Outreach & Inclusion Program

Direct Artist Support

• Momentum Fellowship

  The Momentum Fellowship is a yearlong program of deep, customized creative and professional support that enables writers, directors, and producers from underrepresented communities working across fiction and nonfiction filmmaking, episodic content, and emerging media to achieve new creative and professional goals and build sustainable careers.

  This fellowship has expanded upon the success of the Women at Sundance Fellowship to include artists identifying as women, nonbinary, and transgender; artists of color; and artists with disabilities.

  The robust fellowship is made possible thanks to the generous support and strategic partnership of The Harnisch Foundation, Warner Bros. Pictures, and Adobe. It includes mentorship, professional coaching offered by Renee Freedman & Company supported by The Harnisch Foundation, an artist sustainability grant, travel to the Sundance Film Festival to participate in curated activities and bespoke year-round support. Participation in the Momentum Fellowship is by invitation only.

  Meet the inaugural class of Momentum Fellows.

• Knight Fellows Project

  Community Programming: Since 2014, the Institute has partnered with local artist organizations in the eight cities where the Knight Foundation operates (Akron, Charlotte, Detroit, Macon, Miami, Philadelphia, San Jose, and St. Paul) to provide free public programming and selection-based Intensives from a variety of our artist programs.

  Fellowship: Sundance Institute annually selects up to four artists from Knight communities to attend the Sundance Film Festival for a curated track of professional and creative development opportunities, including film screenings, receptions, performances, panels, networking events, and facilitated meetings with industry mentors and Institute alumni.

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• Women at Sundance

  The Women at Sundance program aims to discover, spotlight, and forge ways for women to succeed as storytellers who shape our cultural landscape. Together with Women In Film LA and USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, we launched the first analysis of gender composition among artists in independent film, raising awareness about the acute underrepresentation of women behind the camera. We support women filmmakers in growing and sustaining their careers through a yearlong fellowship program, financing and strategy intensives, and community events throughout the year, including our annual Women at Sundance Celebration at the Sundance Film Festival. We also collaborate in the field to activate systemic change through ReFrame, a project that partners with industry insiders to forge gender parity at every level in film, TV, and media.

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• Indigenous Program

  Each year, Sundance Institute’s Indigenous Program supports the next generation of Native & Indigenous storytellers worldwide through the Full Circle Fellowship, and the Native Filmmakers Lab Fellowship supports first- or second-time directors in producing a fiction short film through a residential lab, grant, and mentorship.

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• Resource Map

  In 2015, Women at Sundance and Women In Film LA launched the Women’s Resource Map, a user-friendly online database compiling the programs, events, workshops, and services available to U.S.-based women filmmakers. In 2019, we are updating the map to include resources for artists from a broader array of underrepresented communities (currently including artists who identify as women, people of color, LGBQ+, trans and nonbinary, and artists with disabilities). Upon launch in 2015, the Resource Map attracted over 12,000 viewers to the site in one month, proving its necessity in the field; we hope the updated map (coming soon) will be just as useful to our newly supported communities.

  RESOURCE MAP COMING SOON!

  In the spirit of partnership, we welcome suggestions for additional resources supporting any of the groups listed above. Please reach out to inclusion@sundance.org to recommend a resource.