Storyfest 2024: Tell an Inspiring Story to Move the Planet Forward. Win Prizes. DEADLINE February 5, 2024 FINALISTS announced

October 26, 2023

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(Planet Forward) Storyfest 2024 is now open! There is no story more gripping than that of our changing planet — and the solutions to sustain it. While problems ranging from climate justice to conservation, from rising sea levels to increasing heat waves, from the continuing pandemic to our plastic addiction, we’re looking for the stories surrounding the people, ideas, and innovations moving the world toward a greener future.

The Planet Forward Storyfest Awards highlight the voices of students, seeking to understand and illuminate their own innovations for how to best care for the earth. We are looking for stories that inspire, motivate, and drive change. Stories that are compelling, thought-provoking, and vibrantly stimulating. Be memorable, have an impact — and have fun.

We encourage students in journalism/film/media programs as well as students who have no formal media affiliation or experience to enter Storyfest. In order to judge them accordingly, we have created split categories based on formal training in the given medium. Media/Communications students are those who are majoring or minoring in recognized journalism/film/media programs; NON-Media/Communications students are in the liberal arts, sciences, engineering, business, law and other academic pursuits.

Award Categories

i. Best Short Video by a Media/Communications Student;

ii. Best Short Video by a NON-Media/Communications Student

All video submissions should be one to eight (1-8) minutes in length with HD-quality audio and visual, and include an article, which should be fifty to two hundred (50-200) words describing the video without transcription. All video submissions must be uploaded to Vimeo or YouTube. If the entry is longer than eight minutes, a trailer must be submitted that satisfies the run time requirement.

iii. Best Multimedia Story by a Media/Communications Student;

iv. Best Multimedia Story by a NON-Media/Communications Student:

Multimedia projects may creatively combine elements of photography, video, audio/music, and other forms of digital art as, for example, incorporated into an Adobe Express story. All photograph submissions should utilize digital images with a minimum of one hundred and fifty (150) dots per inch (dpi) and feature detailed captions, not to exceed two hundred (200) words for each photograph. Each multimedia project should include a short article. The written portion should be two hundred to six hundred (200-600) words and should summarize the submission. If a multimedia submission is prepared using Adobe Express or similar platform, an embed code and an additional written summary of one hundred to two hundred (100-200) words and one (1) photograph to be featured.

v. Best Writing by a Writing/Journalism Student;

vi. Best Writing by a NON-Writing/Journalism Student:

All written submissions should be six hundred to one thousand (600-1,000) words and include a minimum of one (1) image, where the image is preferably taken by the Entrant, and feature interviews with two to three (2-3) sources.

Storyfest FAQs

What can my story be about?

We’re looking for stories about ideas and innovations that can move the planet forward. Untold stories. Misunderstood stories. And little-known ideas, people, and breakthroughs that can make a difference, have impact, inform, and inspire. These are the topic areas we’re hoping you will explore, and can reflect your studies, research, work, experience, or dreams:

Food: How can we feed the planet, grow better food, stop wasting so much of it?
Water: How should we use it, conserve it, clean it, get it to places that don’t have enough of it?
Energy: What are new ways to get it, make it cleaner, use it more efficiently?
Mobility: What’s a better way to get around, reduce congestion, minimize the impact on the environment and the climate? What has changed since the pandemic, for better or worse, and how can we look forward?
The built environment: How should we build for the future? What are the new materials, technologies or designs that will make better homes, offices, neighborhoods, cities and towns? How has the pandemic changed our view of city life?
Biodiversity: How do we preserve and foster our vital ecosystems?
Public health: What impact and takeaways can the environmental movement utilize from the pandemic and/or the response to it? How are climate change and the pandemic intertwined, and what can we learn?
Climate justice: How can we better implement climate policies and environmental initiatives that provide fair and equal treatment to all communities, and prevent discrimination in the systems that perpetuate climate change?

Let us be clear — this could be YOU! Craft a compelling environmental narrative to publish on Planet Forward, submit it to Storyfest, and see how far your storytelling skills take you! And, new for this year’s competition, Media/Communications students will be judged separately from non-media/communications students in order to maintain an equal playing field. We encourage students from all backgrounds and fields of study to enter.

The deadline to submit your story is February 5, 2024, and the winners will be announced at our annual Planet Forward Summit on April 18-19, 2024.

Storyfest winners will be whisked away to either Iceland or the Galápagos with Planet Forward and Lindblad Expeditions for the storytelling journey of a lifetime. READ MORE

Planet Forward 2024 Storyfest Finalists

Congratulations to the finalists for Best Video, Best Multimedia Story, and Best Written Story!

We received 154 entries from 60 schools from around the world. Of those, 32 have now advanced to the judging stage to be reviewed by independent panels of industry leaders and specialists.

This year, in an effort to make the competition more inclusive to storytellers of all academic backgrounds, each of the three categories has been divided into two groups; submission by a media student and submission by a non-media student. One winner will be selected in each tier of each of the three categories for a total of 6 winners in competition.

Consideration by the independent judges will be based on the following four categories:

Creativity and compelling use of your media format
Storytelling and presentation
Editorial quality, clarity of information, and factual accuracy
Impact and engagement

Two finalists will also be selected for GW Award for Excellence in Storytelling and for the Spotlight Award for Community Storytelling, respectively.

The announcement of all 8 winners of Storyfest 2024 will be made at the Planet Forward Summit on April 18, 2024. You can register for the free event here!