GCRF Blue Communities Research Programme -

19 June 2020

We are delighted to announce the pre-release of "Make a Change Today", the GCRF Blue Communities song.

The Blue Communities team from the Western Philippines University (WPU) worked with students from Central Taytay National High School (Palawan, Phillipines) to create and produce this wonderful song about protecting our natural environment for future generations.

Background

The song "Make a Change Today" emerged from the Project 12 Systematic Scenario Planning workshops, held in 2018. Project 12 is interested in the development of future scenarios, not only based on quantitative calculations of prospective temperature and ocean acidification for example, but also from the perspective of local communities.

In the workshops local stakeholders from Palawan, an island in the southwest of the Philippine archipelago, were encoraged to develop various future scenarios, depicting priorities, concerns, challenges and solutions. These scenarios were then passed to school students from the local area who were asked to creatively engage with them in their preferred way, be it in in the form of paintings, songs, poems or another creative avenue.

The aim of this exercise was to assess the emotional and motivational impact of working with future scenarios with qualitative and quantitative methods and thereby, evaluate the eligibility of scenarios as a tool for communicating sustainable development.

The students spent a whole day learning about the content of the scenarios and designing their own way of communicating them. The result have been fantastic pieces of art amongst which the song “Make a Change Today” stood out as especially impressive.

Excited to share this fabulous work with the wider group of Blue Communities and beyond, the young artists were invited to a music studio in the capital of Palawan, Puerto Princesa, to professionally record the song.

Dr Isabel Richter, Research Fellow at the University of Plymouth and one of the organisers of the Blue Communities Systematic Scenario Planning workshops, commented: “When the young ladies presented their song for the first time, I could not believe the masterpiece they have created in this short time. It’s so captivating, I just want to hear it again and again.”

Joel Sumeldan, Blue Communities Research Assistant at WPU and a key facilitator for the workshops, commented: "This is a great song for nature loving advocates".

"Make a Change Today" will be shared more widely following the 2020 Annual Meeting and the WPU team intends to premiere the song at the their Palawan Annual Meeting for local stakeholders.

Introducing the Blue Communities song

19 June 2020

Background

Other newsletter articles

Projecting the fish of the future

Monitoring aquaculture sites from space

Philippines looking forward and beyond