Filmmaking is a powerful platform for influencing the ethics and imagination of public discourse and engagement. Oliver Sacks wrote, “To live on a day-to-day basis is insufficient; we need to transcend, transport, escape; we need meaning, understanding, and explanation.”
The Windrider Institute Initiative is designed to inspire this transcendence through thoughtful engagement with core themes in humility-in-theology. The program architecture will efficiently leverage multiple uses across aligned target audiences.
The 3-year Windrider Institute Initiative will have exponential career impact potential, reaching three levels of depth. This will be accomplished through the following engagement programs:
1. THE WINDRIDER FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM: Directly engaging fellows and senior fellows — catalyzing and equipping a community of cultural creatives to embed the big questions of Purpose, Character, Virtue and Science in their films and storytelling craft.
2. THE WINDRIDER SUMMIT & THE SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL EXPERIENCE: Thoughtfully engaging ~500 Windrider Summit participants to include the next generation of filmmakers and leaders of faith who will soon enter the workforce.
3. THE BIG QUESTIONS FILM SERIES: Effectively engaging partner networks and a broader public discourse by distributing content infused with topics of Purpose, Character, Virtue and Science through the Windrider Studios platform.
The Initiative's three levels of impact will all be accomplished by maximizing the significant live convening infrastructure and impact of the Windrider Summit and Sundance Film Festival experience, now over 20 years in existence.
The Initiative will cultivate spiritual formation around big questions for filmmakers of faith, empowering the next generation to influence culture through film and to give voice to relevant views about purpose, meaning, relationships, spirituality, science, and reality.
