April 6, 2015

WRRC-CALS-AZPM Team Wins $100K in the New Arizona Prize: Water Consciousness Challenge!

On April 1, Beyond The Mirage, an innovative web-based experience, was selected as the winner of The New Arizona Prize: Water Consciousness Challenge, winning the $100,000 grand prize.

On April 1, Beyond The Mirage, an innovative web-based experience, was selected as the winner of The New Arizona Prize: Water Consciousness Challenge, winning the $100,000 grand prize.

Developed collaboratively by a creative team from the University of Arizona College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS), which includes the Communications and Cyber Technologies Unit (CCT) and Water Resources Research Center (WRRC), along with Arizona Public Media (AZPM) and marketing professionals, Beyond The Mirage aims to raise awareness and understanding about Arizona's water supplies, demands, and challenges.

Targeted to young adults, the Beyond The Mirage project provides users with hundreds of water-related video clips from which to create their own mini-documentary. As users compile their ‘mini-docs’, they learn valuable facts about water, drought and methods of water conservation. Beyond The Mirage will use its award monies to help launch its web site, with an expected go-live date of January 2016.

AZPM’s executive producer John Booth took part in the competition. “I was very excited about this project when Cody Sheedy of CALS approached me,” he said. “At AZPM, we aim to bring depth to important issues – and what could be more important in the desert than water?”

Booth will provide editorial oversight on the project based on his decades of documentary production experience.

AZPM hopes to bring Beyond The Mirage to PBS Learning Media, an educational resource provided free of charge for preK-12 educators. PBS Learning Media offers teaching tools such as images, video, and audio files, as well as lesson plans, background essays, and discussion questions. Its goal is to improve teacher effectiveness and student achievement.

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