The UNESCO World Heritage Centre is pleased to launch the latest edition of the Patrimonito Storyboard Competition 2022. This competition aims to provide young people with an opportunity to use their creative and problem-solving skills to raise awareness about World Heritage sites.
The World Heritage Education Programme is welcoming secondary school pupils and youth to create storyboards on the theme for this year's competition. The best submission will be selected by an independent jury and professionally produced into animated films for global distribution to schools and at World Heritage education events.
Deadline for submissions, the storyboards must be received at the latest by: 16 October 2022, 23:59 CET
Climate change is the defining issue of our time, and among the greatest threats facing cultural and natural heritage today. Many of the natural sites and cultural heritage sites inscribed on the Worle Heritage List are currently threatened by climate change.
In recent months and years, we have seen cultural and natural heritage sites, including many World Heritage sites, threatened by wildfires, floods, storms and mass-bleaching events. Climate change puts living heritage – oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, festive events, and traditional knowledge – at risk as well. As climate change leads to displacement and forced migration, entire ways of life risk being lost forever.
While this challenge of Climate Change is monumental, one can also take inspiration from heritage towards climate action. World Heritage properties also harbour options for society to mitigate and adapt to climate change through the ecosystem benefits, such as water and climate regulation. Cultural heritage, on the other hand, can convey traditional knowledge that builds resilience for change to come and leads us to a more sustainable future. It is hence crucial for all generations to help raise awareness on the impacts of climate change on human societies and cultural diversity, biodiversity and ecosystem services, and the world’s natural and cultural heritage.
In this context, we invite young people from around the world to reflect on the pressing issue of Climate Change, and its impact on the World Heritage sites around them, and the solutions or measures in their opinion, that would help address these challenges.
Who can participate?
The Patrimonito storyboard competition is open to young people from all over the world aged between 12 and 18 years old.
The artworks must be created solely by the participant(s), either by hand or using digital drawing tools. In either case, the scanned copies must be submitted by email OR the original copies (in case of hand-drawn entries) or the print versions (in case of digital artworks) must be submitted by postal mail to UNESCO. Participants may also choose to submit their entries through their countries’ National Commissions for UNESCO.
How to participate?
Preparing a storyboard is like drawing a comic book. It is a script that presents a story through sketches in chronological sequence. Usually, a storyboard is drawn in pencil, ink, or through digital drawing tools. The images or visual illustrations of the story are portrayed using a series of frames.
The story and drawing should reflect:
- the participant’s knowledge of the World Heritage site they have chosen and the exceptional value of the site.
- a challenge/problem faced by the site based on the impacts of Climate Change
- the solution or measures proposed by the participant to the challenge/problem.
Blank storyboard worksheets should be used for drawing the cartoons. The worksheets give the participants a series of frames that will show the development of the action or story.
- Participants should reflect on the story they would like to convey to the audience on the theme of Climate Change. Patrimonito should play one of the main roles among the characters, and there should ideally be two more main characters - a young girl and a boy.
- The script will need 'shape' - this means it needs a beginning, middle, and an end.
- Beginning: The participants should set up story and characters in relation to the selected World Heritage site.
- Middle: This is the backbone of the story. Here, they should present the obstacles or problems that the characters must overcome; or perhaps if there were no obstacles, an interesting journey, or series of coincidences that they experienced. Participants should communicate main message in this section.
- End: This is the conclusion of the story where everything should fall together, depicting how the problem should be resolved in the participant’s view, and giving the end of the story.
- Participants should balance the presentation of the story. They should consider the number of frames devoted to the description of the site, to the issue confronted by the site, and to the solution they propose.
