Future Filmmakers: Exploring Civil Liberties

K-12 STEAM education

County of Los Angeles (select only if your project has a countywide benefit)

Expand existing project, program, or initiative (expanding and continuing ongoing, successful work)

Media Arts were incorporated into the CA Arts Framework in 2018, but under 10% of LA students participate in this curriculum due to underfunding and poor administration of existing funds. The pandemic made more visible entrenched disparities, with devastating and ongoing impacts on LA’s most vulnerable youth. This has generated a greater demand for the academic benefits and vital social-emotional outlet of creative expression that media arts curriculum can provide.

With today’s rapidly evolving digital tech, youth are exposed to large amounts of mis/disinformation and conflicting narratives about civil liberties issues. Combined with a widespread lack of media arts education, this poses a significant challenge to fostering a generation of youth equipped to critically engage with the large amounts of media they consume. Further, youth from marginalized populations are often disempowered from exploring crucial civil liberties topics and contributing their perspectives through media.

Film Independent (Fi) will build upon 2+ decades of youth media arts education experience and expand on a successful 2024 pilot project to present a film and humanities education program for up to 120 LA County high schoolers. Professional filmmakers (“Fellows”) from underrepresented backgrounds who have participated in Fi’s development programs will serve as Mentors to empower students to explore important civil liberties topics through the media arts. A Fellow with a documentary film about an engaging civil liberties issue will serve as Lead Mentor, supported by a Classroom Mentor who will provide engaging and hands-on media arts education that will teach students to conduct oral history research exploring a civil liberties topic important to their own community. Closely guided by the Mentors, the students will create media projects that educate and engage the public. The program will culminate in a celebratory event for all four classrooms at the Democracy Center of the Japanese American National Museum (JANM), where the students will watch their films in a professional theater. We will create a webpage with an oral history omnibus showcasing the students’ work, which will be linked to Fi’s website. This will serve as an ongoing public resource for people to learn and engage on civil liberty issues impacting LA communities. Fi will use our extensive audience reach to publicize the films worldwide.

A series of carefully cultivated active learning opportunities will empower students with the skills, knowledge and inspiration to embark upon a creative career in the film industry that is right in their backyard. We will enable students to use their voices to speak out on a civil liberties issue of personal importance to their communities. Students will also create high-quality media projects to add to their creative portfolios to enhance college/job applications.

We will consider this project a success if we empower LA youth to contribute their unique voices and perspectives to enhance the role film plays in highlighting historically excluded voices, ultimately building a more inclusive and just social narrative. This project is the expansion of a successful pilot. In the long term, we plan to continue expanding to serve a larger number of LA youth annually, contributing to an authentic, unmediated narrative of today’s LA youth that comes directly from their unique perspectives.