How to focus on Fridays

By Madison Grosvenor

If you’ve seen Trustees on social media over the last year, you may be familiar with our weekly #FocusFriday series where we share an animation looking at a particular animal, plant or biome and how they function within the larger Alaska landscape.

Still from the caribou #FocusFriday post. Photos by Kent Miller and Keri Oberly.

From chickadees to caribou to Denali itself, we ‘focus in’ on the lives of an incredible variety of species and habitats across the state every week.

This idea came to me in my first several months at Trustees for Alaska as I was drinking from the firehose of issues and policies concerning Alaska lands and wildlife. It was a project I was eager to take on, wanting to learn as much as I could about the wildlife in my new home while stretching some of my artistic muscles.

I specialize in animation. Wanting to incorporate that into my work at Trustees, #FocusFriday became the perfect place to play and have fun.

What’s your favorite animal?

I want to hear about your favorite animal, but first, let me tell you how I decide what to feature each week.

A symbol of the Arctic, a still from the caribou #FocusFriday. Photos by Bob Wick and Kyle Joly.

Sometimes, the selection revolves around a particular season— migratory birds in the spring, polar bears in the winter, salmon in the summer. Other times, it centers on a particular Trustees’ issue. As Arctic Refuge work ramps up, caribou might be featured on Friday. If Izembek is in the news, eelgrass might be on deck! The goal of these #FocusFriday animations is to connect our audience with a particular species or habitat that we work to protect.

One of my favorites is the first. The video focused on caribou, specifically the Porcupine caribou herd. We talk a lot about caribou at Trustees, specifically about their ecological and cultural ties to the Arctic Refuge and Western Arctic. The #FocusFriday series gave me a chance to experiment with new ways of educating people about animals and places.

Still from our #FocusFriday on Alaska’s intertidal zones. Photos by NOAA, Alaska Department of Fish and Game, and Erin McKittrick.

Another one of my favorite animations was intertidal zones. Not only was it a particularly fun project in terms of all the colorful invertebrates and sea life, but it also opened the door to specific biomes to be explored more closely. Through animation, we are able to make visible connections between species and understand how their individual roles contribute to the larger community.

We began to expand what #FocusFriday could mean and what it could highlight, acknowledging that the timing of a particular species or site could make an impact. One of my favorite examples of this was focusing in on Denali. For generations, the Athabaskan people have called it Denali— “The High One” or “Great One”—a name that holds deep cultural and spiritual meaning.

Focus Fridays are a great way to highlight these kinds of stories, not just the ecological importance and history of a place but also its cultural importance. Names have power and calling it Denali is a simple but important way to respect the people and traditions connected to it.

Still from our #FocusFriday on Denali. Photo by Emily Mesner.

This series has been a great way to bring viewers closer to the work Trustees is doing in Alaska, but we want to make them even more interactive. What are you curious about? Are there species, ecosystems, or conservation issues you’d love to see featured? Drop your ideas in this form and help shape the stories we tell. The more we connect, the stronger our impact can be.

Check out more of our #FocusFriday videos by following us on our socials!