Candi Whitehead
How it started:
At the end of the year in 2023, I was out sick with Covid. I was feeling behind after getting sick, so I ended up looking around online for volunteer events seeking a weekend event to make up for some of my missed hours. (It was still too cold and wintery in Shasta County for any local weekend events.) I found the flagship Wild and Scenic Film Festival in Nevada City, CA. It sounded like a good way to get some additional hours but, happening pretty soon!
Luckily, I was able to sign up to be a volunteer for the flagship 2024 Wild and Scenic Film Festival from SRYCL. Here is the event in 2025:
I signed up for three shifts. It turned out for my first shift that they were fully staffed. Not having that first shift allowed me to spend time exploring the town of Nevada City, CA. It was a beautiful downtown area. The local ice cream shop had some seasonal Candy Cap mushroom ice cream, a few restaurants, and great outdoor shops. The organizers had a bus running guests between the main film area and their theater venue location that also held an art show.
Then, I attended a film and a couple of shifts, most showings were completely full of attendees! Finding an open showing was a struggle. There were so many people, it was great to see the support for these important topics.
The first shift I had was during the film, California’s Watershed Healing. Many people who wanted to attend this session were turned away. The length was about an hour and covered all the aspects of the California watershed, from agriculture to the meadows of the high sierras, to the forest health with perspective interviews from folks of all walks of life. Afterward, a press run and community discussion in which community members asked the panelists incredible questions that I hope continue to drive the momentum of healing California’s watersheds. The panelists also discussed how much of a national leader California’s conservation work is in the way of trying to holistically approach watershed healing and how much we are behind on some healing practices, such as prescribed or cultural fire. I was hopeful to bring this one film to Shasta County.
Then, I attended Into the Deep with my volunteer ticket. I attended blindly due to it being the only film left on Sunday with open seats!! Seats filled up fast. It was a film about the future of mining in the deep seas and the corporate CEOs gearing up to do that mining. The main takeaway is that the conservation and preservation of the deep sea are vital to the health of our oceans, the natural processes of the deep sea have not been studied thoroughly enough for their ecosystem service value to be deemed destroyable by the CEOs. It conveyed this message with amazing imagery of the deep sea and the strange life that lives there. There are small protests happening around the world to prevent the progress of deep-sea mining. I hope more people are listening.
It was a great weekend participating in and experiencing the 2024 Wild and Scenic Film Festival.
Bringing it to WSRCD
When I returned from the weekend, I was sharing the film experiences with my coworker Jeremey Kelley. I mentioned that they do a tour and that it didn’t look like anyone else was bringing the film festival to Shasta County this year. He signed the Shasta Conservation Fund up for the tour. We spent eight weeks doing all the tasks, picking films, creating the invitation, planning snacks, and reaching out to our invitees. Jeremey gladly did all of the phone calling portions of organizing guests and I did all of the computer tasks.
We organized a two-hour exclusive screening for Saturday, May 11th as a thank you to any Conservation Ambassador that has supported the Shasta Conservation Fund. We had a turnout of about 25 people and were able to set up a display of past-to-present project information from different project deliverables over the last decade.
To put on the event we spent a few days picking films. Luckily, everyone liked the California Watershed Healing film for the second hour of our program. Picking the first hour of films was a great experience with the team. We didn’t have time to screen every film in the catalog but overall we ended up with some great choices that were all related to conservation.
Jeremey Kelley planned out the opening remarks, welcoming everyone with a poem that he also presented to the crowd in Sign.
Jeremey Intro | And you want to be more than a believer |
Safety talk (need MC) | You can help us bring back the beaver |
Film crew enters single file standing together | It's the hard work and dedication, |
Jeremey speaking It’s a day of veneration! | Of folks like yourselves, across the nation, |
For the work of conservation… | That defines the meaning of Conservation! |
I look into the crowd, Who do I see? | it’s the work We do together, |
(Everyone) Conservation ambassadors staring at me!! | That bring love and hope back together, |
Many many friends and family!!! | That’s all that we need to restore our nation! |
It’s a moment of great opportunity. | (Chuck) Our goal is conservation |
We get to connect with you personally! | Candi Our work is implementation |
We’re eager to share what we know about beavers!! | Jaime restoration |
I guess that makes us… | Faith And mitigation |
Everyone (say out loud and sign beaver believers) Beaver believers!!! | Ryan Outreach and education |
And if you want to know more about beavers | Alex Is how we share information |
You can read the book name eager | Matthew And with no further hesitation, |
It tells all about beavers After you read this book about the beaver | Jeremey Let’s continue our celebration, |
Everyone (loud) We are proud to bring you the wild and scenic film festival! | Cheers!!! |
Throughout this process I have learned a ton of local community event information after coming back from that flagship weekend. One big unknown was that Tehama County RCD usually hosts their own Wild and Scenic tour. We were able to check in with them about ours and it was good. There is a local club that usually hosts a film festival at Sundial Bridge that ended up canceling their event due to lack of interest. Plus, other information about local venues, community connections, and other good-to-know information.
Link to the film program I created with the CollegeCorps Volunteer: https://www.canva.com/design/DAGE3JtdPgA/kZWHGCbyZyIGwOCXVUmSdA/view?utm_content=DAGE3JtdPgA&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=editor
Lessons Learned
The little things of event planning were what I learned the most. Like, when we started at 5:00 but probably should have scheduled a short optional reception beginning at 4:30 to get everyone there by 5:00. We gave people a 15-minute buffer and it worked out but we had to keep people a little late. There are other small event organization pieces that I hadn’t thought of that we took care of the day before, like creating signage for our guests “seat yourselves” “check in here” etc. It all came together nicely.
At the beginning of our event planning, I tried to use the weekly planner checklist provided by the host organization to check off tasks. But, because of the nature of our event being non-typical, many of the suggestions were not applicable to our event. So then, I ended up not looking at the checklist suggestions for the middle and end planning process leading up to the event. I should have kept with it but the days were busy.
We ended up starting the showing with technical difficulties. I had sound checked everything a few times and on the day of the event, the speaker ended up being disconnected, which we figured out in a handful of minutes. Sometimes small difficulties just can’t be avoided!
In the end, I think everyone enjoyed the films. We received some compliments afterward! I am happy that we were able to throw everything together on a very small budget.
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