The Power of Visual Storytelling for Our Environment
I participated in STEP Sociovation 2021 as a Student Leader (5 to 16 July 2021), which was jointly hosted by SUSS and VS Story, and sponsored by Temasek Foundation.
Sociovation is a 2-week regional forum that advocates for social innovation and our environment through visual storytelling. Our participants are from the ASEAN and Greater China regions and throughout the forum, we learn to create documentaries, learn about regional environmental initiatives and meet talented filmmakers from the region.
Before joining this program, I set the following goals:
1
Understand the motivation and process of visual story-telling
2
Better understand the actions that can combat climate change
3
Hone my cross-cultural communication skills
1
Visual Storytelling
When I first applied for this program, I had no prior knowledge about visual storytelling. I only understood it as telling a story using visual aids but had no idea about the process.
Through the forum, I learned that one need not be a skilled filmmaker to be a good storyteller.
The story is more important than the technical know-how of filmmaking, which debunked my assumption that you need to be technically skilled to produce a good documentary.
A good story sends a powerful message and/or empowers others to act.
To achieve that, we must first have a topic that we are passionate about.
Our Focus:
Lack of Access to Clean Water for Rural Citizens
SDG 6, from the 17 SDGs
We incorporated a stop-motion animation, inspired by Raya and the Last Dragon, with interviews from various ASEAN citizens. My team then structured the specifics of the video, and they did it efficiently because they worked well together.
I took up the role of an animator as I had the tools to draw digitally on Procreate. It was my first animation attempt and the experience taught me a lot about the importance of understanding and translating a story into meaningful scenes.
You cannot illustrate every scene, so you need to choose the right scenes that convey the story succinctly.
View some of the scenes here:
You can view our documentary here:
2
Acting for the Environment
The CEO of VS Story, Ms Jacqui Hocking, shared that many brilliant environmental solutions already exist, but people do not know about them because there are not enough storytellers who can communicate the existence of these solutions.
Some solutions exist in rural places; others in small start-ups. As a storyteller, we should be going to the people who have these solutions and help them to communicate to the world what efforts have been made.
On the final day of the forum, we saw the premiere of all the documentaries produced by each group. There were some interesting points highlighted:
1. Online shopping doesn't benefit the environment as every package requires the use of water, energy, and materials for production and shipping.
An interviewee mentioned that we should reduce our online purchases of things that we do not need, like phone cases.
I love online shopping and I often buy new phone cases. Hearing about this made me reflect on my actions, so now I am trying to reduce things I need not buy.
2. Saving sea turtles
The video depicted the negative impact of our actions on marine life, especially turtles, and the actions we can take to mitigate that.
Specifically, the act of joining clean-up campaigns was something I would not have thought of doing until I participated in our Kayak Waterway Clean-up with Waterway Watch Society (WWS) Singapore.
It was my first kayaking and clean-up experience, and I agree that participating in such campaigns would create a positive impact on marine wildlife.
3
Cross-Cultural Experience
Before the Forum:
I didn't have much preconceived notions of the overseas participants, but:
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I did expect their command to be weaker
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I expected connection issues
I had participated in exchange trips to Thailand and traveled to the Philippines, so I was familiar with cultural exchanges. My group had members from Singapore, Malaysia, Laos, and Cambodia and I was facilitating the Burmese participants for their cultural showcase, so I was grateful to work with people from countries I had yet to visit.
I had a good time communicating with my group, using these steps:
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I made it a point to be the first person to reach out to my members and maintained a warm and friendly tone so that they feel at ease.
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I periodically checked in with my team in case they had any technical issues like entering breakout rooms or trouble understanding what was shared.
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I paced my speech and used simple terms so that others could follow my speech.
However, sometimes I do get carried away when sharing an idea and speak too quickly. I would then stop myself and repeat what I spoke previously (slower) to keep everyone up to date.
I also occasionally struggle with understanding my participants’ accents. My Laotian participant may speak without emphasising her T’s and D's, so I would ask her to repeat at times and clarify with her again.
Nonetheless, I was really proud of my Sociovation group because, despite our language barriers and connection issues, we managed to sing Kid Mak from the Thai Movie, Friend Zone, live without a backing track. It is a multilingual song comprising of the ASEAN languages and Chinese.
I also had fun coming up with our quiz to showcase Myanmar to the participants and learned about the various Burmese festivals and heritage sites.
Conclusion
I had an enriching and fulfilling experience learning about sustainability and visual storytelling. With the exposure to other cultures, I am less afraid to interact with others from the region and would love to participate in such a program again.
A very meaningful and enriching 2 weeks!