Local festival awarded 2nd place in national awards
The local Youth Imagine the Future (YIF) Festival was named second place in the Canadian Youth Climate Action Awards, which looks to celebrate young people taking action against climate change.
The 2024 winners were announced by Pivot Green on Earth Day, and last Saturday youth ambassadors of the YIF Festival accepted the award at the Calvin Park KFPL branch.
YIF's focus is on combating rampant climate anxiety, encouraging youth to look towards solutions and highlighting those positive stories within what can feel like an onslaught of bad climate and environmental news.
Jerri Jerreat, the festival's director, says the YIF's perspective is that it's important for people to be informed about climate change but to not look at all issues through a doomsday lens.
For youth especially, she says, it's vital to highlight solutions and potential opportunities.
"I think every student should have climate education that's based on their age, but also it doesn't have to be all the negative stuff," Jerreat said.
"There's a lot and it's scary, but it could be about the solutions that are working around the world and what people are doing, and what maybe could work around here."
Festival staff visit schools and students are taken through workshops with presentations of different ideas throughout the world that are helping to combat the effects of climate change, and encourages youth to show their vision of how to improve the world.
The festival component is a two week showcase of the projects that are created and submitted at an art gallery in Kingston.
Jerreat says she hopes the spirit of the festival - thinking positively about solutions to the climate crisis - is taken away by the student participants, and that they spread it further.
"I'm hoping that hopeful solution thinking will spread to the students and how they act and maybe through them to the community," Jerreat said.
The festival is currently accepting bookings from teachers in Kingston for workshops in September and October.
Owen Fullerton, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, YGK News
