Ruamahanga Restoration Trust
Understanding Nature Documentary Series
Our Future
UN research calls for bold science-based decision-making to completely rethink our way of living, including ways to help youth worldwide fight climate change and environmental degradation. Among the recommendations is a proposal to create a global campaign on nature-based education for children.
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We want our young people to tell us how they feel about issues facing the world now
–– how they see it from their perspective
–– from their experience living in towns, suburbs, and farms
–– all interconnected via their river catchment, and asking how they could help lead change and adapt to an ever-changing world.
Can the words we speak or actions we take as adults and educators inspire these children to take more proactive roles toward helping adults address and reduce carbon emissions?
Our Plan
According to researchers, evidence suggests that experiences of nature can help children acquire some of the skills, attitudes, and behaviors most needed in the 21st century ––experiences that promote academic learning and in turn their development as individuals and environmental stewards.
Our plan is to produce a long-running education-based documentary series over several years that explores how New Zealand school students from the age of seven onwards share their understanding of nature and the world’s climate crisis by recording their growth and development through a decade of change.
Our Team
Our project team is led Campbell McLean, an experienced documentary filmmaker and media communications professional with decades of experience producing stories across the globe. Campbell is using his storytelling methods to help the Ruamahanga Restoration Trust connect with youth and educators under their Schools Behind Our River project, which currently supports twenty schools across the Wairarapa region.
The team will include experienced educators in the environment sector who will also help the trust oversee any research surveys. Our trustees come from diverse backgrounds, including one who is successfully restoring wetland areas and pockets of remnant forest on his 700-hectare farm, and one trustee awarded with a Queen’s Member of New Zealand Honour for his work pioneering the New Zealand organics sector.
Results and Impact
Filmed and released online, the web series will examine our early relationship with nature by asking school students to describe their own understanding of the world we live in as they learn to adapt their experiences with the natural world according to their own growth and development through pivotal school years and beyond.
For generations to come
The results will help future generations of decision makers understand the key issues that youth face and how we can address their future needs.
Want to make this project a success?
Join us and the project team on the Discord app to start a parlay, ask questions about the project and gift them your thoughts.
Right now, they’d love to know if they can improve their project in any way!
Our needs
Understanding Nature requires funding support for us to develop our web series as a not-for-profit project following 30 students chosen from among participating schools.
The project hopes to start in August 2022 and will release each of the individual stories one-by-one as they are completed. This will be followed by a feature-length edit released in 2023.
Milestones Year 1
Budget
The goal is to produce up to 30 web feature stories within the first 12 months. Our ultimate aim is to produce one 90-minute edited feature-length documentary per year.
o Includes qualified research survey with selected schools
o Stories recorded using small crew with sound, 4K camera, and lighting kit
o Involves student participation in the media production process
o Includes creation of social media pages for students to share their own content
o Covers online media distribution
o Shared for free on social media with a dedicated website and video channel
o 90-minute documentary version based on 30 or less individual stories
o Documentary to be made available for television broadcast
o As a not-for-profit, any revenues generated will be reinvested into this project.
o Futurize and all donors have the option to be acknowledged in the closing end credits and or other publicity.
Interviews and outdoor activities filmed over a period of 30 non-consecutive days
Allow 30 x 3-minute web episodes in the first year