Hi,
Last year in October, we decided to invite visual artists to reimagine our long, text-heavy stories into something fun. This is where we started a bi-monthly visual story contest, Polychrome. The idea was simple: we suggest a story and artists render it creatively in a 60-second video.
We're here to introduce you to the winners of the second edition of Polychrome and their submissions.
The challenge was to visualise a popular investigative story by The Collective's members Tapasya and Shreegireesh Jalihal. This was a 2,700-word long investigation on Baba Ramdev's Patanjali group titled “As Haryana kept Aravallis unprotected, Patanjali quietly traded forestland.” The story traced how the Haryana government ensured parts of the Aravalli Range did not get any protection. This was exploited by Ramdev's Patanjali group by discreetly buying and selling large tracts of land in the Aravalli through dubious entities and shell companies.
Polychrome Round II saw many participants. It amazed us how each one of them had imagined our story and retold it using new methods, tricks and colourful visualisation formats. Here are the top three winners of the contest and their creations.
1st Prize (Rs.10,000)
ADWAITH W.S.
Adwaith works as a freelance researcher / scriptwriter. He has a small YouTube channel where Adwaith, along with his friends, makes documentaries and video essays. His best friend, a hip-hop artist, had pushed him into making music. This submission is a step in that direction.
Watch his winning entry here.
2nd Prize (Rs.7,500)
AKSHIT CHAWLA
Akshit works as a freelance journalist and a video editor. His interest in experimenting with storytelling formats for news drove him to take part in this competition. In the past, Akshit has worked with news organisations for three years as a reporter and a video producer.
Watch his winning entry here.
3rd Prize (Rs.5,000)
HARINI KANNAN
Harini is an independent illustrator who has worked on commissions for various projects, including marathon branding, social media illustrations for mental health and gender issues, among others. Her career goals are to communicate her thoughts on political, societal, and cultural issues to a wide audience as an artist.
Watch her winning entry here.
Why the Polychrome contest?
Investigative journalism is an attempt at pursuing facts and telling the truth. There are many ways to tell the truth. Artists have always been at the vanguard of such truth-telling. At times, artists can convey the truth more succinctly and sharply. Therefore, we at The Reporters’ Collective have begun to find different ways to collaborate with artists of different kinds.
We began our collaboration with video creators with our bimonthly contest, Polychrome. Every two months we will open one of our investigative stories to visual artists.
This is our small effort to expand the village of people who support and collaborate for accountability journalism. You too can join it by promoting these wonderful artists on Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, Facebook.
All of this is possible only with your support. Donate and help us to do more investigations and experiment with storytelling mediums that can take our stories to wider audiences.
Regards,
Furquan Ameen