A dream of many young students in high school is to make a movie. The Utah State Board of Education has required all high schools in Utah to offer Film Production as a curriculum within both CTE and Visual and Performing Arts. To assist the teachers in accomplishing this, Utah Film Mentors was created.
Four years ago we started mentoring both students and teachers in writing and producing student short films in 6 school districts and over a dozen high schools and middle schools. As mentors we all still work fulltime in the film and television industry and provided this service on the side. The demand has grown requiring this to become a fulltime endeavor. Starting in December of 2023 we initiated the Utah Film Mentors program, which provides hands-on workshops taught by industry professionals and has a goal of reaching every school district and potentially every high school in Utah. That's 42 school districts and 429 schools.
To achieve this goal we need the help of those of you who can see the possibilities from our secondary students learning to tell stories through film. The local software industry started with education. We believe the local film indusrty can follow the same path.
We intend on reaching out to large donors in the next few months, but in the meantime would like to offer all our friends, family and fellow Utah citizens to take part in offering this opportunity to our children.
We are setting a goal of $50,000 to carry us through the first two months as we reach out to large organizations. Either a donation of any size or connecting us with someone you may know that could donate would be very helpful. For more information on our program and to contact us, check us out at utahfilmmentors.org.
Thank you for your support!
Joseph Garrard, Executive Director
