The Good Natured Conservation Optimism Short Film FestivalProject

The Good Natured Conservation Optimism short film festival, now in its fifth year, shares hopeful stories of nature’s recovery and people’s stewardship of it from all over the world. From its inception, this annual event has been held in collaboration with the Oxford University Museum of Natural History (with the exception of the pandemic in 2020). Over the past four years, the film festival has seen 479 submissions from 56 countries. Its virtual editions (see here for 2022) have been viewed on YouTube approximately 1,000 times each. The in-person event at the Oxford Museum of Natural History is usually attended by approximately 150 visitors, with consistently positive feedback from audience members and the top three words being used to describe the festival in 2022 as “fun”, “interesting” and “hope”.

For our 2023 edition, we are excited to partner with the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery. This includes the addition of a “Nature Recovery” category for the film festival, as well as an accompanying reception and art exhibition based on the prompt “What does nature recovery mean to you?” We will deliver a workshop on positive communication and stop motion animation, giving researchers at the LCNR the opportunity to make mini stop-motion animations and equipping them with skills to frame their work in new and creative ways.

We showed the Film Festival in the School of Geography on October 13th 2023.

You can watch the films online here