For the past two years, BATS, which was established in 2020, has done 48-hour teen film festivals, in which teams of two to six were given a mystery box on a Friday and asked to create a film around it using their phones, editing the footage and turning it around to be shown the following Monday evening.
The first year’s theme was “Premiere the Problem,” focusing on challenges teens face in their community, while they went with the opposite with “Premiere the Positive” in 2025 on what’s good in life.
Event organizers asked the BATS members to present how to run such an event. BATS member Mary Cunningham, who also served on the event staff, was hopeful it would go over well and came out of it with more than expected.
“We went in with excitement, hopeful people would take away what we took away from our film festival. We were told a film festival was so outside of the box,” she said. “When you start with a how-to, you’re in danger of losing your audience, but with ours, we had video and audio that kept the interest.”
Cunningham also created a how-to guide using examples of what BATS did. Before it concluded, the audience was coming up with its own ideas and plans for their own version of the Premiere festival.
BATS adult advisor Beth Dixon was proud the group was asked to present this by Youth to Youth staff, she said.
“BATS is one of the strongest youth-led programs of its kinds because kids take the lead and it’s arts-based, utilizing the arts to get its messages across,” Dixon said.
The conference was also to help what BATS does in the community going forward. Members got ideas for future presentations such as its fall Be the Change Youth Summit in November and showcase in the spring, potentially doing a smaller-scale version of the state conference.
With BATS founder Addie Powell off to college this year, Cunningham is stepping up as the group’s president, and Emerson Babian will be vice president. She got involved early, finding a love of prevention, and it will be part of her senior year activities with a goal of making the club a sustainable, committed group.
On the opposite end, Springfield High sophomore Kevin Jones joined BATS in January with a desire to help create a strong community and jumped right in, helping at the conference and could potentially take a leadership role in the future.
“It was fun. I liked how interactive it was and seeing the ideas,” Jones said.
While Cunningham and Jones are involved in many other activities including sports, mock trial teams and dance, they balance it to include BATS also.
“If you want to do something, you make the effort,” Cunningham said.
BATS recently got funding from Mental Health Recovery Board of Clark, Greene and Madison Counties and will be seeking other grants to help with its future efforts.
Opposed to adult programs aimed at youth, youth-led initiatives are instrumental in the community, Dixon said.
If you want youth to buy in, include them, she said.
“The most powerful way to get youth to listen is by hearing it from their peers. They are the voices of the future, and young minds have so much creativity,” she said. “We feel like we’ve created something powerful in the world of prevention.”
Any youths interested in joining BATS can check out its Facebook page at www.facebook.com/BringingAwarenessToStudents/ or website at www.batsyouthled.org.
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