Ripples is a youth-led arts zine showcasing visual and written works that celebrate our shared love of and connection to water. We are calling for young artists, writers, and photographers (aged 6-25), who live on the unceded Indigenous lands and waters today known as British Columbia to join us in creating a collection of artistic works that celebrate human connection to water, through the stories told by our relationships to water held in ice.
Ripples is released annually on World Water Day, celebrating this important observance day and the many calls to action that it represents. Each year World Water Day is given a specific theme. This year’s theme is “Glacier Preservation”. The theme we’ve chosen for this year’s issue of Ripples is: Stories told by ice. Through this theme, we hope to inspire submissions reflecting on personal experiences of awe, tenderness, and grief rooted in relationships to ice; narratives of ice communicating the ways glacial and fluvial processes have unequivocally shaped every aspect of the places we live; stories encapsulating the many forms of ice and water, and more! Exploring the intrinsic interconnectedness of humans and water with a special emphasis on ice, Ripples is a celebration, collaborative reflection, an invitation to rethink watershed governance, and an urgent reminder that action is needed to support the health of our watersheds—including our ice, snow, and glaciers—now and into the future.
The organizations behind Ripples 2024 believe that young people—particularly youth artists, photographers, and writers—are creating ripples in the world of water advocacy and governance through education, stewardship, art, and the celebration of Earth’s water systems, of which every creature on Earth, including ourselves, is an integral part. We believe that young people have an invaluable role to play in supporting healthy and resilient watersheds, which our shared and deeply entwined futures depend on.
This year, Ripples is being published by the University of Victoria Sustainability Project, in partnership with the POLIS Water Sustainability Project, Students for a Green University UNBC, and NatureKidsBC.
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Katia Bannister (she/her) is the Coordinator of the UVic Sustainability Project, a student group working to re-conceptualize sustainability at the University of Victoria.