Expedition to Greenland on Offer

For immediate release

>From the Royal Society of New Zealand

Wednesday 14 February 2007

Expedition to Greenland on Offer for NZ Students and Teachers

The prize for the next Freemasons BIG Science Adventures secondary school DVD competition will be four places on a guided expedition to Greenland in August 2007. To enter, teams of three students (Years 11-13) and a teacher are tasked with producing a five minute programme on a local climate or energy story.

The best six teams will be chosen to go on a week-long film school in July at the University of Otago natural history filmmaking unit. They will receive special tuition and complete a short video based on a one-day excursion to various places in the Otago area. This will help judges decide the ultimate winners. Each team will be supported by a film mentor a new graduate of the University natural history filmmaking course.

The team that goes to Greenland will make a ten minute documentary of their trip, focussing on climate and energy. They will go to remote and beautiful Eastern Greenland, where the Inuit people still live a very traditional lifestyle, now under serious threat from climate change. The melting of the Greenland ice sheet has contributed to sea level rises of 3.1mm per year in the decade 1993-2003 (IPCC fourth assessment report, February 2007). The expedition will include the team's film mentor, who will work with the students to produce the documentary.

Grand Master of the Freemasons, Mr Barry McLaggan, says, "There's no learning to equal actual experience. Also, to explain something to other people in this case on video you have to understand it very well yourself. Going to Greenland, especially the east coast, will be a very BIG adventure for our young people it's certainly not a tourist resort. They will learn about the struggle of various peoples to survive there. The Vikings settled in Greenland but ultimately died out because, it seems, they could not fully adapt to the severe climate. There's an important lesson in that as climate change starts to affect our own farming community." Mr McLaggan is himself a farmer.

The winners of the 2006 competition, the team from Wellington High, have just returned from a trip to the Antarctica, their prize for producing a stand-out documentary on the work of astronomers at the Mt John Observatory.

The three DVD competitions sponsored by Freemasons New Zealand, beginning with the Transit of Venus in 2004, have been greatly stimulating for students and teachers, and produced an impressive body of creative work. They have attracted students with a wide variety of talents, who have formed teams with complementary skills.

"By supporting education and young people in general, Freemasons New Zealand encourages New Zealanders to aim high and achieve well. Each year over $200,000 is also given away to tertiary students who show real talent and promise in their chosen fields and who are making a contribution to their community."

Ends

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