The Redford Center's video: Oakland Goes Outdoors

Directed by Sara Dosa In 2019 we began development on our next original production, The Nature Film Project, and we had the opportunity to capture the experiences of a group of Montera Middle School students in Oakland, California camping overnight in Tilden Park. It was part of a groundbreaking new program that shares the same name as the film, Oakland Goes Outdoors. Presently, we’re experiencing a sea change in America when it comes to understanding the health benefits of being outdoors as well as the racialized dimensions of health inequity. Innovative new medical research is culminating with an emerging movement working to ensure equal access to the outdoors and a 20-minute daily dose of nature exposure for all, which The Nature Film Project’s storytelling efforts will fuel and support. Oakland Goes Outdoors is a first of its kind program that aims to provide nature immersion experiences—as a right of passage—to all middle schoolers in the Oakland Unified School District and beyond. This is their story.