Adobe paves the way to accelerate the careers of thousands of underrepresented and emerging creators with new Film & TV Fund
When it comes to storytelling in film and TV, diversity is crucial and ensures that audiences feel represented and heard. It’s not just optics — we also need unique voices and visionaries behind-the-scenes in the roles of creators, directors, and industry leaders telling the diverse stories that reflect the world we live in.
To address the inequity in funding and career and training opportunities that exist today across the entertainment industry, we are proud to introduce our first-ever Adobe Film & TV Fund.
Funding and opportunities for diverse roles in the entertainment industry are small, and often come one-time, leaving gaps for building representation across communities. Adobe and the Adobe Foundation have committed to $6M in grants, contributions and Adobe Creative Cloud product donations in the first year of the new Fund, with the goal to accelerate the careers of thousands of global creators, and ultimately increase inclusion in film and TV series that reach millions worldwide. The introduction of our Film & TV Fund is just the start of shifting old paradigms about the industry, bringing career opportunity and advancements and enabling creators everywhere.
Opening pathways for a more representative industry
As part of the new Fund, we will partner with a cohort of global organizations that share our commitment to empowering underrepresented communities and making a significant shift in representation for multi-hyphenate creators. The launch organizations include Easterseals, Gold House, Latinx House, NAACP, Sundance Institute and Yuvaa, and will focus funding on fellowships and apprenticeships that offer direct, hands-on industry access through mentorships and networking with production houses, studios and distributors to support filmmaking. The grants will also enable organizations to directly support creators in their communities with funding for short and feature films.
The first fellowship program will kick off with NAACP, specifically designed to increase diverse representation in the post-production industry. The 14-week fellowship program will focus on education and training, career growth and workplace experience and will include access to Adobe Creative Cloud to further set up emerging creators with the necessary tools they need, as well as training, industry mentorships, masterclass lectures, workplace rotations and more. Applications for the NAACP fellowship will open on January 18 for four fellows, with the program starting in May of this year. For more info and/or to apply, visit the NAACP Editing Fellowship site.
“Equity matters, and it is incumbent upon those of us who sit in positions of power and authority to help identify solutions to advance diversity and inclusion both in front of and behind the lens. It’s an honor to work with a like-minded partner in Adobe, who shows up at the table with ideas and resources that make a tangible impact.”
— Kyle Bowser, senior vice president of the NAACP Hollywood Bureau.
Hear more from the participating organizations below.
Image Courtesy of The Latinx House.
How will this funding help further support your organization’s mission and drive impact with underrepresented communities?
With over 63 million Latinx people across the United States, our stories, perspectives, and lasting impact are needed now more than ever. Any and all investments made to The Latinx House fuel the future of our work and enable us to further our mission to unite our community by providing the space for artists, content creators, grassroots organizers, thought leaders and other supporters to address issues that impact the Latinx community and creative narratives that will shift culture.
Tell us how you empower and support your community of creators in the film and TV industry?
Our goal is to amplify and empower Latinx creators in the film and TV industry by providing them with the resources, support, and tools needed to break through and create powerful content that truly represents the world we live in. We achieve this by investing in visionaries who tell unique stories reflecting their own experiences and backgrounds. In 2022, we proudly launched our first-ever Adelante Directors Fellowship. This initiative supports the professional development of up-and-coming directors, establishing a pipeline to uplift independent filmmakers as they progress in their careers and gain insights into television direction.
Image courtesy of Easterseals Disability Film Challenge.
Easterseals Disability Film Challenge
Tell us how you empower and support your community of creators in the film and TV industry?
We give people with disabilities opportunities both in front of and behind the camera to create films and provide year-round workshops, seminars, and networking opportunities. There are not a lot of opportunities for people with disabilities, so our program gives them the ability to tell their own stories and see themselves authentically represented. The Easterseals Disability Film Challenge is an annual 5-day filmmaking competition that puts disability in the entertainment spotlight. We give people with disabilities opportunities both in front of and behind the camera to create films and provide year-round workshops, seminars, and networking opportunities.
What are your goals to provide and open up even more opportunities for diverse roles in the industry?
We plan on providing accelerated training programs that will provide additional opportunities, exposure and tools to get people with disabilities hired in front of and behind the camera. It’s also incredibly exciting that with support from the fund, we now can provide financial resources to help get some of these amazing TV and film projects funded and distributed. With more disability representation in film and TV, we can help change the way people define and view disability in the communities where we live.
Image courtesy of Gold House.
Gold House
How will this funding help further support your organization’s mission and drive impact with underrepresented communities?
Despite a demonstrated need for greater Asian Pacific representation both on and off screen, many minority career programs do not consider AAPI communities as a priority. A 2021 AAPIP study found that for every $100 awarded by foundations, only 20 cents was designated for AAPI communities. Gold House seeks to address this need and gap in programming to accelerate the careers of Asian Pacific creators across entertainment and contemporary art sectors. By partnering with Adobe to deploy regenerative grants for projects made by diverse creators, we will not only work to close vital funding gaps but also provide the tools, education, and enriched professional networks that are critical to career progression and success.
What are your goals to provide and open up even more opportunities for diverse roles in the industry?
A 2021 USC Annenberg study found that across 51,159 speaking characters in 1,300 top-grossing movies, only 5.9 percent were API. The API characters that were portrayed often were skewed or monolithic, concluding that the lack of representation on screen was correlated with the lack of representation behind the camera. We will work to close this gap with funding from Adobe, which will enable financial support for at least six projects and 24 diverse leadership roles behind the camera. Given that the projects supported will be centered on multicultural narratives, on screen representation impact will be even greater, thus positively impacting the diverse ecosystem in film and TV.
Image courtesy of NAACP.
NAACP
Tell us how you empower and support your community of creators in the film and TV industry?
Creators in our community have talent in abundance, but often confront barriers to access and lack of resources to fulfill their creative endeavors. The NAACP Hollywood Bureau is committed to creating opportunities to increase access and representation for creators in the entertainment industry. Our work is focused on the following pillars: Accountability, Access/Representation, Collaboration, Inclusion, Consultation and Advocacy. All our events, publications, programs and advocacy initiatives are in alignment with these pillars and will empower and support our creators on a micro and macro level.
What are your goals to provide and open up even more opportunities for diverse roles in the industry?
Adobe is taking a bold and responsible step toward funding several advocacy organizations committed to creating more opportunities for diverse roles in film, streaming and television productions. We are particularly encouraged by their intention to track inclusion in the industry and to fund programs that are designed to accelerate the careers of diverse and underrepresented creators.
Image courtesy of Yuvaa.
How will this funding help further support your organization’s mission and drive impact with underrepresented communities?
In the last decade, the internet has democratized content and given opportunities for strong and powerful voices from underrepresented communities to speak up and speak out about their stories and truths. Over the last 5 years, Yuvaa has worked with several marginalized communities, including women and the LGBTQIA+ community in India, to leverage the power of storytelling and the internet, to co-create stories that must be heard and that must be told. When we get partners like Adobe, who are committed to creating meaningful opportunities for representation, that we can scale the impact of our part of the founding cohort of Adobe's Film & TV Inclusion Fund, and it enables us to work towards both deep and wide reach for the stories we tell, and for the filmmakers we tell it with.
What are your goals to provide and open up even more opportunities for diverse roles in the industry?
Yuvaa has been amplifying the voices of young talent from underrepresented communities, both in front and behind the screen, since our inception, through both fiction and non-fiction, as well as both short-form and long-form content. We've created multiple award-winning short films, chat shows and podcasts, as well as thousands of pieces of video content on social media, in an effort to live up to our motto: to make important things interesting for impact. With this fund, we are looking to scale our impact with long-form storytelling, so we can, at once, collaborate with an eclectic mix of talent and creatives from diverse backgrounds, and work towards telling a story that deeply matters to us as individuals, and us as a society.
Image courtesy of The Sundance Institute.
Ongoing efforts to shape the next generation of storytelling
The Film & TV Fund builds on our commitment to creating greater inclusivity, access, opportunity and creativity for all. Since the Sundance Ignite x Adobe Fellowship began in 2015, 100 fellows have participated in the program and have received the necessary tools, mentorship and resources needed to tell their stories. We also introduced the Sundance Women to Watch x Adobe Fellowship in 2020, a year-round program designed to foster community, further craft and offer support to female artists who are creating bold new work in film and media. Our ongoing efforts towards creating a more inclusive and diverse entertainment industry inspired the Adobe Foundation to also get behind ‘The Inclusion List’ — a new research-led effort with the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative and the support of the USC School of Dramatic Arts MFA Acting Program, to directly support the production of short films for underrepresented students.
“We have been dedicated to championing artists to tell stories that reflect their lived realities for over 40 years. It is essential support that Sundance Institute can only do because of partners like Adobe who understand the importance of supporting artists to advance their projects and increase representation on and off screen.”
— The Sundance Institute
Through its grantmaking to organizations and nonprofits worldwide, the Adobe Foundation aims to create a world where more people, regardless of background, can be creative and share their stories.