Recent graduates of SAE University College’s Master of Creative Industries have worked with a senior lecturer on a new social media series for primary and high school students to help tackle anxiety about the climate crisis.
Stay Tuned to Our Planet (STTOP) is an innovative educational social media series, which aims to teach Generation Z how to positively impact climate change and reduce their eco- anxiety. STTOP is being piloted in classrooms this school year and aims to encourage proactive and positive learnings around reducing our footprint and contributing to the environment.
The project is hosted by YouTube personality Mathew McKenna and was created by Australian production company The Feds, as part of the Documentary Australia Environment Accelerator program.
STTOP includes 28 five-minute episodes packed with information and resources on everything from switching off devices when not in use to save energy, to worm farms, bee hotels, composting and more.
It is endorsed by a number of mental health and environmental organisations, including Orygen, Headspace, University of Melbourne, Planet Ark, Environmental Education NSW, Parents for Climate, Conservation Volunteers Australia and Surfers for Climate.
Senior lecturer at SAE and President of the Australian Screen Production, Education & Research Association (ASPERA) Dr Anne Chesher was recruited to create the learning and teaching resources for the series aimed at getting the online medium into the classroom.

Inviting classroom interaction
Chesher brought two former students Kristina Chapman and Kelsey Hall on board for the series, both SAE Master of Creative Industries graduates with backgrounds in education.
While the project is made for classroom interaction, it is also available on social media platforms like TikTok and YouTube, allowing young people to engage with the series on their own terms.
Teaching students to work on different platforms that connect to young people is a crucial part of creative education, says Chesher, who prioritises this in her teaching at SAE.
Innovative and proactive
SAE University College Masters of Creative Industries graduate Kristina Chapman describes the series as an innovative, and proactive; a much-needed component in the online conversation about climate change.
“This current generation has been told a lot about climate change and what’s happening to the planet but they haven’t been given a lot of sense of control about that, so they’re feeling a lot of climate anxiety towards what they can and can’t do,” she says.
“Hopefully the students notice this themselves, going through their own social media feed, but the other part is their teachers being able to use it in a medium that makes sense to the students.
“I can imagine there’s content online that’s purposely encouraging people to feel awful about [climate change], instead of trying to help them feel empowered to do something, so I think it’s important [to have a series] coming from an educator.”

Putting creative skills to work
Fellow graduate Kelsey Hall says being asked to take part in the project by Dr Chesher allowed her to put her
skills from the Masters of Creative Industries to work.
“I wouldn’t have felt as confident to enter the industry without having completed the Masters of Creative Industries through SAE. That real-world application really helped me feel confident to jump into that space,” says Hall.
“I think the really cool thing that I love about STTOP is that it empowers students to take it into their own hands; to not [just] have that climate anxiety, but to actually feel like they can do something about it, and it provides ways that they can do those things at home or in schools and the community.”

As SAE University College Senior Lecturer and President of ASPERA, Dr Chesher says there is a trend, within the industry, “for the merging of impact and education, changing people’s minds, social attitudes and also environmental concerns” and says that piloting the STTOP project in Australian schools this year helps meet those goals.
She wants to see more parents, carers and educators asking how creativity and meaningful content can be used effectively to help address important issues, such as climate change and the anxiety that surrounds it.
“How can we, as responsible adults, help to steer them away from the pulp fiction and towards the literature? How can we use it as a teaching tool down the track?”