This activity will help you:

  • Realize how the issues we face are incredibly complex
  • Better understand the diversity of voices – stakeholders – involved in an issue
  • Gain empathy for different viewpoints
  • Understand the value of focus when making hard decisions
  • Find ways to work with those you disagree with
  • Weigh the pros and cons of community-focused work versus national-level action

Ready?

Part One

  1. Divide your class in half. One half of the class selects a national biodiversity hotspot (ex boreal forest) and the other half picks a local biodiversity hotspot (ex location in your city or community).
  2. Select an issue facing both the national and local biodiversity hotspots you’ve chosen (ex a species that is endangered in both your community and at the national level). Hint: get ideas from the themes being discussed in your Inquiry Media.
  3. Within each group, answer the following questions:
    1. What levels of government are involved in your issue?
    2. If land is involved, who owns it?
    3. What industries and businesses are impacted by or have impact on the issue?
    4. What advocacy groups are involved in the issue? Remember, there are often advocates on all sides of an issue.
    5. What communities need to be considered when discussing this issue?
    6. What treaties exist?
    7. What’s the politics of the region? Look at public opinion polls and historical electoral trends.
  4. Each member of the group will select one viewpoint or stakeholder and quickly research their position (ex the issue is an endangered frog and you’re representing a developer; understand why the frog is endangered and why a housing project in the frog’s habitat can proceed safely).
  5. Once you’ve done the research, you will argue your stakeholder’s case to the rest of your group.
  6. After everyone has made their case, the group will work to find a solution to the issue that each ‘stakeholder’ can agree with. If you can’t come to an agreement, that’s still a result.
  7. Create a storyboard that outlines your result (your consensus solution or why you couldn’t agree). What story will you tell? How will you tell it (think about the style, mood, emotion and message that we’ve discussed in previous chapters)? All members of the group have to at least agree on the final storyboard, even if you can’t all agree on how to solve the issue. Be sure to ask each group member: “Do you feel your position is represented in the story?”

Part Two

  1. Have a representative from each group present the storyboard to the class, outlining the issue, the viewpoints and the agreed upon solution (or non-agreement).
  2. After each group has presented, as a class, discuss the pros and cons of local-versus-national action. Which group had an easier time reaching an agreement? Which solution, local or national, would have more impact? Would a national solution trickle down to solve the local issue as well? Would a local solution move the needle on the nation issue? How do you answers relate to visual storytelling? Is one approach, a local or national focus, better than the other if the goal is to tell a story inspires others to act, or shares a solution to a problem?
  • Moral of the story: Decision-making is hard and so too is creating meaningful impact. Understand and weigh this reality when creating a visual story that seeks to advance a specific idea or solution.