Alice Aedy is a name rapidly gaining resonance across the climate justice and media spheres. As a filmmaker, storyteller and advocate, she harnesses the powerful interplay between narrative and activism to ensure vulnerable voices are heard. She is not just telling stories—but reshaping how environmental narratives are framed, centring justice, equity and inclusion. In an era when climate change is too often portrayed in abstract numbers and distant futures, Alice Aedy brings it back to people—particularly those on the margins.
Early Life and Education: Foundations of a Voice
Alice Aedy’s journey begins in the United Kingdom, where she grew up with a deep curiosity about people, places, and systems of power. Her undergraduate studies in History and Politics at the London School of Economics sharpened her analytical thinking, while exposing her to the underlying forces shaping global inequalities. Later, she pursued postgraduate study in Documentary Filmmaking at University College London, acquiring the technical and narrative tools she would later deploy in service of justice.
Those academic years were formative. She not only learned about structures of power, migration and colonial legacies, but also practised telling stories—learning how editing, framing, and voice can amplify or silence certain perspectives. This dual grounding—scholarly and creative—has shaped her work ever since.
Earthrise Studio: A New Model for Climate Storytelling
Perhaps her boldest initiative has been co-founding Earthrise Studio, where storytelling meets climate activism. The underlying mission: shift how climate stories are told—moving away from doom, despair or saviour tropes, and towards dignified, participatory narratives.
Earthrise Studio places emphasis on:
- Collaborative storytelling — working with communities affected by climate change to co-create media, rather than imposing outside narratives.
- Justice-centred framing — treating climate change not merely as an environmental crisis, but as a crisis of equity, rights and accountability.
- Scalable impact — spreading stories through campaigns, social platforms, documentaries and events to reach broad audiences.
Through Earthrise, Alice and her team have launched multimedia campaigns and produced films, photography projects and visual essays that centre on climate migration, frontline communities, women, and intersectional justice.
Themes and Focus: What Alice Aedy Opens Our Eyes To
Alice Aedy’s work revolves around a few recurring and interconnected themes:
1. Climate Migration and Displacement
In many parts of the world, communities are forced to move—temporarily or permanently—because climate change undermines livelihoods, food systems or safety. Alice’s storytelling draws attention to such human stories, resisting reductive narratives of “refugees” as victims or charity cases. Instead, she highlights agency, resilience, structural causes, and the blurred line between forced migration and displacement in the climate era.
2. Women, Gender and Climate Justice
Women and gender minorities frequently bear disproportionate burdens of climate change. Alice explores the gendered impacts—how responsibilities, access to resources and decision-making power often exclude voices that are most affected. Her work seeks to amplify women’s leadership in climate action and reframe climate justice as inseparable from gender justice.
3. Narrative Power and Framing
A recurring motif in her work is meta-reflection on how stories are told. Who is the narrator? Whose voice is foregrounded? What visuals are used? She critiques mainstream environmental storytelling that reduces complex crises to graphic data or “saviour” personalities. In doing so, Alice encourages more ethical, participatory approaches.
4. Intersectionality and Justice
Alice insists that climate change cannot be understood in isolation—rather, it intersects with race, class, colonial histories, migration policies, land rights and more. She calls for climate stories that hold these intersections front and centre, resisting single-axis frameworks.
Major Projects and Campaigns
Alice Aedy has been associated with several significant works and public interventions. Below are a few examples representative of her impact (note: titles paraphrased):
- Documentaries from Displacement Zones
She has documented life in refugee camps and migration contexts across Europe and the Middle East, interviewing those who live at the interface of climate stress and human displacement. Her films expose how climate, politics, policy and borders interact. - Photography & Visual Essays
Many of her magazine and gallery contributions zoom in on climate migrants, women-led adaptation, and community resilience. Her imagery often centres dignity and agency—showing not just struggle, but strategy, resistance and everyday life. - Public Talks, Panels & Moderation
Alice appears at major climate, media and global events, speaking on narrative strategies, climate justice and media ethics. She moderates conversations across voices and geographies, bringing attention to underrepresented storytellers and communities. - Collaborative Campaigns
Through Earthrise, she helps design global or regional campaigns spotlighting climate impacts in underreported contexts. These campaigns often use short video, photography, social media tools and event activations to reach both local and global audiences.
Style and Approach: What Makes Her Work Stand Out
Alice Aedy’s storytelling style is distinctive, rooted in ethical considerations and narrative rigor:
- Reflexive storytelling
She is upfront about narrative choices—why one angle is chosen over another, what is omitted, and which voices are foregrounded. That reflexivity builds transparency and trust. - Centre the marginalised
Her subjects are often those rarely seen in climate stories: displaced people, smallholder women farmers, borderlands communities, youth voices. She avoids “poverty porn” or sensationalism. - Collaborative and participatory processes
Her work often involves partnerships with local storytellers, communities, NGOs, and activists—ensuring that stories are not imposed from outside but shaped together. - Visual + narrative synergy
She understands that images and words must complement one another. Her projects frequently fuse photography, film and written narrative to offer richer texture. - Call to justice, not despair
While acknowledging urgency and loss, she avoids purely alarmist frames. Instead, she asks: what systems must change? Who must be accountable? What are agency and hope in this context?
Challenges and Critiques
No public figure is without critique or limitation. Some of the challenges Alice Aedy faces include:
- Scale vs depth
Intensive, ethical storytelling demands time, community trust and resources, which can limit how many stories can be told or how widely. Scaling without diluting ethics is difficult. - Balancing optimism and urgency
There is a fine line between too much hope (which risks downplaying crisis) and too much doom (which can paralyse audiences). Maintaining nuance is a constant juggling act. - Funding and editorial constraints
Many climate funders or media platforms favour familiar narratives (icons, data, spectacle). Advocating for justice-centred, long-form, locally rooted storytelling can be harder to pitch or sustain in media markets. - Navigating power imbalances
Even well-intentioned storytellers must remain vigilant about inadvertently reinforcing power dynamics—e.g. when editing, selecting, translating or distributing.
Contributions and Impact
Despite challenges, Alice Aedy’s contributions are significant and growing:
- Shifting narrative norms
She is among a new crop of storytellers who argue that telling climate stories “right” matters—not just what is told, but how, by whom, and to whom. Her work contributes to shifting media norms away from extractive, top-down frames toward partnership and justice. - Amplifying marginalised voices
By centring those often silenced, Alice helps broaden the mainstream understanding of climate impacts and adaptation beyond the Global North lens. - Educating practitioners
Through talks, workshops and mentorship, she helps build capacity among emerging storytellers to centre justice in their climate communication practice. - Influencing public discourse
Her presence in climate events, panels and media gives space for alternative frames to reach public, policymaker, and activist audiences. She asks the difficult questions around accountability, migration, borders and power.
Why Alice Aedy’s Approach Matters Now
We live in a moment when climate change is accelerating, but dominant narratives remain stubbornly limited: catastrophe, polar bears, distant futures. Those frames often fail to reach or move those in power—or fail to reflect the lived realities of people on the frontlines.
Alice Aedy’s approach matters because:
- It decolonises climate narrative—instead of seeing communities as passive victims, her work presents them as knowing, adapting, resisting actors embedded in histories of inequality.
- It links climate and justice—arguing that climate change is inseparable from racial, gender, migration and economic justice.
- It invites accountability—not only asking what communities can do, but what institutions, corporations and states must do.
- It inspires engaged audiences—people respond more to human stories and justice calls than endless statistics.
What’s Next: Trajectory and Opportunities
Looking ahead, Alice Aedy is well placed to expand her influence and deepen her work in several directions:
- Long-form feature documentaries
A full-length documentary could build on her shorter films and essays, reaching festival, TV or streaming audiences. - Mentorship and capacity building
Establishing fellowships, training programmes or editorial collectives to nurture more climate justice storytellers around the world. - Institutional partnerships
Collaboration with universities, NGOs, and media houses to embed justice-centred narrative practices in climate programmes and content strategies. - Cross-sectorful campaigns
Working with policy, tech, climate finance or philanthropic stakeholders to embed storytelling into public campaigns, accountability mechanisms and climate adaptation projects. - New geographies and contexts
Extending her work into underrepresented climate zones—Small Island States, Central Africa, South America—and exploring cross-regional narrative dialogues.
How to Learn from Alice Aedy: Practical Lessons
For aspiring climate communicators, journalists, activists or storytellers, Alice Aedy’s work offers several concrete lessons:
- Start with listening, not telling
Before framing stories, embed yourself (ethically) in communities. Let voices shape direction, rather than imposing themes. - Ask hard narrative questions
Whose perspective is dominant? What is omitted? What power relations underlie the frame? - Use mixed media carefully
Combining film, photo, text and audio can deepen impact—but coherence and sensitivity are key. - Stay intersectional
Integrate gender, race, class and colonial histories into your climate narratives. Avoid single-axis lenses. - Frame justice, not just crisis
Challenge audiences by asking not only “What’s happening?” but “Who is accountable?” and “What must change?” - Document process, not just outcome
Transparency about choices, ethics and challenges enhances credibility. - Build networks and collaborations
Storytelling is rarely solitary. Collaborate with local creators, activists, NGOs and scholars.
Conclusion
Alice Aedy exemplifies a new generation of climate storytellers—ones who refuse to accept the conventional narratives of doom or detachment. Instead, she brings nuance, justice, and humanity to the fore. Her voice reminds us that the climate conversation is not merely about carbon, temperature or projections—it is about people, systems, power and hope.
As she continues to grow her impact through Earthrise Studio, mentorship and media presence, Alice Aedy is poised to be one of the influential voices shaping how the world views, understands and responds to climate justice. For those who care about climate, narrative, equity and action—the story of Alice Aedy offers both inspiration and a roadmap.
