Recent graduates of SAE University College’s Master of Creative Industries are tackling growing climate anxiety among primary and high school students in a medium tailored to them.
Stay Tuned to Our Planet (STTOP) is an innovative educational social media series, which aims to teach Generation Z how to positively impact climate change and reduce their eco-anxiety. The series is in early stages of being rolled out in schools across the country.
The project is hosted by YouTube personality Mathew McKenna and was created by Australian production company The Feds, who recruited SAE senior lecturer and President of the Australian Screen Production, Education & Research Association (ASPERA) Dr Anne Chesher to create the learning and teaching resources for the series aimed at getting the online medium into the classroom.
Dr Chesher recruited two former students Kristina Chapman and Kelsey Hall for the series, both SAE Master of Creative Industries graduates with backgrounds in education.
Kristina said the series is an innovative one for students.
“This current generation has been told a lot about climate change and what’s happening to the planet,” she said.
“But they haven’t been given a lot of sense of control about that, so they’re feeling a lot of climate anxiety towards what they can and can’t do.”
STTOP includes 30 five-minute episodes packed with information and resources on everything from switching off devices when not in use to save energy, to worm farms, bee hotels, composting, and more.
While the project is made for classroom interaction, it is also available on social media platforms like TikTok and YouTube, allowing young people to engage with the series on their own terms.
“Hopefully the students notice this themselves, going through their own social media feed, but the other part is their teachers being able to use it in a medium that makes sense to the students,” Kristina said.
Kristina said the series is positive and proactive; a much-needed component in the online conversation about climate change.
“I can imagine there’s content online that’s purposely encouraging people to feel awful about [climate change], instead of trying to help them feel empowered to do something, so I think it’s important [to have a series] coming from an educator,” she said.
Being asked to take part in the project by mentor Dr Chesher helped bridge the gap between study and industry for Kristina, allowing her to put her skills from the Masters of Creative Industries to work.
It gave fellow graduate Kelsey Hall the confidence and connections to freelance after her studies.
“I wouldn’t have felt as confident to enter that space without having completed the Masters of Creative Industries through SAE,” Kelsey said.
“That real world application really helped me feel confident to jump into that space.”
Kelsey said STTOP is effectively a call to action to our future generation of leaders.
“I think the really cool thing that I love about STTOP is that it empowers students to take it into their own hands; to not [just] have that climate anxiety, but to actually feel like they can do something about it, and it provides ways that they can do those things at home or in schools and the community,” she said.
Teaching students to work on different platforms that connect to young people is a crucial part of creative education, said Dr Chesher, who prioritises this in her teaching at SAE.
“In the industry there is a trend for the merging of impact and education, changing people’s minds, social attitudes and also environmental concerns,” she said.
“How can we, as responsible adults, help to steer them away from the pulp fiction and towards the literature? How can we use it as a teaching tool down the track?”
The STTOP website is live now and the series is available on YouTube and TikTok.
It is being piloted in classrooms in the first semester of this year.
For more information on studying Creative Industries at SAE University College visit: Creative Media Courses – Earn Your Degree in Creative Media | SAE
