Unruly Natures Fieldnotes

The Unruly Natures research project has been running in Cape Town since 2022, exploring how people respond to baboons and the broader challenges of urban wildlife in a rapidly changing city.

From the beginning, the research team wanted to communicate the project in a way that was open, accessible and useful to the communities involved. They also wanted to share their findings beyond academic spaces, using creative formats that could support public engagement, build trust and make the research easier for wider audiences to understand.

I developed a content strategy built around both short- and long-form video storytelling. The aim was to document the research journey, communicate complex ideas in an accessible way, and create materials that could be used across different platforms and audiences.

This included short social media reels, medium-length YouTube videos, and a full-length documentary that brings the project’s key themes, voices and questions together. The film helps translate the research into a more human and engaging format, supporting the project’s wider goals of public understanding, transparency and dialogue around human-wildlife relationships in Cape Town.