Videos for Change is a worldwide community of young people creating original, short-form video content on issues that matter most to them. They are global citizens championing diverse viewpoints that animate our collective future. One idea. One Video. One minute at a time. The TIE gallery showcases videos produced by participating international school students.
Student Motivation:
The climate crisis is an existential threat; however, few treat it as such. Less than one percent of media coverage focused on the climate in 2019 and plummeted by 22 percent from 2019 to 2020. Speaking to my community about the crisis, I am shocked; their alarm bells are not sounding. What most frightens me is the lack of bold climate policy from leaders. Passing climate legislation is difficult in a polarized political era but is the fate of humanity not worth the challenge? Canada's inaction is evident. Our rate of warming is double the global average. Our future plays on a loop in my mind – the droughts, floods, inequality, disease, refugees, war... my alarm bells are always sounding. The Videos for Change contest gave me an opportunity to channel my fear into creativity and action.
I love to create. I'm passionate about visual arts, writing, acting, music, and dance. My video began as a collage made of found magazines and old notebook paper. I created shallow cylinders of rolled, flattened pages. They resembled planets or clock faces. I nailed reused straws to the cylinders’ centers to create clock hands. Ripped images became oceans and continents- the cylinders, clock-faced planets. But my piece felt stagnant; it needed movement. I heard of the Videos for Change global competition through my school and took it as the perfect challenge to bring my art piece to life using all of my artistic interests (and learn stop-motion animation in the process). I was inspired by the opportunity to create something beautiful while educating my audience about an issue with which I am intensely involved, the climate crisis. Above all of the disasters I see in our future, I see the beauty of our world – of nature, of kindness, of art, of collective hope and change. I want my audience to see this too.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Created by an international school student in Canada.
