How Streaming Can Help Conservation Efforts: An Interview with Newyonder’s Jon Cleave

We all spend countless hours streaming on our favorite platforms (check out our latest EMA Green Streaming Guide). To many, it's a time to unwind and distract us from life's many uncertainties. But what if that time spent streaming could make a difference? Enter Newyonder, a streaming service for environmental documentaries that supports the projects you learn about.  

We spoke with Jon Cleave, Founder and CEO of Newyonder, to learn what motivated him to bring environmental activism to streaming.

Could you tell us about Newyonder and what motivated you to do such an ambitious project?

Through stories, people make sense of the world, and the greater we understand it, the more likely we are to preserve it. Yet entertainment alone is insufficient, and we require positive action in the real world. This is where the idea for Newyonder originated. Simply put, Newyonder is a global streaming service, film studio, and Certified B Corp® that inspires, informs, and helps restore our planet, one story at a time. Our audience can stream award-winning, feature-length Originals, films, and series about our home planet and beyond, any time, and help to restore the earth from your sofa – with 5% of streaming sales donated towards regenerative impact projects.

What role do media and the entertainment industry play in saving our planet?

It can play a hugely influential role. The stories we tell are one of the keys to helping restore the planet, and how we tell those stories is infinite. For instance, when you subscribe to Newyonder, you're getting access to great content and giving back to the planet in a tangible way. And with our Newyonder Originals, we're producing this content in a way that is mindful of environmental impact and utilizing a lean production model that doesn't compromise on the creativity or quality of the output. It means we can share interesting, inspiring, and often surprising stories that people wouldn't ordinarily be able to experience more consciously and sustainably.

 Did a particular show or documentary inspire you to become an environmental storyteller?

You can draw inspiration for the planet from any historical genre or time. Growing up watching classics like 'The Lion King', 'Free Willy', 'The Jungle Book', 'Jurassic Park' and 'The Land Before Time', to name a few, were a real cornerstone of my childhood. Creators wove themes into these stories, and the films appeal to a global audience, which inspires, informs, educates, and creates a sense of wonder and imagination on a large scale. 

As I grew older, Sir David Attenborough's 'Frozen Planet' and other bluechip natural history series brought the natural world closer through creative storytelling, innovative technology, and capturing unique wildlife behaviors on camera for the first time. Those 'you have to see it to believe it' sequences leave you wondering what happens when we're not rolling the camera. That's what excites me even more. What haven't we seen? What don't we yet know?

One of my all-time favorite quotes is from Sir David Attenborough – "I just wish the world was twice as big and half of it was still unexplored." When I watch documentaries centered around human stories and real-world expeditions, I feel like I'm exploring with them - 'Billy Connolly: A Scot in the Arctic', 'Touching the Void' and 'Sherpa', to name a few. One of my favorites is a recent documentary, 'The Last Mountain (2021)'. When I say recent, filmmakers shot it over 25 years! Docs that take decades to produce give the audience a sense of a 'lifetime' within the timeframe of a film sped up right before your eyes. It's also something you could never recreate or recapture again because that moment in time has been and gone whether the camera was rolling or not. This leads me to believe that stories can also show us how our time here on earth is a fleeting moment and how we need to think about our planet way beyond our personal 'timeframe.' I think that's incredibly powerful.

Getting outside and experiencing our natural world first-hand is what creates memories. I truly connected with nature and how incredible our planet is when I spent time in the Highlands and Outer Hebrides of Scotland, capturing epic landscapes with my camera, drone, and worldwide. We begin to realize how small we are and how vast the world is. I never felt this more than when I traveled to the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard. Knowing that a polar bear could be just on the other side of a small hill when you're stepping off the Zodiac onto land is a moment when you know that nature is truly in charge and you're not in the comfort of your home anymore.

These experiences have led me to believe that it's our duty to protect and restore our planet and give nature and wildlife a voice through the power of story and real, tangible change.

What's a hidden gem documentary everyone should stream on Newyonder?

Our Newyonder Originals' Wild Isles' and 'Three Moons of Biyangdo' are two feature docs we produced and launched the Newyonder streaming service with, which will give you a sense and feeling of what we stand for and the types of stories we want to tell going forward. So we recommend immersing yourselves in those.

We're keen to tell stories that sometimes follow different formats. We want to show breadth and diversity with different types of content and genres, whether that's feature docs, series, outdoor adventures, natural history, family-friendly, food, human stories, or fiction. We have some exciting and unique stories coming soon that we can't wait to share with the world.

Although we're a streamer with a point of view on the world (in the context of 'niche vs. generalist' streamers), our ever-growing, curated content catalog is intended to inspire and appeal to everyone. Whether you're a family engaged with a bluechip natural history doc, love food content but want to watch something different in that area, or live vicariously and experience the thrill of surfing Arctic waves or flying sky-high above the jungle. Whatever your kick, interest, and passion, there's a story here for you. Our goal is that while you might subscribe to a particular genre, you'll get lost in an entirely different one afterward. 

Have any advice for the next generation of environmental filmmakers?

There's a story happening right on your doorstep that people on the other side of the world have no idea about. Tell that story. Share that story through the power of film. And don't be limited to what's on your doorstep; some stories don't exist anywhere in the real world because they're in your head, so start writing that comedy script, start crafting that drama you've been thinking about for the past six months, and let us know when you're ready to share it with the world.