2025 Earth Month Fest Recap

Photography by Dylan J. Locke Photography

April 8th, 2025 was our fourth annual Arts & Climate Collective Earth Month Festival! This was our biggest Earth Month Festival yet – a vibrant celebration of creativity, community, storytelling, and environmental justice. It showcased student artwork and projects that connect the arts and storytelling with environmental justice. The festival featured art activations, food tasting, produce giveaways, and a resource fair with local, student, and USC organizations. We were joined by over 350 attendees. With connections among remarkable people, incredible work, and awesome performances and activities, we had an amazing time and hope your experience was just as special.

Photography by Dylan J. Locke Photography

What are OUR highlights?

Our festival brought together student artists and activists showcasing their incredible work - including our very own ACC Cohort members Cameron Bloodgood, Yana Savitsky, Sophia Hammerle, Anik Panja & Ryan Rosendahl, Lawrence Herbert, Daniella Leon, Gwenan Walker, Alekhya Sengupta Banerjee, Angelina Rocchio, and the Student Coalition Against Labor Exploitation!

We also had award-winning murals created by Andy Johnson, Makena Parker, Kanie Ramos, Caroline Li, Brielle Lee, Nina Tomasevic!

We had a wide range of workshops & programs…

• LA Commons blessed us with the OAK TREE: Resistance, Resilience, and Home workshop!

• Queer & Ally Student Assembly served trade with a Gender-Affirming Clothing Swap!

• USC Arts in Action brought us together with the Mending Station with students from Roski and  Kaufman!

• The Performing Arts Committee showed us amazing youth work with the imPACt: Environmental Art Exhibition

If you didn't have a chance to visit the 30+ amazing organizations tabling at our Resource Fair, you can check them out in our Instagram highlights!

We're grateful for the participation of AltaSea, Architecture and Advocacy, CicLAvia, Clockshop, Cnidarian Evolutionary Ecology Lab, Commission on Voluntary Service & Action, Community Service Unlimited Inc., Environmental Student Assembly, Esperanza Community Housing, FPM Waste Management Dept., Gibson Climate Justice Lab, Hikes For Habitat, Joint Education Project, Legacy LA, Metabolic Studios, Move LA, NorthEast Trees, Peace Garden, SC Mappers, SC Outfitters, Student Committee of the President's Working Group on Sustainability, Streets for All, Test Plot, Tree People, USC Annenberg’s Center for Climate Journalism and Communication, USC Garden Club, USC Good Neighbors, USC Sea Grant, USC Student Basic Needs, USC Sustainability, USC Trojan Shop Local, USC Wrigley Institute for Environment and Sustainability, and of course for the delicious food from Bridgetown Roti, a Los Angeles Caribbean American restaurant, and Southern Girl Desserts!

You can also read Annenberg Media’s story about our event HERE!

From all of us at the Arts and Climate Collective, thank you for joining us at this year’s festival. We hope to see you again next year!

Looking back at the 2024 Eco Film + Media Arts Fest

Over 100 attendees joined the Arts & Climate Collective (ACC) and SCA’s Division of Media Arts + Practice for an evening of film screenings, community building, celebration, and dining at the second-ever 2024 Eco-Film +Media Arts Festival!

We kicked off the festival with an impact-storytelling panel featuring Shawn Sweeney (podcast producer and Associate VP of Communications & Partnerships at the Jane Goodall Institute), Marlee Fox (recipient of the NRDC Climate Storytelling Fellowship and Development Assistant at Universal Television) and Paula Cizmar (Co-Director of the Institute for Theatre & Social Change and Professor of Theatre Practice in Dramatic Writing at USC). The panel, moderated by student Monty Hughes (Lead Festival Producer at the ACC), touched on the significance of hyper-local environmental storytelling, eco-storytelling ethics, best practices for impact-storytelling, and more.

Following our panel, we screened 10 student films – ranging from 1 to 20 minutes in length each – that explored a variety of environmental themes. Films showcased pressing climate issues such as invasive species and wildfires, as well as the ways in which people have developed innovative solutions and supported recovery for such crises in their communities. The ACC awarded Down the Road by Carin Dorghalli the Gold Award for Excellence in Long Form Environmental Filmmaking and Fastidiosa by Ming Leng the Silver Award for Excellence in Short Form Environmental Filmmaking. The creators won $500 and $250 awards, respectively.

Dorghalli’s Down the Road followed the inspiring efforts of James Faircloth and his 9-year-old daughter, Luna, as they drove RVs from across the United States to provide free, temporary shelter to Californians in need during the loss and destruction of the Camp Fire (2018) and Bear Fire (2020). The film also elevated inspiring accounts of heroism and recovery by other community members during the blazes. Succinctly, Dorghalli presented our audience with a touching story of community resilience and people devoting themselves to helping strangers during an environmental crisis. Powerful emotional reactions from festival-goers filled the air throughout the 20-minute film, which concluded with roaring applause from the audience.

Leng’s Fastidiosa shed light on Xylella Fastidiosa, a bacteria wreaking havoc on olive trees and the people who rely on them for their livelihoods in Italy. Through captivating computer graphics, photography, quotes from affected individuals, and facts about the crisis, Leng captivated the audience – many of whom had never heard of the bacteria.

We screened 8 other fantastic films and unique pieces of media art throughout the evening, which are all available to stream via the links at the bottom of this article. Another crowd favorite was Spear, Spatula, and Submarine – a tale of how a community is addressing the Lionfish invasion of South Florida’s reefs through weaponized submarines, spearguns, and exotic recipes.

“A captivating presentation of films… about environmental health and disparity: [the] Eco-Film fest was both a delight and humbling festival, presenting an array of potent genres. What’s more, it was a pleasure to hear from a panel of renowned speakers who added depth to conversations around the films, supplementing students’ visions through their learned experiences inside their respective industries and artwork. Nourishment for the cinephile’s soul.”

–Sol Vanhassel, recent Film, Television, and Media Graduate from the University of Michigan who traveled to attend the festival

We concluded the festival with a mixer, inviting the audience to have conversations with the filmmakers. The rest of the night was full of spirited discussion, community building, and mountains of empanadas, potato balls, and guava strudels. Attendees – including students, university staff, community members, and an entire visiting group of film students from the University of Michigan – had the opportunity to break bread with one another, connect with fellow creatives passionate about environmental storytelling, and share their reflections on festival programming. Energetic conversations about people’s favorite films and panel moments went on right up until the festival concluded.

Check out our amazing students films + media art below:

Shannon Morrall | Spear, Spatula, Submarine

Arian Tomar | The Youth Climate Corps. B.C.

Carin Dorghalli | Down the Road

Leng Ming | Fastidiosa

Savannah Masters and Nikhita Datar | Bekah, From Earth

Xiaoyuan Bao | Birds

Natalie Lopez | Breaking Point

Callianne Jones | Amnis

Tracy Wong | FIELD

Noelle Villasenor | Declining Trust in Institutions Concerning Environmental Justice

A few words from the Lead Student Producer, Monty Hughes:

Climate change has become the defining crisis of the 21st century, and its effects are inescapable and borderless. Wrapping our heads around the climate reality we’re facing is emotionally overwhelming, and storytelling is humankind’s best vehicle for sensemaking, and perhaps our greatest tool for fighting hopelessness, building sustainable communities, and achieving positive change.

Directing the Eco Film + Media Arts Fest has been my greatest achievement at USC. It has been so fulfilling to create a space to elevate amazing stories, celebrate our boundless student talent, and facilitate learning in impact storytelling. We live in an unprecedented era of democratized digital media and global storytelling, and there is a palpable demand for more events like this. It was an honor to play a role in meeting that demand here at USC!

But nobody was more important in making the festival a smash hit than our audience and the army of organizations and supporters that made everything possible: the Arts & Climate Collective, Arts in Action, the Annenberg Innovation Lab, The Fisher Museum, USC’s Office of Sustainability, and the legendary Michael Bodie of SCA’s Division of Media, Arts, and Practice, to name a few. Further, my diverse mentors and educators – such as Tomm Polos, Oliver Mayer, Thomas Gustafson, Cara Esposito and Amanda Pope, among so many others – expertly prepared me to take on the challenge of creating something like this.

The Arts & Climate Collective continues to be at the cutting edge of eco-storytelling, and it was a joy to help make the film festival a reality. As I inch closer to graduation, I’m looking forward to an entire career of empowering, elevating, and representing storytellers, creatives, and innovators – as well as telling stories myself – because of the exciting work I have been able to do at the ACC.

– Monty Hughes

Arts & Climate Collective Festival

ACC Earth Month Festival

April 2nd, 2024

On a sunny afternoon in April, hundreds of guests joined the Arts & Climate Collective in celebration at the annual ACC Earth Month Festival. Attendees participated in creative, hands-on activities, explored ACC awardees’ art showcase, enjoyed dance and music performances, and learned about a myriad of organizations in sustainability, storytelling, arts, and community-building. Festival-goers also connected with new friends and ate delicious tacos from the local restaurant Chichen Itza.

The festival itself featured a resource fair where attendees had the opportunity to learn about over 20 student and community organizations, as well as different departments at USC working on issues related to sustainability, climate change, and/or environmental justice. Organizations ranged from affordable housing nonprofits to student groups like Peaks and Professors and the USC Garden Club. There was something for everybody interested in sustainability or the arts– and a complete list of links to our tabling partners can be found at the bottom of this article.

The ACC’s mission is rooted in community-building and aims to create a space that fosters relationships and ignites collaborative action. To further facilitate this, the ACC also organized a community mixer in USC’s sustainability hub together with USC’s University Relations department for team members from various community groups to engage with one another before the main festival. 

The ACC festival also boasted an extensive schedule of engaging activities. LA Commons hosted a seed art table where participants contributed to a sprawling mosaic and Community Service Unlimited held a produce giveaway. Another station invited attendees to doodle how they envisioned a sustainable and equitable Los Angeles, which attracted sketches of green spaces and smiling blue whales, as well as calls for inclusive cultural centers and affordable rent. These were just some of the activities at the festival, which you can catch a glimpse of below:

Learn more about our resource fair tabling partners:

• AltaSea at the Port of Los Angeles

• Cnidarian Evolutionary Ecology Lab

• Community Service Unlimited Inc

• Environmental Justice Research Lab/ SC-CCEHRT

• Esperanza Community Housing 

• Fifty-One Miles 

• Koreatown Youth & Community Center

• La Commons 

• Legacy LA

• NewFilmmakers Los Angeles

• North East Trees 

• Peaks and Professors

• Student Committee of the President's Working Group on Sustainability

• TEST PLOT 

• TreePeople

• USC Arts in Action

• USC Environmental Student Assembly

• USC Garden Club

• USC Native American Student Assembly

• USC Peace Garden

• USC Sustainability

• USC University Relations  

• USC Urban Trees Initiative 

• USC Wrigley Institute for Environment and Sustainability 

USC Zero Waste