University of Penn Partnership: the Weitzman School of Design’s faculty Dr. Matt Kenyatta
Urban Film Youth Mentorship Project
- Dr. Matthew Kenyatta, The Philadelphia Film Factory (Philm Factory), and We Embrace Fatherhood
- City and Regional Planning, Weitzman School of Design
- Community Partnerships Grant
The Sachs Program supports innovative arts activities throughout the University of Pennsylvania community, with grants opportunities for faculty, staff, students, departments, programs, and centers. Each year the Sachs Program funds a wide variety of activities aligned with the funder’s vision to support teaching art, making art, and presenting art, as well as their aim to provide Penn students with increased access to the arts.
The Urban Film Youth Mentorship project is the first collaborative partnership powered by The Philadelphia Film Factory (Philm Factory) staff and the Weitzman School of Design’s faculty Dr. Matt Kenyatta, to expand their community-based “Take One” Youth Film Mentorship Program, by introducing local youth and their mentors to hidden community history in their backyards, as an opportunity to both learn the business of filmmaking while documenting the ongoing community
planning process in historic West Philadelphia stimulated by the New Freedom District Cultural Plan. Philm Factory is a West Philadelphia based nonprofit founded in 2019 that has incubated the Take One Youth Film Mentorship Program since 2022. During a six-week spring curriculum and a four-week summer curriculum, the staff and volunteer filmmakers rapidly teach young people from grades 7- 12 the fundamentals of filmmaking as an art, science, technological craft, and industry.
In 2024 they are launching a two-season approach that is recruiting high school and middle school students from all over Philadelphia, but primarily in West Philadelphia, while retaining the inaugural class of youth filmmakers as mentors to their Peers. This grant will support their recruitment efforts and deepen their connection to future pathways in the cinematic and media arts industry as anchored by the University of Pennsylvania. 
“Take One” will also intersect with Dr. Matt’s course “Planning as Spatial Storytelling,” through which graduate students will be focused on designing and documenting the process of community rebranding efforts to recognize and implement plans preserving the Black history of West Philadelphia as the “New Freedom District.” There will be organized touchpoints between the Penn graduate students and spring cohort of Philm Factory students. The summer cohort will additionally use the graduate students’ footage as a real-world client in their Editing Department to begin making short films. Overall, the goal for the Urban Film Youth Mentorship Project is to begin to spark the imagination for the role of nonfiction filmmaking in preserving community history, participating in urban planning, and shaping the future of the film and planning professions.
