Spy Hop Productions

Spy Hop is a Salt Lake City-based youth media production nonprofit that provides mentorship and training to young people in the digital media arts to help them find their voices, tell their stories, and increase their agency to affect positive change in their lives, communities, and the broader world. This project grant provides support for Spy Hop’s Voices of the West program, an after-school and summer media making program for young people in rural and remote areas of Utah, with a special focus on reaching Native youth from the Ute Tribe, the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation, and the Navajo Nation. It will culminate in a summit that brings youth leaders from Voices of the West together with young people from Spy Hop’s Salt Lake City programming to share experiences, learn from each other, and co-create media on issues relevant to youth across Utah. Voices of the West, launched four years ago with support from MacArthur, focuses on regions of the State where youth have limited access to high quality programming, and their voices are largely absent from mainstream media. It is designed to increase the media literacies and civic engagement of youth in the program, and to connect them and their communities to important conversations taking place across the state and country.

Spy Hop is a Salt Lake City-based youth media production nonprofit that provides mentorship and training to youth in the digital media arts as a vehicle for free expression, critical thinking, and civic engagement. This project grant provides support for Spy Hop to expand Voices of the West, its after-school and summer media making program for young people in remote areas of Utah that was launched two years ago with MacArthur support. The program, which is growing to reach more than 300 youth in five rural districts, culminates in a summit that brings youth leaders from Voices of the West together with young people from Spy Hop’s Salt Lake City programming to share experiences, learn from each other, and co-create media on issues relevant to youth across Utah. Voices of the West focuses on regions of the State where youth have limited access to high quality programming, and their voices are largely absent from mainstream media. It is designed to increase the media literacies and civic engagement of youth in the program, and to connect them and their communities to important conversations taking place across the state and country.

Spy Hop’s mission is to mentor young people in the digital media arts to help them find their voice, tell their stories, and be empowered to affect positive change in their lives, their communities, and the world. This grant supports Spy Hop to participate in a national convening of participatory civic media organizations supported through MacArthur’s Journalism and Media program. The meeting is designed to help coalesce the emerging field of participatory civic media, of which Spy Hop is part, by facilitating new connections and collaborations and building a shared sense of identity among a new breed of media and culture organizations using participatory media to amplify historically marginalized voices and strengthen American democracy.

Spy Hop is a Salt Lake City-based youth media production nonprofit that provides mentorship and training to youth in the digital media arts as a vehicle for free expression, critical thinking and civic engagement. This grant supports Spy Hop to pilot an after-school and summer youth media making and civic engagement program for young people in three rural districts in Utah. It focuses on regions of the State where youth have limited access to high quality programming, and their voices are largely absent from mainstream media. These include a southeastern area with a predominantly Native American population and two other regions deeply affected by the extraction industry. The pilot is designed to increase the media literacy of youth participating in the program, and to connect them to communities and conversations across the state and country.