ITP is pleased to announce a continuation of our fertile relationships with several of the 2012 Grant Partners.  They have harvested the fruits of their initial "Pauses" and are moving into fertilizing their "next stages" with a "Seeding Possibilities" grant. 

• Documentary Film: "The Organic Life" - Casey Beck, Filmmaker -Casey "paused" and further edited the storyline of a documentary film chronicling a year in the life of an organic farmer and the financial insecurity, physical hardship, and rise of corporate agriculture that threaten the sustainability of organic farming. 

Now, with her "Seeding Possibilities" grant, she is ready to create and publicize a downloadable educational curriculum both for children and adults to accompany the film.  Her approach is two-pronged.  She will develop two, 10-page mini books to be distributed via free downloadable PDFs alongside the film:  one for adults and one for education of 7th-9^th grade students.  The adult screening guide will include post-screening discussion items and questions. The children's guides will be aligned with California state curriculum standards, and will give teachers the tools to incorporate a comprehensive look at local, organic farming into the larger curriculum of many different subjects.

• Science, Imagination and the Art of Adaption: Understanding Climate Change Awareness Through the Prism of Brazil - Joshua Fouts, Executive Director, Science House Foundation - In their "Pause", Joshua Fouts and his team traveled to the heart of the Amazon jungle to deliver microscopes to the "legacy communities" of the indigenous Ashaninka People, to teach them about science education and to help them learn to evaluate the impacts of climate change in their environment.
  

  As a result of that successful Amazon expedition, now awarded with a "Seeding Possibilities" grant, Joshua and Science House Foundation are collaborating with a team of Brazilian anthropologists and game designers at the University of Sao Paulo on the creation of an Iphone/IPad app game that informs players about the culture of another "legacy community" of indigenous ethnic Brazilian people known as the Kaxinawa, who live in the state of Acre, Brazil. The purpose of the game will be to convey the importance of indigenous knowledge and demonstrate the relationship between man and the environment from the standpoint of indigenous peoples, with an emphasis on explaining the impact of climate change on these "legacy communities".

• California Agricultural Road Trip - Mark Schapiro, Senior Correspondent, Center for Investigative Reporting and Peter Cunningham, Photographer - In their "Pause", Mark Schapiro and photographer Peter Cunningham took two California road trips to explore various food-growing regions -- including the Central Valley, Sonoma, Napa, and Marin counties -- to explore how water, salt and heat are creating a new set of problems for today's farmers.   While forging a new way to collaborate as journalist and photographer, Mark and Peter tell the stories of how climate change is altering conditions on the agricultural lands now, in real time, with innovative approaches taken by farmers. They created a new language combining associative pictures paired together with text as a journalistic backup. 

  Now, a "Seeding Possibilities" grant will enable them to complete and make into a coherent package their work to date through a variety of media --  including printing a limited number of books; with possibilities for dissemination of project elements on the web,  in magazines and other publication; and drafting a proposal to expand the project onto the national and international stages. Additionally, they plan one more photo-journalistic California trip to evoke yet uncovered elements to add to this story.

• Inner Transition - In their "Pause", Trathen Heckman, Board President, Transition US - and co-collaborators from Transition US, Ecology of Leadership/Regenerative Institute, and Daily Acts Organization, together with an independent filmmaker, spent a week together to  build relationships and envision the possibilities of collaboration among these three organizations. They began to elaborate a plan of action to create a 'tool box' of resources containing a book, a series of downloadable PDF's, webinar presentations, workshops, and videos as resources for environmental social activists.

  Awarded with a "Seeding Possibilites" grant, these collaborators plan for  several smaller working group sessions to move forward with creation of the deliverables envisioned in their "Pause"—downloadable PDF's of case studies, DIY guides on various topic areas, webinar series, video project to weave stories and models, and plan another collective pause and visioning retreat in the fall to chart their next steps.

   

  The remaining two 2012 Grant Partners, Nicole Heller and her collaborative team from the Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment, and Bodhi Garrett and his team with C2C (Change 2 Climate), are "invoking longer pauses" and reflective time this year before they submit requests for a second phase of funding for a "Seeding Possibilities" grant.