Through the Lens: Environmental Education Efforts from the South Side to San Antonio

Carrie Albright: Hi, everyone. I'm Carrie Albright from NAAEE. A couple of quick notes before we jump in with today's guests.

This episode was recorded at the NAAEE Conference in the fall of 2024. And I want to take a moment to share a little bit about us. For over 50 years, the North American Association for Environmental Education has cultivated a strong network of environmental educators who are helping people of all ages to develop the knowledge and skills to protect our planet, to tackle complex challenges, and to think critically about the issues shaping the world for generations to come.

The future of EE is in your hands. Please visit naaee.org/donate to find out how you can contribute to our mission of advancing EE around the world. And thank you for being part of The World We Want.

Gerry Ellis: Welcome to The World We Want: The NAAEE Podcast. You know, film is a uniquely powerful medium for communicating, especially the significance of environmental education. Visual storytelling captures the imagination.

It evokes emotion and can bridge the gap between abstract ecological concepts and their real world consequences. Hi, I'm your host, Gerry Ellis, and with over three decades of global conservation filmmaking experience, I have witnessed firsthand how film and environmental education can form a powerful influencing duo. In today's episode, we asked the question, can environmental education through the camera's unflinching lens help us bridge divides between rural and urban communities, across beliefs and perspectives, and even help us find a sense of place in a heavily digitized world?

To help answer that question, I'm joined by filmmakers James Parker and Juliet Grable of Synchronous Pictures. They are the creative force behind the 2020 documentary Other Side of the Hill, a film exploring the effects of climate change in rural Western America. This episode, we dive into their newest project, In Our Nature.

From Chicago's South Side to the hills of Kentucky and to families in San Antonio, James and Juliet and their team have been bringing to life stories that show how nature-based learning can heal, connect, and inspire hope. But more than just three community nature projects, it's a film about finding common ground, figuratively and literally, through environmental education. On The World We Want, we explore the roots and impacts of changemakers on the front lines of education.

People like you building a more caring, vibrant, and sustainable world. And now, I'm delighted to welcome two of those changemakers, Juliet and James, to The World We Want Podcast. I would love to start by saying, why are filmmakers at an environmental conference?

It seems kind of like you should be at a, you know, South by Southwest conference or something.

James Parker: Yeah, well, we're, I mean, we're really excited to be here. And the reason we're here is we're presenting a sneak preview of a new film that we're working on that explores kind of this question of how can environmental education be a bridge in a time where we have a lot of fractures and a lot of divides. And, you know, that was kind of the impetus of us, you know, starting this inquiry of the film, which is still very much in progress.

But we have uncovered some really compelling reasons why EE environmental education is one of the most powerful tools we have at building community, at finding common ground. So we're really thrilled to present a really small sneak peek of what we're working on here and to open up the conversation and to learn, you know, while we're here amongst so many professionals who, you know, who work in this space.

Juliet Grable: Just to add on to what James said, so we are building on a previous film project that we did together that explored similar themes, but it focused on communities in Eastern Oregon, particularly rural communities, that were turning to renewable energy to bolster their economies. And one of the things we were exploring in that project was the assumptions about people in rural communities and what they care about. And similarly, assumptions they might have had about people who live in urban places because there is a real divide in the state of Oregon between kind of the rural red and the blue cities.

That's a very, that's a simplification. And that's one of the things we wanted to show in our work is that there's a lot more going on when you zoom down to the ground level and start meeting people in these communities and learning about what they care about, including their attachment to land, which is very strong.

Gerry Ellis: I wanted to ask you, where do you both live?

James Parker: So I live in Southern California in San Diego.

Juliet Grable: I live in Southern Oregon in a rural community outside of Ashland. So I feel like I have a rather unique perspective. I've both lived in big cities and small communities and very rural mountain communities. So I've kind of seen it all.

Gerry Ellis: Well, one of the strong tenets that we've discussed with several people on this podcast is a sense of connection to place. If you're going to build a strong love for nature and a love for the environment, you have to have that connection to place.

James Parker: And of course, another big threat to this connection to place is technology and, I mean, an incredible opportunity with technology, of course, too. But if we're trying to establish a sense of place in a child who's spending eight hours a day on a screen, it's going to be pretty difficult to do. And so that's something that we've been thinking a lot about and we've been, I think, really coming back to, wow, environmental education is really, really important now more than ever, perhaps, because there are so many threats to us as human beings maintaining this connection to place and an appreciation and understanding of the systems of nature that support us.

Juliet Grable: So we started with this inquiry, and it had to do with some trends we were noticing in the culture at large. As James mentioned, kids are spending increasing amounts of time on screens and social media, spending more time alone and less time with each other, and certainly less time outdoors. This loneliness epidemic that we keep reading about, these mental health crises, along with, of course, the ever-widening social-political divide.

All of these trends seemed somehow interconnected, and something that environmental education had something to do. To say about. And so we really wanted to explore that.

Gerry Ellis: One of the driving themes in environmental education today is connecting, not just the facts of climate change, or the facts of an environment, or so many hectares or acres of rainforest loss, or that kind of thing. But it's trying to reconnect people to place. I think we've kind of forgotten that in this push to become urban creatures.

And now the whole planet. I mean, I think we're up to now nearly 80% of the planet lives in an urban setting. Over 85% of America lives in an urban setting.

And I think there's almost been a natural them and us by that migration. And what the them’s in the urban areas have lost is that sense of place. I'm curious how you started conversations.

When you would go into a place and describe what you were about to do, the film you were wanting to make, what were those first conversations like?

Juliet Grable: We went back more than once. And that really helped to build rapport, you know, making more than one trip. I mean, in an ideal world, we would have made multiple trips to all of these places, but we were working with a budget and on a time crunch.

And so we did what we could. But I think those repeated visits told people that we were serious about what we were doing. We weren't just parachuting in, getting what we needed and leaving.

We were actually interested in learning more deeply what this was all about and making repeated visits to make sure that we were being authentic in our representation.

James Parker: You know, we went out a few times into the woods and, you know, sometimes recording, other times not. And, you know, it was just, it was real magical to kind of to build some of that understanding of how folks live. And of course, through those conversations, those experiences, reaching a place where we just, we find that commonality that, oh, wow, this is just really beautiful or this is really cool, or, you know, that type of thing.

And I think that's the real opportunity in this type of sort of trust building and, you know, creating conversation across these perceived divides. You really quickly break through the divide. And it, you know, just takes the wind out of those sails.

When you're in a room or you're in the woods or, you know, you're sitting around a kitchen table with people, you know, you just start to talk about family and friends and things you're interested in. And, oh, did you hear about this? And it's really beautiful.

Juliet Grable: And so if there's anything we could do to foster understanding and respect for both urban ways of life and rural ways of life, I think that would be a really good place to start.

James Parker: And I think that, you know, that kind of speaks to the power of environmental education because it connects us, connects people with the natural world, with nature. We start to sort of see these systems. We see the sort of change and evolution that happens constantly.

It's such a dynamic world that we live in. And so that perhaps connects us all with a sense of hope and opportunity. You know, both in the breaking down of the walls that, oh, that is us, you know, and what we're seeing happening in nature is that we are not separate from that.

And, you know, perhaps that alone is just a spark of hope that can help us, you know, navigate difficult change.

Juliet Grable: And there may be some resistance to change, understandably. But I think as these examples show the way, that I think they'll become more common and more embraced.

Gerry Ellis: I'd love to pivot to the new film. That seems like a great place to do that is connecting to kids.

Juliet Grable: So we started out with this idea of finding heroes. We wanted to find heroes and environmental educators who were heroes doing really good work in very specific communities. I think we did that, but I think we also did more.

Because what we discovered is that it wasn't just about one person in one community. It was really about this constellation of individuals interacting with each other and with the place and that's where the magic happened.

So in our working project, we're highlighting three, I'm going to call them programs, but three manifestations of environmental education in different places that look very different from each other, but they have in common this community building, bond building structure that I think is really critical to their success, and it's really about the relationships that are being formed within this particular place between the individuals and the place, but also among the individuals. I think that's the power of environmental education.

James Parker: Yeah. I think that it's all started from a place similar to other side of the hill, where there's so much disconnect, there's so much fracturing in these narratives of divides, and, you know, is we just sort of curious again, is this, is that reflective of the truth on the ground? And so we sort of, we intentionally kind of sought communities that sort of represented some of these divides.

You know, one of the places that we went to in the film is Chicago, specifically the South Side of Chicago. You know, this is one of the most disinvested communities in the whole country. We see a lot of divides sort of play out in Chicago, you know, arguably one of the most segregated cities in the country, a lot of issues around access.

And so in the heart of that context, there is just magic happening in this environmental education program called South Side Blooms, much more than environmental education. It is almost difficult to sort of put it into a box because it is so many amazing things. But I think at its heart, it is sort of providing a framework for community and for healing and for education through nature.

And they sort of convert vacant lots in the South Side of Chicago into productive, sustainable flower farms. Kids are learning how to farm and in the process, getting connected to nature and getting connected to each other. We also went to Kentucky, which is a place with a very interesting context when we speak about environment.

And we found, you know, first we found an educator, a professor who's working on a really fascinating body of work around, you know, is titled What is Political About a Tree? And sort of doing some research on how do we deliver effective environmental education in a partisan context? That led us to a forest educator, excuse me, a person who started a forest school in sort of on the border of Eastern Kentucky.

And so this now is a place of common ground where folks from, you know, rural Eastern Kentucky come to bring their kids for education alongside folks from, you know, more urban Lexington. And of course, you have a context of coal in Kentucky, which is really fascinating, a very, very sort of complex, nuanced political landscape in Kentucky. 

And then the last program that we went to was in San Antonio. And this was a sort of a we profiled an outdoor environmental educator who was connecting children who were part of military families who have suffered loss to the power of the environment and nature to sort of help us through those most difficult, you know, moments that we all experience as human beings. And this was happening in the context of the San Antonio Riverwalk, you know, so a really wonderful insights there about how nature is everywhere. And it doesn't, you know, it doesn't look one particular way.

And, you know, I think through all of this, this storytelling and listening that we've done, it's starting to signal how powerful environmental education is at fostering community and working through these perceived divides. Because it is, you know, connecting us to our own nature, and it's doing so in a way that is, you know, I think when it's at its best, it's doing it in a way that's very mindful of place, a very mindful of context, you know, for the individuals who are, you know, the sort of students in the context of this education. And, you know, I can't help but think, kind of in this context of a divided country politically, and we think about democracy and all this.

I mean, what an incredible tool at, you know, returning us to community, you know, an incredible tool at bringing people together on literal shared common ground to mingle, you know, to converse, to heal together, to share. And so we're just, I mean, we're enthralled by this film and the subject matter, environmental education. I mean, we're very much in the middle of learning, you know.

And I think, you know, when we come to a place like this, you know, NAAEE conference, we're coming here similarly to maybe to how we approach the other side of the hill to listen, you know, coming here to maybe pose a question or two and then to really kind of understand what all of the amazing educators are bringing, you know, to their practice and help that inform how we, you know, we kind of finish this film because, of course, it's in the middle of post-production right now.

Juliet Grable: Absolutely. And I just want to stress that we are by no means experts. Neither one of us is an environmental educator, and the programs we're exploring in our film, we don't even know where exactly they fall on the realm of environmental education.

I think they certainly are included in that definition, but, you know, they may fall outside the traditional bounds of formal environmental education for sure. And we felt it was important to pick examples that maybe were surprising and show the breadth and depth of what connection to nature can look like and maybe should look like, because I feel like one of the important takeaways we've had is that this kind of experience should be happening everywhere. It's just so critical both for children's healthy physical and mental development, but also for communities to be empowered and healthy and resilient.

Gerry Ellis: It's interesting that you should say this sort of formal concept of environmental education. I think one of the things that we're hearing because of this podcast, especially, is that that umbrella is much bigger than we have all considered. And with every single voice that comes to this podcast, they're pulling somebody different or a new idea under that umbrella.

And I think that might be one of the things that comes out of it and probably will come out of your film, is that there's a lot of different approaches. I mean, one of the things I'm curious about is, because physically, if you're talking Kentucky, Chicago, San Antonio, you're talking about three very different places on North American continent. And each of those places also have different immigrant groups that are living there.

And they either lived there for a very long time or brought there by whatever means. And they don't have a connection to the rural landscape around where they are. They're definitely urbanites.

And I'm curious if you saw in these stories, you saw that sense of culture brought in to their connection to nature.

James Parker: Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think it, you know, it's like being an environmental educator is perhaps being a guide, you know, for folks to connect with the nature and the place wherever they are, sort of the external nature, and that is going to look different. But, you know, through that process, you know, we connect to sort of our shared nature.

So, you know, the way in which that happens, you know, that it looks different in all these different places, it looks different in, you know, the communities and the context that it's happening. But, you know, I think about the program in South Side Chicago, and, you know, it's really interesting that, you know, like, Quilen and Hannah are the folks who are running that program, and, you know, they don't describe it as an environmental education program, because that might be a barrier to some, you know, to some folks coming in. So it's really framed around opportunity, you know, economic opportunity.

You can come work on the farm, you can come work in the flower shop, and, of course, that's addressing a really specific, an important need for a lot of the young folks who they're reaching. And that might be, you know, that might be different for the program that's happening in Kentucky or San Antonio or wherever, you know, in the country or the world it's happening. So yeah, it just kind of brings me back to the real significance of being mindful of context, you know, and ground up environmental education is really, seems to be kind of more effective than top-down environmental education.

Juliet Grable: Related to that point, one of the things I found so interesting about going to these TAPS, the TAPS event in San Antonio, we spoke to several children of military families. We spoke with several mentors who are paired with these kids. And of course, by nature of being in the military, a lot of these families have moved around a lot.

And so one of the things we asked them are, how do you connect with your lost loved one? And so many of them talked about experiences that they had shared outside, camping, hunting, fishing, hiking, and so on. And at the same time, several of them described having moved a lot.

And so a lot of them are not necessarily living in the same place as they were when they lost their loved one. And so one of the things that Jason Stout, who was leading these Healing in Nature workshops, was trying to convey to them is that they can draw strength and healing and peace from nature wherever they are, wherever they have access to nature. And I think that's just such an important lesson.

I mean, there we were on the San Antonio River Walk having, and they were staying in a conference hotel, and you know what those conference hotels are like. We're in one right now. They're lovely in their own way, but they can feel very disconnected from nature and from the natural world.

And so what he was doing was pulling these people out of the conference setting, taking them out to the river walk, which is, yes, a contrived environment, but still beautiful in its own way. And there are lots of natural features. There's trees, there's water, there's birds.

And just connecting them and their bodies to the experience of using their senses outside. And I thought that was a really beautiful contrast to some of these more place-based programs that we were experiencing, because you don't always have access to place.

Gerry Ellis: What is the most difficult? So now you're in post, and you're looking at this pile of film that you have, all these images, you're trying to make decisions about what to use and what not to use, and how to create those stories, and weave that together. Couple of questions.

First one, what is it you want when you're looking at all of this? What is the story you want to tell that you want people to resonate with people who watch this film?

Juliet Grable: Well, I think we leaned in hard to the emotion of these stories and of the characters. I mean, I think we want people to viscerally feel the urgency of this project. And when I say project, I mean this project of connecting people to nature and having them understand their place in it all, like their connection to these natural systems and how they have a hand in them.

And so I think for that reason, we really leaned on the emotional pull of these characters and of their stories. That for us was top of mind.

James Parker: Yeah. And I think, you know, I think, you know, theme wise, it's really about community and it's about the significance of context and also awe and wonder and how that's a really wonderful vehicle of kind of starting these conversations. But, you know, we recognize that those are things that a lot of folks in the environmental education community are talking about and have been talking about for a long time.

So I think what we're hoping to do with this project is to is to kind of connect that to this present context, you know, and if we kind of simplify it down, it's like we have two sort of choices here. One is continue to lean into this divisiveness and that, you know, that can look like us all sort of, you know, driving our stakes further into the earth. And so I'm right and then you're wrong or you're right.

And, you know, that's one path. Another path is really valuing and prioritizing community building. And there's really no better place to do that than in nature.

And of course, this is happening in a context where there's a lot of threats to nature. There's a lot of threats to this, you know, this prospect of making sure that kids today and, in the future, remain connected to the natural world. And so it's, in a way, a call to action, you know, to environmental educators, continue doing this work.

It's incredibly important work. But it's also a call to action, you know, to perhaps a more general audience that, hey, look, this, this form of education that may be at times has been viewed as a smaller part of education or kind of just an enrichment program. Actually, this maybe should be central to the way in which we educate people, you know, moving forward and central in this prospect of, you know, frankly preserving democracy.

So I hope we're kind of moving in that direction. It's, you know, it's, we're in the middle of it. So these are kind of the hopes and dreams.

We'll have to chat again once the film's done.

Juliet Grable: I do have one more thing to add. Something I was curious about is how we would feel. Here it is Wednesday after the election.

If we would feel differently one way or the other about going forward with our project. And what I'm discovering for myself is that it kind of didn't matter. And the trends that we were exploring, the loneliness epidemic, the social political divide, those would have continued no matter who won.

And so I feel like our project feels urgent no matter what. I feel like we really need to figure out a way to go forward and view each other as human beings, get out of our silos, and start talking with each other again. And I feel like environmental education provides the literal common ground where those conversations can happen in a way that maybe is going to be more productive.

Gerry Ellis: How do you think what you're doing is best done with film? Why is film the best vehicle to do what you're trying to do?

James Parker: I think film, documentary film, in particular, is a magical medium to capture nuance and complexity. Because you're presenting a narrative through audio, you're presenting a narrative visually, and then you're also doing it in a way that is very much a participatory exercise with the audience. And they're bringing a whole other layer of sort of narratives to that film-watching experience.

And so it just is, it's so exciting to work with this medium because there is so much that can be captured and explored in that nuance and in that subtext. I'm most interested in the stories where the lines are sort of blurred, you know, where there isn't a right and wrong, per se. I mean, the name of our documentary production studio is Synchronous Pictures, and so this idea that things can be many things at the same time, and you know, I think documentary filmmaking is a wonderful way to sort of explore ideas and stories through that lens.

Juliet Grable: It's about as an immersive medium as you can get without maybe going out in the forest. It's kind of second best, but yeah, you have music, you have the visuals, you have the nuance of human action and expression. And yeah, I just think it's probably the most powerful medium we have.

James Parker: It's, you know, coming into the edit, like moving from pre-production to production to post-production is such an interesting process because you start, especially with a documentary, you start pre-production with this sort of, you know, you're kind of vision questing, you're putting together these paper edits and scripts of kind of what you expect you might get. And then, of course, you go out in the field and you discover some, many things that are very different than what you expect to happen. And then you come into post-production and you start watching interviews and watching, you know, verite scenes you've captured.

And it takes on a whole other life because of, I think, what you were just describing, Juliet, with the nuance of expression. And of course, most of the communication is happening non-verbally. And so it's really a beautiful process and also very challenging.

And, you know, it's challenging because it's hard to put it all in a box. And I think that reflects one of the main challenges of this film, too, is that environmental education is really something that is pretty tough to put into a box. But of course, there's value in doing that and sort of, you know, making things easy to talk about or, you know, providing frameworks that are sort of easy for us to understand quickly.

But, you know, it's really wonderful when we can kind of break through the limitations of these categories and these boxes and connect to something a little bit deeper.

Gerry Ellis: Thank you both. Juliet, James, thanks. We, on the associated materials and out in the social media stuff, we'll put some links to the other film and then hopefully soon the new film, folks can take a look at it.

But thank you so much for taking all the time to do this.

Juliet Grable: Thanks so much for the opportunity.

James Parker: Thank you for having us.

Gerry Ellis: Through documentaries like In Our Nature, we discover film can personalize global issues such as climate change, biodiversity, and pollution. It not only informs but it moves people towards action. What James and Juliet remind us is that environmental education isn't just about outcomes and program deliverables.

It's about relationships with place, with each other, and with the possibility of a shared future. In Our Nature is a powerful call to listen more deeply, build more bridges, and recognize the quiet work happening in communities across the country. You can learn more about the film and the work you can do in your own community by visiting our website at naaee.org/podcast.

I'd like to add a special thanks to our entire podcast team, Carrie Albright, Judy Braus, Jimena Cuenca, and Stacie Pierpoint for making this podcast possible. And a special thanks to you for being a part of The World We Want. I'm your host Gerry Ellis.

Join us next time to hear more stories of individuals and communities creating a better future through the power of environmental education. You've been listening to The World We Want: The NAAEE Podcast.