Blog - Benjamin Drummond / Sara Joy Steele » Press

Natural Histories Project at ESA

Sara — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 04:38:36 +0000

The Ecological Society of America recently held its 96th annual meeting in Austin, TX. Our friends from the Natural History Network presented a symposium there, and they brought along our broadsides from the Natural Histories Project. Read what attendee Hayley Gillespie has to say about the “beautiful portraits and inspiring (but often haunting) words” on her blog, biocreativity:

“What I love about this project is that it is both a true celebration of natural history – which is inspiring in itself – but it is also something that can speak to very diverse audiences. It shows the faces of natural history – young and old, male and female, diverse backgrounds. It shows that anyone can be a natural historian, and that everyone can find a reason to care about this field, whether or not it is part of their profession.”

Read Hayley’s full post.

New prison work featured in TED Talk

Benj — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 13:54:58 +0000

Earlier this year we returned to prison to make some additional images for an upcoming TED Talk by Nalini Nadkarni. The five minute “Life science in prison” was recently posted to the TED website. Watch it here:

A year ago we built a multimedia story, photo galleries and a website for Nalini’s Sustainable Prisons Project. For these new images, we were invited into the Intensive Management Unit at the Washington Corrections Center in Shelton. The DOC gave us phenomenal access to these controversial isolation units and we completed interviews with a number of inmates.

Congratulations to Nalini on her second TED Talk and the recent renewal of funding for this important work!

To view a complete gallery from the IMU, contact me.

Recently published prison project images

Benj — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:26:49 +0000

Our images of the Sustainable Prisons Project were recently published in two magazines. The Winter 2009 issue of Nature Conservancy leads off their Newsfront section with “Green Rehab: Inmates Fuel a Prairie’s Restoration.”

And Mother Jones’ January/February 2010 issue features an article by Beth Schwartzapfel titled “The Green Mile: Can turning prisons into hothouses of sustainability pay off for everyone?”

Nau awards us $10,000 Grant for Change

Benj — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:36:04 +0000

We’re very excited to announce that we’ve been awarded Nau’s inaugural Grant for Change! Nau, a hip little clothing company based in Portland, Oregon, will support our climate change work over the next year with a $10,000 grant. This year’s award began with an open nomination process that brought in 294 people or projects over six weeks. (It was an inspiring list of independent movers and shakers including our friends photographer Tim Matsui and Derek and Michele Long from Sustainable Connections.) The pool was winnowed down in part by popular vote – thanks to all of you who signed in to give our project the thumbs up! You can view the top 10 finalists and learn more about G4C on Nau’s Web site.

We’ll announce many more details about this new partnership over the coming weeks. If you’re in New York, join us for the kick-off party on November 21, 2009.

A big thank you to all the folks at Nau!

Good things are happening: the Grant for Change – Nau’s blog announcement

Documentary Team Win Nau’s Inaugural $10,000 Grant 4 Change – Treehugger.com

Filmmakers Win Nau’s Grant for Change, Totally Deserve It – Good Magazine blog

Seattle artists win first Nau award – 4Cutlure Blog

Documentary Team Win Nau’s Inaugural $10,000 Grant 4 Change – Sports One Source

News from Nau – Examiner.com

Documentary Team Win Nau’s Inaugural $10,000 Grant 4 Change – Earth-Stream

Congratulations Benj and Sara – Ranger Mike Designs / Michael Lang

Nau Grant: Benj Drummond and Sara Joy Steele win $10k – The Chronicles / Tim Matsui

Facing Climate Change Wins “Grant For Change” – Blue Earth blog

Nau: Encouraging Change, One Grant At A Time – Green by Design

Benjamin Drummond Awarded Nau’s Grant for Change – Aurora Photos News

The future of storytelling?

Sara — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:29:01 +0000

Recently, we were lucky enough to spend a long-weekend in the North Cascades. Tucked beneath Sourdough Ridge, lined with its first dusting of snow for the season, Benj and I were co-teaching a workshop for North Cascades Institute called Will Write for Change: Communication Tools and Techniques for Activists. The team of instructors also included Pulitzer Prize winning author William Dietrich; Sam Knox, a guru on e-mail alerts and newsletters from One/Northwest; and senior researcher and blogger extraordinaire for Sightline Institute, Eric de Place. It was humbling to be in their company and also amongst so many inspiring participants, all working to make a difference in their own ways.

The night that everyone arrived, Benj and I were invited to share our work from Facing Climate Change and the next morning we presented more generally on multimedia storytelling. After the workshop, our new friend Eric wrote a blog post about us and the medium on Sightline Daily. Here’s an excerpt from “The Future of Storytelling:”

“It’s not as if Drummond and Steele invented multimedia – in fact, high-quality multimedia is getting cheaper and easier to produce all the time – just that they seem to be mastering an art form as it matures. Most importantly, they’ve got the knack that the best storytellers have for enlivening a scene and fleshing out a character, but not beating you over the head with The Moral Of The Story.”

What an honor! Thanks, Eric.