking a close look at all of the parts, providing a network of support, and commemorating the joy that comes with education, collectively we spark excitement, fuel passion, and replenish energy.

“I feel like there's a growing energy around what's possible in education that goes beyond the regular ebbs and flows of enthusiasm for this program or that product. I think about the opportunities that emerging models, connections, and technologies have unlocked for learners, to curate and craft futures they deem worth pursuing. It's an exciting — and important — time to be in this work, and I couldn't be more grateful and energized to be part of it.”

-Michael Crawford
Vice President, Strategic Initiatives
America Succeeds

Grounded in Impact

Dive deeper to see how themes and trends have shaped the community and program over the years.

2024 Themes | 2023 Themes | 2022 Themes | 2020 Trends | 2019 Trends | 2018 Trends

Join this dynamic community of learning leaders at the 2025 SXSW EDU Conference & Festival as we dive deeper into these themes and all the great programming to come.

Feeling Inspired?

Bring your ideas to this year's event! Learn more about all the participation opportunities available, including PanelPicker which is open for submissions now through July 21, 2024.