Back to Activities CFN Story telling

Storytelling - the Pixar Pitch

Advocacy allows young people to express their views and proposals for creating a better world. Youth advocacy encompasses education, communication, leadership skills, and evidence to make a compelling case for change. Storytelling is a powerful tool to make your case in an attractive, creative, and persuasive way. Let’s advocate for biodiversity using the Pixar pitch.

Develop these Key Competencies

  • Collaboration

Materials needed

  • Paper
  • Pen
Activity Description
  1. Participants decide on an issue they want to advocate for: biodiversity loss, a particular threat to a species, or wildfires destroying the habitat.
  2. Introduce the Pixar story model.
  3. Now, let’s bring this to the Wildfire example where you are seeking to eliminate human-caused fires in the forest.
  4. Give participants time to create their pitches by:
    • Fill in the blanks using Pixar’s story
    • Once completed, allow them to rewrite and expand your story.
    • Last, if you have time, rewrite and expand it again.
  5. Ask some of them to share their stories with you.
Relevant information if you are facilitating

Pixar film uses the same narrative structure with six sequential sentences:

  1. Once upon a time, there was …
  2. Every day …
  3. One day …
  4. Because of that …
  5. Because of that …
  6. Until finally … 

This six-sentence template is both appealing and supple. It allows pitchers to take advantage of the well-documented persuasive force of stories within a framework that forces conciseness and discipline.

Time needed

1 hour
30 minutes

Age range

  • 15 and above

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Time needed

1 hour
30 minutes

Age range

  • 15 and above