Conservation Optimism Summit

For too long, conservation organisations have relied on shock and emotional guilt tactics to communicate to the public why we need conservation. Negative language and imagery is used to convey species declining and habitats shrinking. Whilst these messages are important to highlight, they have become commonplace and dominant, resulting in people feeling disempowered to make a change. This session will look at how we can change this: how can we, as the conservation community, pass on our enthusiasm and scientific knowledge and best communicate our work to the wider public through storytelling? 

The session will focus on how to tell conservation stories in the best way possible to empower and inspire audiences, and attract new attention. Led by Durrell and Wildscreen, this session will bring together professionals from the world of film, media and marketing to look at the art of storytelling. Participants will be split into small workshop groups and will each be given a pre-determined story to communicate. Our professionals will then work with each group to advise participants how they, as a creative, would develop and tell these stories. The groups will then have a go at storyboarding their ideas – a skill which participants can then take back to their own organisations to help them turn their own stories into stories of hope suitable for film. Session participants will then come back together at the end to share their ideas and the professionals will then summarise the key points that have come out of the session with some final words of advice for participants.