Open Planet
Photo: Ocean with David Attenborough, Open Planet
Every great initiative starts with a purpose. Can you share what your initiative does, the communities you serve, and why this work matters in today's world?
This initiative saw the open-sourcing of thousands of credible, high-quality video clips from the making of Ocean with David Attenborough -- a landmark feature documentary produced by Open Planet Studios and Silverback Films. The film was released in cinemas in May 2025 to coincide with Attenborough’s 99th birthday, ahead of the historic UN Ocean Conference, before its global release on National Geographic, Disney+ and Hulu. For the first time in production history, individuals and organisations across the globe were empowered with free, world-class footage to respond to the film with their own ocean stories -- told in their voice, to their audience. The combined global impact of the film (which saw record-breaking success at the box office and on streaming) together with the invaluable free storytelling resource on Open Planet, contributed to a mass cultural moment for ocean conservation -- harnessing the power of storytelling to drive change.
Photo: Still, Open Planet
We're thrilled to learn more about your work. What does being featured on the 2025 Culture for Impact List mean to you and your initiative? How do you see this recognition supporting your mission or amplifying your impact?
We’re so excited to be featured on the 2025 Culture for Impact list and to be recognised by the Museum for the UN whose work, including the Sounds Right initiative, we greatly admire. We want everyone, everywhere to be using the Open Planet library and become storytellers for our planet so being part of this list is a really valuable endorsement of our work and the power of storytelling to achieve change. It will also enable us to reach new audiences.
Let's talk about hope. In your view, what role do arts and culture play in helping people reconnect with a sense of collective possibility? How can creativity and cultural expression encourage communities to imagine and work toward a better future together?
We are in a climate and nature crisis, but we are also suffering from a crisis of imagination. The narrative has been dominated by negative news and personal sacrifice and yet great progress is being made around the world. We have the technology and the solutions to make a nature positive future possible, the question remains as to whether we can realise that future. Culture and storytelling play a key role in achieving this change. Our society is built on stories. The stories we tell each other define our identities and our relationship to the planet. We need to create stories which help us imagine the better future that’s within reach and show the brilliant examples of work that’s already in progress to get us there so we can scale and support them.
Photo: Still, Open Planet
What inspired you to use socially engaged arts as a tool for positive change? How did this medium become your way of making a difference in the world?
At Open Planet we believe passionately in the power of storytelling to inspire positive change. Our collective experience in documentary production has given us countless examples of this in action. But we know that there’s only so many people we can reach on our own and that it’s important to hear from diverse voices and different perspectives. We want to deliver the tools to enable anyone, anywhere to become storytellers for our planet. That’s why we created openplanet.org so that storytellers around the world can use the library to create content that reaches their audiences in their voice.
What has the impact of your work looked like? We'd love to hear stories, feedback, or specific moments when you saw your initiative making a real difference in someone's life or in a community.
From the outset, Ocean with David Attenborough was created to inspire action to protect and restore the ocean -- with the open-sourcing of footage being central to the impact campaign. Footage captured for a feature documentary of this kind is extremely expensive to film and often difficult to access, creating a barrier to storytelling. By democratising this vast collection of ocean footage, Open Planet has enabled people everywhere - from educators to activists, NGOs, grassroots filmmakers, campaigners and communicators - to tell powerful stories that would have otherwise not been told. Together, those stories are helping to raise awareness and call for change in this decisive decade for ocean restoration -- while providing a lasting legacy for the film.
Photo: Still, Open Planet
Conversations driven by Ocean with David Attenborough and the supporting impact campaign reached over 692 million on social media between April-July 2025. The Open Planet library, which supports thousands of storytellers across more than 110 countries worldwide, saw over 5,000 downloads of ocean clips in the first few months of release -- demonstrating the urgency and relevance of this footage. Inspiring, educational content created using this material has since featured in classrooms, boardrooms, on the world’s largest stages at major climate summits, and across social media channels -- contributing to the groundswell of public support and momentum for ocean conservation. This initiative not only marked a revolutionary step in democratising world-class film content for storytellers, but also demonstrates the role of open-source materials in delivering impact around major cultural moments. It has helped amplify the voices and stories of individuals and grassroots activists across the world, catalysing conversation and action inspired one of the most successful nature documentary releases of this decade. At a global level, the recent ratification of the High Seas Treaty - a central call-to-action in Ocean with David Attenborough - is one example of political change that has come from the collective efforts of the ocean movement. World leaders, including from the UK, Greece and Australia, have cited the film as influencing their decisions on marine protection.
On 4th Dec Open Planet collaborated with World’s Largest Lesson to deliver a live lesson on storytelling for impact using the structure of Ocean with David Attenborough as a blueprint and inviting the students to create their own ocean story. 377 schools have signed up to take part so far.
What do you hope others can learn or take away from your initiative? Are there key approaches, values, or insights that you believe could inspire others to create change through culture?
Telling the right story, at the right time can be an effective catalyst for change. Keeping your target audiences and the impact you want to achieve, front of mind all the way through your project is really challenging, but key to success. The challenge we have in front of us can seem overwhelming at times, but we can achieve great things when we come together and share resources and stories.
Photo: Still, Open Planet
At UN Live, we aim to harness culture as a force for empathy and collective action. Looking at your work, how do you think popular culture platforms can inspire people — not only to care about the planet, but to take meaningful, connected, and concrete action?
To change the future, we need to change the story. People are much more likely to take action when they believe change is already happening and they’re much more likely to believe it when they hear it from those they know and trust. Now more than ever, we need stories that help us believe in a future where humanity and our planet thrive together. In our storytelling we need to share positive stories to inspire people to support and scale solutions globally, whilst not shying away from the reality of what’s at stake.