PINC held its sixth annual event last week to a sellout crowd at the Sarasota Opera House, and the lineup of speakers was inspiring as always. Organized by DreamLarge, a public benefit corporation started by Sarasota entrepreneur Anand Pallegar, PINC stands for People, Ideas, Nature and Creativity. The daylong event (Sarasota Magazine is the longtime media sponsor) brings in speakers from all over the world who have used imagination and passion to solve global problems, create extraordinary art and sometimes just to make us laugh. It was a welcome respite from politics, reminding everyone who attended about the enormous amount of talent, goodwill and creativity that exists to make the world a better and more interesting place.

Speakers included forensic artist Joe Mullins, whose work with university students in a sculpture course are helping to create faces from skulls in the hope of solving crimes; self-taught artist Daniel Houck, who uses supernatural practices to make violins that have been compared to the Stradivarius; former Finnish social worker Juha Kaakinen, whose nonprofit, the Y-Foundation, has reduced homelessness in Finland by 35 percent; and New Yorker cartoonist Matthew Diffee, who had the audience laughing as he explained his personal creative process. The entire morning, artist Stephen Wiltshire, who is autistic and was mute until age 9, sat on the edge of the stage and sketched a detailed portrait of the city of Sarasota from his memory of flying over the city the day before.

The event was capped off on Friday evening with an outdoor dinner by adventurer caterer Sophie Hollingsworth, also a PINC speaker and a graduate of Pine View School, and The Chiles Group, using all locally sourced ingredients.

Pallegar also announced that DreamLarge was launching the DreamLarge 100 in January 2020, “to create a global community of changemakers.” He is looking for 100 community members to become our local changemakers.