StoryShift is part resource network, part production hub, and part skill-share system for artist-organizers working to amplify narratives around climate justice with intention and integrity. StoryShift is a collaborative initiative that aims to resource and support individual leaders, media-makers, artists, and community-based organizations who are building powerful alternatives to structural racism, oppression, and inequity in the face of climate change.
StoryShift is based on the belief that powerful community-centered stories can seed solutions for justice and sustainability, and bring people from various backgrounds and geographies together to learn from each other while increasing their collective impact. From racist policing, to mass deportations, and devastation from hurricanes fueled by a warming climate – we are facing threats to our very existence. Yet in the midst of this, we are doing more than saying “No.” We are actively building new systems and structures – even in a moment full of of new threats. This makes up the crux of the stories StoryShift will help to produce, support, and amplify.
The purpose of StoryShift is to seed, root, and nurture the long-term collaborations, resources, and vision needed for us to fundamentally shift our relationships to each other, to the planet, and to the way in which we tell the stories. We aim to spur the innovations necessary to achieve what is possible on the long road to liberation, justice, and sustainability.
This new initiative is anchored by a set of principles and praxis for accountable storytelling that we hope will be widely adopted by filmmakers, artists, communities, and funders around the globe.
StoryShift is coordinated by Working Films with a collaborative of partners with whom we are cultivating a responsive community of practice. This group represents dozens of organizations, filmmakers, and leaders, with a core partnership focus in five geographic communities with eight films including Another Gulf Is Possible Collaborative, Beautiful Solutions, Bridge The Gulf, Center for Story Based Strategy, City of Jackson People’s Transition Team, Climate Justice Alliance, Cry You One, Defend Puerto Rico, EcoRobeson, Indigenous Rising Media, NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program, New Economy Coalition, the North Carolina Climate Justice Summit, and Water Warriors.
