Climate Communication: Creatives gathered in Cape Town to address the crisis

Climate Story Lab ZA participants, mentors, and guest speakers gathered in Cape Town from 22 to 26 January to develop and amplify 9 creative projects that address the climate crisis.

This 4-day residential lab brought together creative leads from Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, and South Africa. The aim was to strengthen the potential of each project to reach and move a particular target audience. Over the course of the lab project leads got to present their work to a room full of key people engaged deeply in different aspects of climate crisis mitigation and adaptation work.

Vivian Chuene, Content Partnerships Manager at TikTok Africa

Projects included theatre, documentary film, podcast and virtual reality. Full details of these projects can be found on the CSL ZA website : https://climatestorylabza.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/cslza23-project-info-pack.pdf

Mentors at the Lab represented a diverse range of voices from various disciplines, areas of interest and expertise who are changing the way the world sees and engages with the climate crisis. 

Included in the line-up of experts and mentors were:

• South African Human Rights and Environmental Activist Kumaran “Kumi” Naidoo, who served as Executive Director of Greenpeace International; and is a Special Advisor to the Green Economy Coalition and Senior Advisor for the Community Arts Network (CAN).

• South African social justice activist Zackie Achmat, known for his activism in health, education, queer rights, spatial justice, commuter rail and recently energy / electricity.

• Award-winning Kenyan impact producer Emily Wanja  who has worked with policymakers across national and county governments, private stakeholders, funders, civil society, and communities, using film as a tool for advocacy. 

• South African science writer and author Leonie Joubert who focuses on environmental and social justice issues, climate and environmental collapse.

• Lesotho-born Pascalinah Kabi, the author of Pollution, Profits and the People - an incendiary book that exposes the ugly reality of water mismanagement in Lesotho. 

• Zimbabwean Kudzayi Ngwerume, formerly from Greenpeace, and now the Communications & Engagement Manager with the Urban Movement Innovation Fund (UMI Fund), who supported this lab. 

• Professor Susan Levine,Head of the University of Cape Town’s Department of Anthropology, whose research spans visual and medical anthropology, with an interest in the role of the arts in health care settings. 

• Vivian Chuene, Content Partnerships Manager at TikTok Africa, who supports partners and creators in Entertainment in the Southern African region. According to her the hashtag #ClimateChange has had more than 4.3 billion engagements, demonstrating people around the world are looking for climate stories.

• Award-winning playwright, activist story-teller and co-founder of Empatheatre, Neil Coppen, who shared the 5-year journey of their theatre production  Lalela ulwandle, that has supported transformative governance of our oceans from community activations to Cop27 and engagements with United Nations agencies

• Elaine Maane (Zambia), Regional Training Coordinator at STEPS, is responsible for programme development, regional network partner training and mentorship in using film as a tool for change. 

• Nazeer Sonday (South Africa), a regenerative farmer, entrepreneur, social and environmental justice activist and chairman of the Philippi Horticultural Area Food & Farming Campaign.

• Xoli Fuyani, a South African environmental education consultant and Founder of the Black Girls Rising NPO and Lisakhanya Mathiso a youth climate activist based in Cape Town and Communications Intern at 90by2030.

• The well-known mobile solar cinema NPO Sunshine Cinema was represented by their Programmes Director Rene Weston, and Nontokozo Sibanyoni, a graduate of the UCT Sunshine Cinema Impact Facilitator online short course. 

“After spending three intense days in the same space with the creatives, activists and strategists I can tell you that these 9 projects are going to hit the target with audiences. It was a ‘1 + 1 = 3’ experience, where having everyone together in the same space elevated all the stories and distribution strategies,” says Dr Liani Maasdorp, CSL ZA co-director, impact consultant and UCT film lecturer.  “It can be exhausting and demoralising working in this field, constantly facing the devastating impacts of climate change and the ordinary people who are least responsible for generating harmful emissions. Hearing the stories of those who are generating climate adaptation and mitigation strategies from the African continent inspired us and re-invigorated everyone to continue their work with even more passion.”

The residential Climate Story Lab ZA is supported by the UMI Fund and hosted by the UCT Centre for Film and Media Studies in partnership with Doc Society and the Climate Story Unit.

For more information go to: https://climatestorylabza.org/

Climate Story Lab ZA offers Southern African creatives an opportunity to make an impact on the climate crisis

Calling creatives to act on the most pressing emergency facing humanity - the climate crisis. Climate Story Lab ZA invites Southern African creatives to submit innovative and imaginative projects for an opportunity to participate in a four-day residential lab near Cape Town, South Africa in January 2023. The first Climate Story Lab ZA is an incubator aimed at shifting the narrative and amplifying communication around climate change in order to make positive impacts against the global crisis.

Art and Activism: In December last year, activists began a successful campaign against Shell’s attempt to prospect for gas off the Eastern Cape Wild Coast, amplifying it with short films, street art and even dedicated music tracks which helped to bring more people out to support frontline communities, and help protect our marine life. It is this creative energy that the Climate Story Lab aims to harness.

Climate Story Lab ZA calls for submissions of creative narrative-based projects whether they are films, animation, social media campaigns, XR/VR/AR, theatre, dance, stand-up comedy, poetry, children’s/teen/adult fiction writing, podcasts, visual art, performance art – anything that uses a creative medium  to communicate a message about climate change.

Up to eight projects will be selected for CSL ZA, and up to two team members per project will be invited to a four-day lab near Cape Town from 22 to 26 January 2023. The lab will focus on developing the stories, designing impact strategies, and introducing projects to potential partners.

Creatives from Southern African countries including Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, DRC, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe may apply.

“We keep hearing about the issue and how dire the situation is,” explains Dr Liani Maasdorp, CSL ZA co-director, impact consultant and UCT film lecturer.  “People feel overwhelmed and sometimes don't do anything because they don't think they can make a difference. But one person can - as long as we all do something. Statistics and graphs don't move people to action, but emotions do. That is why we are inviting creatives to come together to make their stories as strong as possible and make sure they reach the right audiences to take action against the climate crisis.”

“We see creatives as a kind of emergency corps rushing in at a time when global leaders are just not acting fast enough,” explains Anita Khanna, climate justice activist, producer and CSL ZA co-director. “Creatives can help spread the message about how urgent this is, push back against false solutions to the crisis in accessible ways, help to  get people to see that climate impacts are affecting every part of their lives, and importantly, give us a vision of a world that sustains life, not one that destroys it.”

“We firmly believe that storytelling can reach into the hearts and minds of people and shift behaviour and inspire action. Now is the time to harness our creative energy to support urgent and innovative action on the climate crisis” says Miki Redelinghuys, CSL ZA co-director, documentary filmmaker and impact producer. 

This intensive residential Lab is supported by the UMI Fund and hosted by the UCT Centre for Film and Media Studies in partnership with Doc Society and the Climate Story Unit. 

Applications can be made online: https://climatestorylabza.org/application-form/ and close on 7 October at 5pm SAST.

Follow CSL ZA on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn.

Green Corridors Receives Award from Plastics SA

Durban-based NPO Green Corridors, which cares for green spaces around the City, this week was awarded a Certificate of Appreciation by Plastics SA for its commitment and dedication to helping restore rivers and for protecting our waterways and natural environment.

Tri-ecotours founder and Green Corridors’ Litterboom Coordinator, Siphiwe Rakgabale (left photo) and Green Corridors’ Coastal and Waste Management Projects Officer Musawenkosi Shange (right photo) receive the Caroline Reid Award from Plastics SA’s Director of Sustainability Douw Steyn, on behalf of Green Corridors for its commitment and dedication to helping restore rivers and for protecting our waterways and natural environment.

The Caroline Reid Award was presented to Green Corridors’ Coastal and Waste Management Projects Officer Musawenkosi Shange, who works with the NPO’s Green Spaces programme, and Tri-ecotours founder and Green Corridors’ Litterboom Coordinator, Siphiwe Rakgabale.

Caroline Reid was an ocean conservation warrior who coordinated hundreds of beach and diving clean-ups, was central in the work done with the loss of plastic pellets (nurdles) in the Durban Harbour in 2017 and with her networking skills, increased the awareness of plastic pollution on the KwaZulu-Natal Coastline.

Green Corridors has a vision to provide solutions and support for cleaning of natural environments, ensuring waste is recycled, repurposed, or removed, and that communities within these areas are significantly involved.  

“We would like to thank Plastics SA for this recognition as we continue to carry on the legacy of Caroline Reid,” says Musawenkosi Shange. “The work we do is very much in collaboration with a number of partner organisations and stakeholders including Adopt-a-River, WESSA, and Umgeni Estuary Conservancy, DUCT’s Amanzi Eyethu Nobuntu programme, the eThekwini Municipality’s Solid Waste and Parks Department, with support from sponsors such as SAPRIPOL and PETCO.”

“We hope that the work we do in restoring and cleaning riverways helps to create improved natural spaces for people to connect with nature, and the planet and improve their quality of life,” says Siphiwe Rakgabale.

For more information about Green Corridors visit https://durbangreencorridor.co.za

For more information about Plastics SA visit https://www.plasticsinfo.co.za/

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CAPTION TO COVER PIC by VAL ADAMSON

Siphiwe Rakgabale (litter-boom and clean up co-ordinator Green Corridors) (left) and Musawenkosi Shange (Green Corridors’ Coastal and Waste Management Projects Officer) (right) pictured here with Green Corridors' partners Margaret Burger (WESSA and Umgeni Estuary Conservancy) and Teboho Kikine (Adopt-a-River). They received the Caroline Reid Award from Plastics SA’s Director of Sustainability Douw Steyn, on behalf of Green Corridors for its commitment and dedication to helping restore rivers and for protecting our waterways and natural environment.

African Insight Launches New Operation on Pongola Game Reserve, KZN, South Africa

African Insight Launches New Operation on Pongola Game Reserve, KZN, South Africa

African Insight, one of the continent’s leading  providers of inspirational, educational and empowering conservation programmes has announced that it has extended its site offerings for groups to the White Elephant Lodge on Pongola Game Reserve in northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

African Insight has been providing academic field trips and youth development programmes to universities, colleges and schools for over 20 years.  Destinations include Kruger National Park, Blyde River Canyon, KZN Drakensberg Mountains and Greater St. Lucia Wetland Park.

“In 2013 we were contracted to train 16 community members in hospitality and through this process were able to further develop our  unique brand of academic tourism on the community-owned Somkhanda Game Reserve in the Zululand region in KwaZulu-Natal,” explains Andrew Anderson, MD of Africa Insight.  

Anderson explains that “this led to the establishment of the African Insight Academy on Somkhanda with the vision to Inspire, Educate and Empower future global environmental custodians locally and abroad.  The facilities developed on Somkhanda include two safari style tented student camps that can accommodate 20 and 30 students respectively and a rustic “sleep out” camp.”

At the end of October 2018, the contract expired, and the hospitality side of the operation was handed back to Somkhanda’s management company.  African Insight Academy continues to operate on Somkhanda as a venue for its highly successful academic and youth development programmes whilst looking for new venues to accommodate the growing demand.

“The market for additional capacity to accommodate groups led us to talks with the owners of Pongola Game Reserve’s White Elephant operation, who loved the idea and they have now established  a new 30 bed facility for groups which was launched in January 2019,” says Anderson.

“Our African Insight Academy on Somkhanda and now on Pongola provides practical field experience in wildlife behaviour and management exposing students to a variety of research, monitoring and conservation programmes and community engagement.”

“Conservation and wildlife tourism that does not embrace the surrounding local community is unsustainable,” continues Anderson. “It is because of this that we have been actively involved in building sustainable socio-economic bridges between Somkhanda and the community resulting in the established of several programmes, such as cattle dipping, early childhood development and authentic homestays.  These programmes provide real support to the community whilst offering students an educational insight into contemporary traditional cultural and social-political issues. These same principles will be applied in the development of the site at Pongola.”

“We have had a phenomenal response over the years to these programmes, which has led to the need for more sites,” says Anderson. “And of course, there is nothing quite like an authentic African bush experience to capture the hearts and minds of our future conservationists, scientists and the like.”

The University of Roehampton in the UK has had a decade long partnership with African Insight Academy: with the two institutions working together to deliver the module Conservation. People, and Wildlife: South Africa Field Course to final year undergraduate students of anthropology, biology and zoology.  Prof Garry Marvin, Professor of Anthropology at the University, has seen the positive impact these trips have had on them and the university, saying “the close engagement that our students, through the field trips, have with the complex issues of conservation in situ, offers a rich educational experience beyond that which they would have from only reading the academic literature on conservation.”

Dr Heinz Kohrs, owner of White Elephant Lodge is excited to partner with the African Insight Academy on Pongola Game Reserve and looks forward to “being part of this important initiative that is having a positive impact on the next generation of global citizens and environmental custodians”.

For more information about the bespoke educational, development and academic programmes created by African Insight Academy , contact andrew@africanInsight.co.za or go to www.africaninsight.co.za

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Media enquiries:

Andrew Anderson

MD African Insight Academy

Email:  andrew@africanInsight.co.za

Mobile:

Facebook:                                          https://www.facebook.com/africaninsightacademy/

                                                            https://www.facebook.com/AfricanInsight/

Eco-film about controversial titanium mining to co-premiere at Encounters International Documentary- and the Durban International Film Festivals

The Shore Break, an award-winning film that unpacks the dilemma faced by a rural community on South Africa’s Wild Coast as to whether to support or resist a proposed titanium mining project that could fundamentally change their lives forever, will have its South African co-premiere at the Encounters International Documentary Film Festival in June and at the Durban International Film Festival in July.

Directed by Ryley Grunenwald, The Shore Break was a selected project at the 2012 Durban FilmMart, the IDFA WorldView Summer School 2013, the Hot Docs Forum 2012 and the Hot Docs Dealmakers 2013. It is co-produced by two South African companies, Grunenwald’s Johannebsurg-based Marie-Vérité Films and Odette Geldenhuys’ Cape Town-based frank films. It was in competition at the recent International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), and was named the Best Feature Length Documentary at the 2015 International Environmental Film Festival (FIFE) in Paris.

In the Amadiba area, in the heart of the breathtakingly beautiful Wild Coast, the Pondo people have tended their traditional way of life for centuries. A proposed titanium mine and the government’s controversial plan to build a highway across this ancestral ground, has polarized the community with those that see it as the beginning of the destruction of a way of life, and others who see it as a beacon of economic hope for the region.

Nonhle Mbuthuma, a young local eco-tour guide, is a staunch supporter of her people and the endangered environment on which their livelihood and culture depends. She wants to develop eco-tourism in order to protect her community’s homes, farms, graves and traditional lifestyle. Her cousin Zamille “Madiba” Qunya, a local entrepreneur and self-proclaimed modernizer, is fully supportive of the proposed mining operations and highway construction. Tired of his community living in poverty, Madiba scurrilously courts private capital and questionable government officials. While the South African President deposes the pro-environment Pondo Royal Family, Nonhle rallies support with little more than dogged determination.

“South Africa’s Wild Coast is my favourite place in the world – it has a rugged, mysterious beauty, and our family has been visiting there for years. When I heard about the proposed mining and toll road through the area, I could only imagine the extent of the environmental destruction of this pristine area,” says Grunenwald. “I met Nonhle Mbuthuma, who is a leader in her community, on one of my trips there. When I found out her arch enemy in favour of the developments was her own cousin and that the South African Government had dethroned her environmentally-conscious King Mpondombini Sigcau, it felt like something out of Shakespeare. I had to make a film about it.”

“In the early stages of filming I was only aware of how the titanium mine and highway threatened whatever was in their pathway,” explains Grunenwald. “However spending time with Madiba definitely made me see things from a broader perspective. He pointed out things that I couldn’t deny: the Wild Coast’s dire need for more schools, hospitals and employment. He believed large-scale development is the only hope for change. On the other hand Nonhle wanted development that would last longer than the 25-year lifespan of the mine. She believed alternative development such as expansive eco-tourism could develop the area without their having to give up their land and livelihood. Throughout production I kept changing my mind as to who was more ‘right’ about the development of the Wild Coast. The complexity intrigued me and I wanted to allow the audience to see things from both sides.”

“It is very easy for urban middle class people to want to protect the environment when its preservation does not impair their own access to necessary facilities,” says Grunenwald. “However rural people should not have to give up their land and livelihood in order to access basic services and opportunities. I was struck by the amaMpondo's connection to their land and their determination to protect it for future generations no matter what the cost. They are willing to die for it. We hope The Shore Break will be seen by a wide audience - not only to entertain but to raise awareness of what's going on and to stimulate debate about the development of our most picturesque coastline.”

Co-producer Geldenhuys, a public interest and human rights lawyer, says “I am very interested in what is development? How is it defined? Who defines? By being structured around the drama of a family feud, The Shore Break manages to ask this question in a non-academic way, but in a manner that ordinary people can relate to.”

Exquisitely filmed with arresting cinematography, The Shore Break is edited by Kerryn Assaizky, with original traditional cross-over music by local musician Ntombe Thongo, and sand animation by award-winning animator Justine Puren-Calverley. The almost Kentridgesque animation links sections and propositions in the film, subtly providing context and silent commentary, creating opportunities for the audience to reflect and muse.

The Shore Break has been selected by Bertha BRITDOC Connect Fund to use the film for outreach. The film will have free screenings in the affected area, with decision makers as well as other communities facing similar development struggles. “We’re regularly partnering with more NGOs who want to use The Shore Break in their work around development, community engagement, and extractive industries, “ says Grunenwald.

The film has been made possible by the South African government’s DTI Film Rebate Scheme, a public sector initiative which is ensuring that South African films, including The Shore Break are reaching exhibition. Other funders include Ford Foundation, National Film and Video Foundation, Knowledge Network, Heinrich Böll Foundation, Gauteng Film Commission, Worldview, Alter Cine Foundation, and the Hot Docs Blue Ice Film Fund.

The film will screen at Encounters International Documentary Film Festival in Cape Town during 4 to 14 June 2015 and at the Durban International Film Festival which takes place from July 16 to 26, 2015. It will also screen at the Sydney International Film Festival during June 2015; and has already been screened at the Festival Millennium 2015, Belgium, and Hot Docs 2015 in Canada.

For more information go to www.theshorebreakmovie.com

Trailer: http://vimeo.com/102621491

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/theshorebreakmovie

Twitter: http://twitter.com/theshorebreak

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 Captions to photos attached embedded in the JPG files. There are more pics available and these are also available in higher resolution.

Digital stills, EPK and links to articles and reviews are available online: http://theshorebreakmovie.com/press/