The winning entry

Runner-up

Third place

On Monday, whilst COP26 got finally underway in Glasgow – with hopes to find an agreement to change the climate trajectory towards something less unsettling – 460 miles away the winners of the Film for COP26 video competition were announced.

The competition, which was launched as part of the University’s commitment to sustainability, invited students to create a video of no more than 60 seconds in length that could be used to do one or more of the following:

• influence delegates at the COP26 Summit
• change attitudes towards climate change
• promote young people’s and/or student voices on the climate crisis.

The entries didn’t disappoint. In all, nearly thirty entries were recieved, which were then shortlisted down to the final 12 by a judging panel of communications and sustainability experts including environmental activists Ella Daish and Katie Proctor (@Sustainable_Squad).

Those shortlisted videos were then used as the centerpiece of the evening, the culmination of a competition which showed the very best of Sussex’s passion for sustainability and climate change awareness.

However, in a close-run live audience vote Lewis Alford won the competition for his video, ‘24 Hour Short Film Challenge’ – winning a cash prize of £750.

Lewis, a second year Media Production undergraduate, student displayed an innovative and original idea to show how climate change can sometimes be pushed to the back of our minds.

He said: “The film itself is based loosely on true events, I made it in 12 hours, only beginning filming at 3pm and finishing editing at 3am, with the deadline being 7 hours later.

“24-hour film challenge just flows a bit better than 12 hours. While considering the fact I had so little time left to make the film, and how badly I wanted to make an entry, I realised it was allegorical to a lot of views around climate change.

“I feel like most people and organisations are happy to discuss the problem whereas we must act before it is too late.”

The runner-up was Marina Orruela Monteoliva with ‘Pacific before Profit’, who wins £500. She has decided to donate her prize to the Poutasi Development Trust – a local non-governmental organisation in Samoa – for the organisation of a climate change education programme for youth in the district where the video was filmed. This will be a programme which which will be led by a youth group of Samoan climate activists.

In third place was Matthew Evans with ‘A Brief Insight into our Planet’, who won £250.

The evening also saw well-received speeches by Ella Daish and Katie Proctor (@Sustainable_Squad) who both talked about the importance of environmental campaigning, and Alisa Lebow, who spoke about using different approaches to film making to raise awareness of climate change.

The winning videos will now feature on the University’s main social media accounts, so look out for them over the following days.