High Five and Town of Vail Win Award for Sustainability Video Series

Vail’s Sustainable Landscape Series, produced by High Five Access Media, took first place in the Informational Talk Show Series category in the 2022 Hometown Media Awards from the Alliance for Community Media Foundation.

Town of Vail partnered with High Five Access Media to create the informational videos to promote native and sustainable landscaping to replace some of Vail’s in-person education events during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The three-part series featured experts from Betty Ford Alpine Gardens, Colorado Department of Agriculture, and ET Irrigation to educate viewers about native plant species for mountain areas, controlling pests without the use of chemicals and optimizing irrigation systems for water-efficiency. The video series can be viewed on High Five Access Media’s website.

“High Five Access Media took an idea we had for remote education programming and turned it into an engaging and informative series of videos that will help people take a more sustainable and attractive approach to their landscaping,” said Pete Wadden, Town of Vail watershed coordinator. “The pandemic put all our in-person education and outreach programming on hold even as reservoirs were dwindling, and fires were raging across the West. We couldn’t just sit on our hands and ignore these serious problems in 2021. High Five gave us the tools we needed to spread an important message and the series they produced for us was absolutely top-notch.”

Each year, nearly 1,000 video entries are submitted to the Hometown Media Awards. A panel of judges awards over 100 winners based on criteria such as creative approach, addressing community needs, developing diverse community involvement, challenging conventional commercial television formats and moving viewers to experience television in a different way.

“The Hometown Media Awards celebrate both the excellence of work and the diversity of media that appears on community channels being produced around the country. The ACM Foundation is proud of their achievement and of how they represent their communities in their work,” said Mike Wassenaar, president & CEO, Alliance for Community Media.