Are you an artist interested in experimenting across forms? Then this is your chance! The Reporters’ Collective is excited to announce the third round of its visual story contest, Polychrome. Earlier editions saw artists from across the country participate. Their creative takes – as animations, recorded skits and rap videos – on our reported stories amazed us. 

Every round of this contest encourages us to look for more such collaborations and engage with new media artists to retell our journalistic stories. Here’s to yet another round of creative fun! We invite artists across India to create visual stories on the linked story.

In this story, our associate member Hemant Gairola found bank executives being lured by illegal incentives – iPhones, foreign jaunts, kickbacks – to boost sales. This compelled bank executives to force their staff to sell insurance to unsuspecting customers who ended up with unwanted policies. Send us your artistic interpretations using the submission form below.

The Collective produces stories in written format. Our stories are full of details that many people often miss while reading. Some friends tell us they prefer listening to podcasts. Some tell us to experiment with videos. Some push us towards infographics. While we would love to incorporate all the requests, our strength lies in writing long, investigative stories. And, we hope to collaborate with artists to retell our stories in an engaging way, which is more accessible to a larger audience.

We realise the need to engage with new media to tell our stories better for diverse audiences. We are specifically interested in youthful innovation that broadens the scope of journalistic storytelling. 

This is our step in that direction.

Anything! As long as these videos are no more than 60 seconds and tell the story linked above in an innovative [and fun] way. The videos should touch the core of the issue.

We appreciate newness and bold experiments! We are open to any and all the elements that you wish to use – images, theatre, live footage, drawings, animations and sounds.

Take a look at our previous submissions. Our past winners have experimented with different mediums of storytelling – Adwaith chose rap to tell the story, Harini picked cool explainer while Rency told the story with a skit performance. Their work will give you an idea about what can be created.

The Collective does deep-dive investigative work with cost-efficiency. We would like a similar approach with video-creation – videos should be innovative, not expensive.

Your work should also not infringe on copyright requirements or use abusive language.

The top three videos will receive an award. They will also be displayed on our website and promoted on our social media.

Deadline: We will accept submissions till JUNE 25, 11:59 PM.

For any queries, write to us at polychrome@reporters-collective.in with “Polychrome Query” in the subject line.