We're a 'Digital Storytelling' finalist at the LUMIX Festival

In the 7th edition for the LUMIX Festival for Young Visual Journalism, our ‘Grit & Grass’ multimedia story is selected as one of this year’s finalists in the ‘Digital Storytelling’ category. Together with ‘ digital narrative format’ productions made by renowned photographers and journalists like Cicilie S. Andersen, Anna Fritsche, Ilvy Njiokiktjien and Etinosa Yvonne, our work can be seen during the festival in Hanover. Due to COVID19 measures, however, the festival will run mainly online.

Grit & Grass was produced on assignment by Dutch foreign news platform Bureau Buitenland. For this story about a deadly conflict between herdsmen and farmers in Nigeria, Africa correspondent Saskia Houttuin and I traveled to Plateau State, where we created two interactive stories which focus on both sides of the conflict.

The first chapter of this story is about Nding, where Fidelis tells about the Fulani herdsmen that attacked his family. The second chapter is about a nearby settlement of Fulani herders, who explain why they had to move their cattle into farmers territory - one of the biggest reasons that initiated this conflict is drought caused by climate change.

This multimedia interactive story is made with the Slices storytelling tool, and includes photography, video, text and infographics. You can watch both (Dutch) chapters of the story in the video below, or click through the English two chapters through these links:

• Grit & Grass 1: the farmers

• Grit & Grass 2: the herdsmen

VPRO Bureau Buitenland multimedia project: 'Grit & Grass'

If Nigeria is mentioned in Dutch media, chances are high that the news story is about Boko Haram. But just a couple of hundreds kilometers from where the Boko Haram insurgency is taking place, thousands of Nigerians have been killed in a lesser known conflict between herdsmen and farmers.

For Dutch broadcaster VPRO’s Bureau Buitenland platform, Saskia Houttuin and I traveled to Plateau State, where we created two interactive stories which focus on both sides of the conflict. The first story is about Nding, where Fidelis tells about the Fulani herdsmen that attacked his family. The second chapter is about a nearby settlement of Fulani herders, who explain why they had to move their cattle into famers territory - one of the biggest reasons is drought caused by climate change.

This multimedia interactive story is made with the Slices storytelling tool, and includes photography, video, text and infographics. You can watch both (Dutch) chapters of the story in the video below, or click through the English two chapters through these links:

• Grit & Grass 1: the farmers

• Grit & Grass 2: the herdsmen

In July 2020, the production was a finalist in the 7th edition for the LUMIX Festival for Young Visual Journalism, in the ‘Digital Storytelling’ category. Read more about the festival here.

To watch more multimedia stories about climate refugees, you can take a look at this VPRO Bureau Buitenland web page.

Work in progress: an interactive storytelling project for VPRO

Sneak peek: Africa correspondent Saskia Houttuin and I are working on a new interactive story for Dutch broadcaster VPRO. In two chapters filled with audio, video, texts and photography, we look at two perspectives on the deadly conflict between herdsmen and farmers in Nigeria. The two stories, created with the Slices storytelling tool, will be published on VPRO’s Bureau Buitenland platform in November.