Call for Submissions: Planet Forward Storyfest Awards

The Planet Forward Storyfest Awards highlight the voices of students, seeking to understand and illuminate their own innovations for how to best care for the earth. They are looking for stories that inspire, motivate, and drive change. Stories those are compelling, thought-provoking, and vibrantly stimulating. Be memorable, have an impact — and have fun.

They encourage students in journalism/film/media programs as well as students who have no formal media affiliation or experience to enter Storyfest.

Topics

• These are the topic areas they’re hoping you will explore, and can reflect your studies, research, work, experience, or dreams:
  • Food: How can they feed the planet, grow better food, and stop wasting so much of it?
  • Water: How should they use it, conserve it, clean it, and get it to places that don’t have enough of it?
  • Energy: What are new ways to get it, make it cleaner, use it more efficiently?
  • Mobility: What’s a better way to get around, reduce congestion, and minimize the impact on the environment and the climate? What has changed since the pandemic, for better or worse, and how can they look forward?
  • The built environment: How should everyone build for the future? What are the new materials, technologies or designs that will make better homes, offices, neighborhoods, cities and towns? How has the pandemic changed the view of city life?
  • Biodiversity: How do everyone preserve and foster the vital ecosystems?
  • Public health: What impact and takeaways can the environmental movement utilize from the pandemic and/or the response to it? How are climate change and the pandemic intertwined, and what can everyone learn?
  • Climate justice: How can everyone better implement climate policies and environmental initiatives that provide fair and equal treatment to all communities, and prevent discrimination in the systems that perpetuate climate change?

Award Categories

• Best Short Video by a Media/Communications Student;
• Best Short Video by a NON-Media/Communications Student
  • All video submissions should be one to eight (1-8) minutes in length with HD-quality audio and visual, and include an article, which should be fifty to two hundred (50-200) words describing the video without transcription. All video submissions must be uploaded to Vimeo or YouTube. If the entry is longer than eight minutes, a trailer must be submitted that satisfies the run time requirement.
• Best Multimedia Story by a Media/Communications Student;
• Best Multimedia Story by a NON-Media/Communications Student:
  • Multimedia projects may creatively combine elements of photography, video, audio/music, and other forms of digital art as, for example, incorporated into an Adobe Express story. All photograph submissions should utilize digital images with a minimum of one hundred and fifty (150) dots per inch (dpi) and feature detailed captions, not to exceed two hundred (200) words for each photograph. Each multimedia project should include a short article. The written portion should be two hundred to six hundred (200-600) words and should summarize the submission.  If a multimedia submission is prepared using Adobe Express or similar platform, an embed code and an additional written summary of one hundred to two hundred (100-200) words and one (1) photograph to be featured.
• Best Writing by a Writing/Journalism Student;
• Best Writing by a NON-Writing/Journalism Student:
  • All written submissions should be six hundred to one thousand (600-1,000) words and include a minimum of one (1) image, where the image is preferably taken by the Entrant, and feature interviews with two to three (2-3) sources.

What you can share?

• They’re looking for stories about innovations and solutions that can move the planet forward. You can share stories about yourself, what you’ve seen or done in your travels, or what your friends, family, professors, people in the community are doing. Show them the amazing new devices, ideas, policies or actions that are making a difference. Introduce them to the inventor. The idea here is to showcase an innovation or solution that others can learn from, and maybe do themselves, or contribute to. They’re looking for ideas, not political commentary, editorials or rants.
• The most effective stories always have a great explanation of what the innovation is an exploration of the character or characters behind it, and a well-reasoned, detailed and supported main point. This is your story to move the planet forward – your opportunity to explain it to the community. Make them care!
• Remember, though, Planet Forward is not the place for advertisements or infomercials. You’re not selling a product or a service; idea submissions that are clearly commercial will not be posted. Make your story informational, not promotional. Tell them how something works, what’s new about it and how it can make a difference but be careful not to hype it up.

Criteria

• Planet Forward accepts submissions from people across the globe with all different points of view.
• You do have to be at least 13 years old to submit, and if you’re under 18 you need to have a parent’s permission.
• Before you post, you need to set up your Planet Forward account by answering a few simple questions about who you are and where you’re coming from. They do this because they’re a community and they want you to have the chance to share your story with as many people as possible.
• They also want to be transparent, so if you’re posting for a company, make sure that’s clearly reflected in your account information and in your submission. In any case, make sure they can all see who you are – fill out your profile information, let them know where you’re coming from, and let the community see exactly who is responsible for your great work.

For more information, visit Planet Forward.