And our local paper, the Methow Valley News, did a very nice profile of us the last week of January. They only kept the article online for a week, but you can read the text of Ann McCreary’s article after the jump.

Methow Valley News
January 25, 2012

Filmmakers explore climate change and more through personal stories
By Ann McCreary

Benjamin Drummond and Sara Joy Steele travel the world to produce documentaries that connect people and nature, giving a personal face to issues that often seem too big to grasp.

When they are not traveling in Scandinavia, Africa, South America, or around the Northwest, they make their home in the Methow Valley.

Drummond and Steele are storytellers with a particular interest in the issue ofclimate change. Rather than trying to explain this complex phenomenon with facts and figures, they seek out people around the world to tell the story in very personal ways.

They describe their work as “character-driven narratives” that combine powerful photography and video by Drummond with audio engineering, writing and production by Steele.

“We’re trying to tell personal stories of individuals, community and life,” said Steele. “We’re not just talking science.”
Drummond and Steele began collaborating a decade ago when they were students at Carleton College in Minnesota. They took a three-month trip to the Peruvian Andes, capturing images and stories to create a multimedia production about the people and landscapes of that rugged country.

Realizing they worked well as a team, they launched a personal project that has become an ongoing focus for several years – telling the story of globalclimate change through people and communities. The story for them began with a trip to Norway where they told the story of Sami reindeer herders, and how a warming environment is threatening their traditional way of life.

Having moved to Seattle, Drummond’s hometown, after college, Drummond and Steele began an examination of the impacts of climate change in the Northwest, launching a long-term documentary project that they call “FacingClimate Change.” Their multimedia stories explore the impact of globalclimate change here in our backyard through the personal stories of people who live and work in the region.

They have filmed and interviewed wildfire fighters, potato farmers and snow makers at Snoqualmie Pass to make an abstract issue understandable on an individual level.

“The thinking behind that (approach) was that so much of climate change is about whether scientists were right or not right. There is a huge disconnect with people who were living with it on the front lines,” Steele said. She and Drummond strive to create that connection between science and people through their multimedia productions.

Their work has been presented in a variety of venues, including Confluence Gallery in Twisp, environmental conferences, Mother Jonesmagazine, and the Houston Center for Photography.

The couple moved a little over a year ago to the Methow Valley, renting a house on Beaver Creek. They realized they could continue their work anywhere, and came to the valley to escape the city and enjoy the recreational opportunities.
Continuing their work in climate change, Drummond and Steele have begun a new project with the working title, “The Northwest Project.” They are focusing on impacts of a changing environment on individuals and communities in the Columbia River Basin in an eight-part series to be completed this spring.

The project uses a study called the Washington Climate Change Impacts Assessment as a foundation to examine how climate changeaffects eight aspects of the environment: water resources, coasts, forests, oceans, energy supply, storm water, health and agriculture.

Field work on four of the stories is completed. One segment, for example, focuses on the Umatilla Tribe in northeastern Oregon, and the tribe’s use of roots and salmon as traditional foods.

“Those traditional gathering practices are inextricably linked to cultural continuity. They are using traditional foods as a way to prioritize and manage natural resources,” Drummond said.

“We’re looking for examples where people are expressing what they’re facing on a day-to-day basis. No one can argue with someone’s hopes, dreams and fears,” Drummond said.

When completed this year, the series will be published online with a summary of relevant science and resources. Working with Department of Ecology, Drummond and Steele will present the series at a number of events in the communities that are featured, to promote discussion between scientists and community members.

“Our goal is to really increase the diversity of people engaged in this issue, to ground the science through personal examples,” Drummond said.

Partners in the project are the Washington Department of Ecology, the University of Washington’s Climate Impacts Group – a research group studying climate change in the Northwest – and Cascadia Consulting, an environmental consulting group. Drummond and Steele have received funding for the project from NAU, an outdoor clothing company in Portland.
In addition to their work related to climate change, Steele and Drummond work with nonprofit organizations and other clients. Last summer they traveled to Mozambique to produce a documentary about the first optometrists to work in that country for an organization called the Mozambique Eye Care Project.

“It was our first foray into the health care world,” Steele said.

The couple has also produced a video about the Sustainable Prisons Project, a partnership of the Washington State Department of Corrections and The Evergreen State College. The project trains offenders and correctional staff in sustainable practices.

Last year they traveled to Tanzania to photograph and interview researchers working in a Conservation International project called Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring, designed to provide an early warning system on the status of biodiversity in the tropics. The project places field stations in tropical locations around the world.

The researchers shared stories of elephant encounters, harrowing boat trips and their dedication to the work of monitoring remote field stations in countries including Peru, Malaysia and the Congo.

Gathering and retelling people’s stories is a “lifelong project – you never feel like your work is done,” Steele said.
“Its so much fun,” she added. “Whether it’s a community in Pendleton, Oregon, or a city in Mozambique, we get to meet people we wouldn’t meet any other way.”

“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.

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?”

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!

READ MORE:
Grant for Change official site

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 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.