The Planet Forward Storyfest Awards 2024

Storyfest 2024 is now open!

The tale of our planet’s changes and the ways in which we might preserve it is the most captivating of all. Planet Forward is searching for tales about the individuals, concepts, and inventions guiding the globe towards a greener future among issues ranging from climate justice to conservation, rising sea levels to more frequent heat waves, and the ongoing pandemic to our addiction to plastic.

The Planet Forward Storyfest Awards give kids a platform to share their stories while shedding light on their own creative solutions for taking the best possible care of the environment. Planet Forward is seeking narratives that stimulate, encourage, and effect change. Tales that are vividly intriguing, thought-provoking, and captivating. Be noteworthy, make an impression, and enjoy yourself.

Students enrolled in journalism, film, or media programmes, as well as those without any official media experience or affiliation are invited to apply to Storyfest. Planet Forward has divided them into groups according to their formal training in the relevant medium so that we can evaluate them appropriately. Students majoring or minoring in accredited journalism, film, or media programmes are classified as media/communications students; students pursuing other academic fields such as the liberal arts, sciences, engineering, business, or law are classified as non-media/communications students.

Award Categories:

• Best Short Video by a Media/Communications Student;
• Best Short Video by a NON-Media/Communications Student;
• Best Multimedia Story by a Media/Communications Student;
• Best Multimedia Story by a NON-Media/Communications Student;
• Best Writing by a Writing/Journalism Student;
• Best Writing by a NON-Writing/Journalism Student.

Planet Forward is looking for stories about ideas and innovations that can move the planet forward. Untold stories. Misunderstood stories. And little-known ideas, people, and breakthroughs that can make a difference, have impact, inform, and inspire. These are the topic areas we’re hoping you will explore, and can reflect your studies, research, work, experience, or dreams:

• Food: How can we feed the planet, grow better food, stop wasting so much of it?
• Water: How should we use it, conserve it, clean it, 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, minimize the impact on the environment and the climate? What has changed since the pandemic, for better or worse, and how can we look forward?
• The built environment: How should we 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 our view of city life?
• Biodiversity: How do we preserve and foster our 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 we learn?
• Climate justice: How can we 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?