The Future of our Water: Lessons learned
At the Taos Center for the Arts on Dec. 9, True Kids 1 staged our first-ever Future Dialogue. It was an unqualified, fascinating success. Led by the brilliant students of our Youth Council, with each creating their own video entry, The Future of our Water was the culmination of many months of work. With less water tomorrow, how can we become smarter at managing this resource today?
After a big show of water photographs in the lobby, student videos examined the role of beavers in our watershed, the extreme importance of green infrastructure and regenerative agriculture, the connection between fire and water, and the evolution of water rights, among other pressing topics. After seeing each video on the big screen, we invited both student and an expert to the stage for a short community conversation on the video’s topic. Instead of advancing one solution, the intention was for student videos to open and stimulate dialogue among all of us.
Here are some of the important lessons we learned along the way.
No. 1. Video is a potent, potent medium. In creating polished arguments about water, student videos can uniquely open conversation on the contested, the murky, the unknown. And in our community, we must have more and more dialogue. This is a weird time, a new time, and we need to get together and talk about that. We need to listen to our children — and we need to talk about them, especially the dizzying digital world they inhabit. To that end, in 2023, True Kids 1 will convene monthly Parent Dialogues, learning from experts and each other all about our children’s digital lives. Up first? “Snapchat: what in the world is this social-media app that’s consuming our teenagers?”
No. 2. In focusing on the future — and by future we mean 15 years from now, when today’s students might be buying their first home or starting a family — we effectively nurtured an important spirit of curiosity among our students. The future isn’t written — so how shall we best write it? What kind of future world do we want to inhabit? We adults can become jaded to “the way things are;” but the good news? Our children are not jaded. And we must remind them that anything is possible, that smart ideas can and do prevail — in fact, they must prevail
No. 3. We must continue to educate our children in dynamic, new, and different ways. Our own piece in doing this is providing students with the technology, the training and the intellectual prodding, and pushing them through mobile literacy (using their phones well, which for many students is their primary technological tool); to computer literacy (really understanding computers and, for instance, media-creation software); to media literacy (seeing behind the veil; if the app is free, you are the product).
We all must keep pushing for a collaborative educational approach that knits together the extraordinary actors in this amazing community. There is no other way.
What a journey this has been and with more to come! In January, students will begin working on The Future of our Food, which we’ll achieve in collaboration with the Red Willow Center. Stay tuned for the formal event, likely to be held at the Taos Center for the Arts in May. And for those asking, one of our students is currently editing all Future of our Water pieces into one long submission to New Mexico PBS, so we can’t share the videos on YouTube just yet. We hope, however, that they’ll be coming to a silver screen near you soon!
Here’s to a bright, bright future. And here’s to our incredible children.
Sandy Campbell is executive director of True Kids 1, a youth-based digital media education organization.