Laudato si’ inspires new communication project

By Lydia O’Kane

Three months ago, nine young media professionals got a unique opportunity to participate in a programme organized by SIGNIS, the World Catholic Association for Communication.

Entitled the “Laudato si’ Global Fellowship”, the programme focused on Compassion and Social Communication.

The participants jetted off to Xavier University of Bhubaneswar, in India where, as they put it, they “began a journey in search of ourselves, faith and the cosmos.”

During this creative journey, the group, who hail from six countries, came up with a project called “Unfold Nest” which they describe as “an interactive, multi-narrative, transmedia flip book that proposes an engaging experience where the audience has the opportunity to choose its own path.”

It is also meant to be an invitation “to spread awareness about the crisis our planet is facing and promote action and conversion at every level.”

Argentinian Communications Director Solange Didiego was a Fellow with the programme and described her time at the University as “a really challenging and transforming experience.”

Laudato si’

Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato si’, she said, is a “wake up call”, adding that “if you don’t get that conversion that Pope Francis talks about and you cannot feel it from… your heart it is not easy to work for that change that is mandatory at this point.”

Ms Didiego went on to say that the encyclical “was a door that opened me to many activities…and it is an invitation to work with people from all walks of life; it’s a very open initiative that moves us from love and respect and that search for peace and equality in our world.”

Unfold Nest

Speaking about the Unfold Nest project, she said working on it had been “an incredible experience because it meant we also needed to re-think many of the concepts and the ideas we came to the programme with; trying to understand that there is always the possibility to see new things… and to innovate in the narrative.”

Ms Didiego explained that what she and her colleagues were trying to do was to “create a narrative”, to spread the values of peace, love and justice that Laudato si’ speaks about.

The Communications Director described the Unfold Nest e-book as “an open narrative that each user can choose the part that they can go through.”

She continued by saying that it “is a transformative journey” and is about introspection and “understanding what is going on around us, in our communities, in our planet. It’s not a book meant to be read in a couple of hours; it’s more like an experience.”