SMI and Vancouver Youth Climate Summit

A highlight of this year was the 2025 BC Youth Climate Action Summit—Stories for Change—which brought together youth climate leaders, young documentarians, researchers, and provincial policy makers to explore how screen-based storytelling can inspire systemic change toward a climate-friendly future. Across three days of programming, participants shared perspectives on climate communications, resilience, misinformation, circular economies, and green jobs.

SMI was proud to collaborate with the BC Ministry of Energy and Climate Solutions’ Climate Action Secretariat, CityHive Vancouver, and The Starfish Canada to host this Summit for 75 youth climate leaders between the ages of 18-30.

SMI ED, Sue Biely and Coordinator, Smiely Khurana lead activities during the Summit to expand and inspire the participants' awareness of screen based climate content as a tool for supporting meaningful societal behaviour shifts.

We learned what kinds of content youth believe works to inspire audiences to action, and what kinds might lead to passivity or despair. Attached is a summary document of what we learned and a 4 minute video that shows clips from the Summit.

SMI supported six local youth documentarians to attend the Summit and a more intimate half-day roundtable to learn from and build relationships with BC Climate Policy staff and four local climate researchers. It was an amazing and unique roundtable that has sparked connections and content ideas for our filmmakers.

Participants described the summit as inspiring and collaborative, emphasizing storytelling’s power to depolarize climate communication and connect creative and policy communities.

These six filmmakers supported in this initiative were: Ben Cox, Morgan Tsetta, Jayda Alderson, Rosie Johnnie-Mills, Morgan Tien and Nicole Van Zutphen.

Big thanks to the BC Climate Secretariat for inviting SMI into this project and appreciating the role of cultural tools in engaging with community.