Can Film Inspire Personal Change? Insights from research with Take One Action Film Festivals

Take One Action has been finding out about what kinds of films inspire people to take action in their lives.

Workshops held after three climate change screenings asked audience members how films made them feel and how connected they felt to the stories and issues shown.

Responses included the following insights:

• Audiences are more likely to connect with personal stories and characters than factual information.
• Confrontation can make a film exciting, but also distance the audience from the subject.
• People liked to see people like themselves on screen.
• Films that show constructive solutions inspire action.
• Films that show problems or contextual information may inspire further learning.

Lessons from the workshops will help inform Take One Action’s work and should be of interest to film-makers and those using film to inspire change.

The results of the research were launched at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh on 30 March preceding Take One Action’s cycle-powered screening of ‘YERT’.  They were published in Take One Action’s Green Shoots report and you can read a summary of the findings here:

• ‘Can film inspire personal change’, Ric Lander, 2012

You can also read full transcripts from the workshops: There Once Was an Island, Just Do It and the Lightbulb Conspiracy.

Adapted from a story published on the Take One Action news feed.