Christian Strevy, who earned a BFA in art at Birmingham-Southern College in 2010, strongly exemplifies the school’s value of lifelong learning. He has a wide, ever-growing range of interests, including plants, animals, insects, and geology. And Strevy – now a Philadelphia-based filmmaker – is also hosting a series of YouTube videos to explore these interests and share them with the world.

The series, “Old Scout,” began in 2018 by depicting Strevy’s quest to earn all the merit badges from Cub Scout to Eagle Scout in one year. That quest stemmed from Strevy’s regrets about dropping out of Cub Scouts when he was 10 years old. He quit before he had a chance to enjoy the outdoor scouting activities, such as camping, he had come to love as an adult.

Strevy successfully completed that initial one-year stage of the “Old Scout” series in 2019. And Strevy – along with series co-creator and fellow BSC graduate Julie St. John ’11 – resumed “Old Scout” in 2020 after a pandemicinduced hiatus.

The project began with Strevy wondering if he could complete all the merit badges in one year.

“It was a little bit of a stunt,” he said. But “Old Scout” became something more.

Strevy and St. John, who earned a BFA in 2011, have continued the series because it’s an entertaining way to explore subjects they have “strong curiosity” about, Strevy said.

A Vestavia Hills native, Strevy earned an MFA in film in 2015 from Temple University in Philadelphia. At Temple, he made a web series, “Gunner Jackson,” that was shown at numerous film festivals, including Sidewalk Film Festival in Birmingham.

Strevy began “Old Scout” on his 30th birthday, June 14, 2018, and a year later, he filmed an episode that was based on an Eagle Scout graduation. For that episode, Strevy, St. John, and friends staged a pinewood derby, the wood-car racing event popular in scouting. Strevy said he and St. John like the old Boy Scouts curriculum from the 1950s and before.

“It was more experiment-based or adventure-based,” he said. In the newer curriculum, the rocks and minerals merit badge book, for example, “is more like a book report,” Strevy said. In the old curriculum, scouts were told to collect 25 rocks and minerals in the field.

Making the episodes “is a great way to start hobbies and learn about science.” For example, he started collecting insects and is making an episode about them. He even became interested in stamp collecting.

“We did that episode, and I realized they’re tiny, beautiful, little engraved works of art that you put on mail,” Strevy said.

Since restarting “Old Scout,” Strevy and St. John have made two more episodes. St. John does “the tedious, hard work of producing the episodes,” Strevy said, while he directs and does most of the editing.

“We’re just doing them at our own pace and taking our time doing them, which is really fun,” Strevy said.

Old Scout: Follow along as Christian Strevy completes the entire curriculum of Scouts from Cub to Eagle in one year. From knot-tying to safe hiking to a pinewood derby finale, find out if an old scout can learn new tricks in this 45-episode series.

This story was published in the Fall/Winter 2021 issue of ’Southern, BSC’s alumni magazine.

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