Like You Children's Film Festival 2025

Since I completed the afternoon and evening shift in succession. It makes sense to merge their reflections together. This will be a reflection for 9.5 hours between both volunteering shifts.


I was given the opportunity to volunteer at the Pink Palace for the 2025 Children's Film Festival, a great event which allowed children to see local/international indie films while interacting and creating with different art mediums such as claymation or stop motion. My role for this day was to scan tickets and run the concessions stand. While the roles themselves were not necessarily eventful, being able to interact with children as they explored the museum was a fantastic experience. Another great feature of volunteering for the Pink Palace was being able to talk to so many people in the art field whether film, design, or even music. There were so many cool and interesting people aging from late high school/early college all the way to retired individuals helping their community. I talked with this one gentleman who is apart of a producing collective. We talked for about an hour about art and culture in Memphis. He was a U of M alumni and was very fond of his musical experience there. It was really neat to see how some people were doing after their time at the university. What really made this event was being able to see kids enjoy their time creating things and being present in the moment. I feel that it is very rare these days to see children away from their devices. Kids have so much access to everything that it makes sense that the real world would not entertain them as much. It is both the fruit and bane of our efforts with the improvement of technology. So, seeing the children sit and be present was very refreshing. I met this one parent. She had a lower functioning child with autism. He was a very smart and happy kid; his energy was infectious. We were talking about how he had created a new character (a pterodactyl) and had been creating a stop motion animation with him. Seeing a child who has probably been underestimated his entire life create something that most people don't even know how to do spoke to why these events are important in the first place. They create an environment where these children can really express creative freedoms. It was truly a beautiful moment to experience and one I will not forget. I finally closed the night helping everyone set up for the next day. I made some friends, networked with some individuals, and came away with some new respect and appreciation to the Memphis community. I do not know if people are truly altruistic, but moments like these support the case.