MEDIA ALERT: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

DATE: August 4, 2017

CONTACT: Laurel Hunter, [email protected], 801-532-7500

Spy Hop Productions to Receive $90,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities

Salt Lake City, UT— The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) today announced $39.3 million in grants for 245 humanities projects across the country. Included in this announcement is a Making Humanities Communities grant of $90,000 to Salt Lake City’s Spy Hop Productions to supportBeyond the Beat, a radio documentary program. Beyond the Beat, is an educational program that provides youth with the musicological training and technology necessary to produce short radio documentary programs exploring individual pieces of music.

“NEH grants ensure that Americans around the country have the opportunity to engage with our shared cultural heritage,” said NEH Acting Chairman Jon Parrish Peede. “From traveling exhibitions and teacher workshops to efforts to preserve local history, these projects demonstrate the power of the humanities to build connections, stimulate discovery, and contribute to vibrant communities.”

“Music is a vehicle for self-expression and cultural understanding,” said Matt Mateus, Spy Hop’s Program Director. “We are honored by this opportunity to create such a meaningful program. It is certain to reach a wide audience and provide deeper discussion into the context of music and culture.”

This grant will support the Beyond the Beat program at Spy Hop. Under the mentorship of professional artists and musicologists, students will explore the radio documentary form and its potential impact on the community, specifically looking at the role music plays in our lives. Students will create short radio documentaries exploring specific pieces of music, which will be aired on 90.9 FM KRCL, as part of Spy Hop’s Loud and Clear Youth Radio show, on Saturday nights.

For more information on projects included in the NEH grant announcement, visit neh.gov.

About Spy Hop

Since 1999, Spy Hop has offered classes in the digital media arts to Utah’s young people in our downtown Salt Lake City studio, as well as across the state of Utah. Our 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.

Spy Hop is now widely recognized as one of the leading youth media organizations in the country, and is setting the standard for media arts learning across the nation. In 2015 Spy Hop was honored at the White House as one of the nation’s best after school arts and humanities programs, receiving the National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award from the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.

For more information about Spy Hop, please visit spyhop.org.