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Before cities there were swamps. Wetlands and swamps globally have been sacrificed to pave the way for housing, agriculture and industry. Urban developers and dwellers have largely overlooked the\u00a0vital role that swamps play in buffering storms, capturing carbon, fostering life and filtering water<\/a>.<\/p>\n One of the biggest threats to swamps today is a lack of understanding of swamps\u2019 role in human survival. This is especially true in South Florida, home to the Everglades, one of the largest swamps in North America, and the\u00a0site of a huge and expensive wetland restoration project<\/a>.<\/p>\n In a time of climate emergency, it is especially important to listen and learn from the swamps around us. But what if you don\u2019t live near a swamp?<\/p>\n I spent a semester as the visiting Knight Chair at the\u00a0Center for Communication, Culture and Change at the University of Miami<\/a>, teaching a production course in interactive documentary and the Everglades. As a filmmaker and teacher who is invested in participatory processes, my goal was to explore media methods to promote what I\u2019ve come to think of as swamp literacy.<\/p>\n Over several months, I worked in collaboration with university students, community organizations, biologists and co-directors Kim Grinfeder and Juan Carlos Zaldivar. We developed\u00a0SwampScapes,<\/a>\u00a0a multi-platform documentary that involved a 13-minute\u00a0Virtual Reality (VR) film<\/a>, a\u00a0Swamp Symphony<\/a>, and a\u00a0study guide<\/a>. For those who could not access the VR film, we shot video\u00a0portraits<\/a>\u00a0that can be viewed online.<\/p>\n We were curious to explore how we could use\u00a0VR to cultivate care about a site<\/a>\u00a0that is inaccessible to most people. Our idea was to create a virtual field trip for youth with no means or interest in wading through a swamp.<\/p>\n