The Disney Storytellers Fund, launching at Howard University, will ‘help the next generation of Black storytellers bring their ideas to life.’
The fund, which was announced at the Essence Festival of Culture in Burbank, will provide stipends from $25,000 to $60,000 to individual students or groups of students, for projects focused on ‘storytelling’ through a variety of media.
This includes animation, digital design, gaming, journalism, live-action, performing arts, product design, visual design, virtual reality and more.
Disney Storytellers Fund at Howard Universit
Jennifer Cohen, EVP Corporate Social Responsibility at The Walt Disney Company, said: ‘Across Disney’s brands, we are working to amplify underrepresented voices and untold stories.
‘The Disney Storytellers Fund at Howard will help us support students and the innovation and creativity that the university has cultivated for more than 150 years. We are excited to help the next generation of Black storytellers bring their ideas to life.’
The program will be available to all student classes in its first year, but after 2023 it will be targeted at freshmen, sophomores, and juniors. Those involved will be assigned a Disney mentor and have 10 months to complete a project.
Disney fund creative space at Horward Uni
Disney has not stopped there and has also announced that it will fund the development of a creative collaboration space which will be housed inside the Chadwick A. Boseman college of Fine Arts, and the Cathy Hughes School of Communication at Howard University.
‘Our students at the College of Fine Arts find their creative expression in many ways – in the performing arts, in animation, in the design of the products that we use in life,’ said the dean of the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts, Phylicia Rashad.
‘The Disney Storytellers Fund is a great support for our emerging artists as they explore and develop their potential within and across disciplines.’
Meanwhile, Gracie Lawson-Borders, dean of the Cathy Hughes School of Communications, said that The Disney Storytellers Fund ‘lets today’s journalists and filmmakers use contemporary tools to do what pioneers like Ida B. Wells and Oscar Micheaux have always done – tell the stories that inform the public.’