Art Opening Minds classes are driven by our films so our films need to be relevant.
Every year, Voices With Impact selects a theme for its filmmaking grant based on a year’s worth of conversations with educators, counselors, and the communities AOM serves. The question isn't "what should students learn about" in the abstract. It's "what are your students dealing with right now, and what don't you have good tools for?"
That's how AOM ended up with films on topics like cliques and echo chambers, burnout, climate change and mental health, and the intersection of masculinity and mental health. These are topics that people on campuses we work told us were top of mind for their students.
When you browse the AOM class library, the topics you see reflect years of this process. Each topic exists because educators said it was needed, filmmakers brought it to life with care and accuracy, and film industry and mental health mentors helped shepherd the films to be the best works possible.
It also means the classes stay current. New films are produced every year on new themes, so the library grows in directions that track with what's actually happening on campuses right now, not what someone planned five years ago. We also continually update the classes themselves with our new content. Many classes have different film choices to meet the learning objectives, and we add new versions to those classes when they are relevant.
Because each topic is explored through multiple films and classes, Art Opening Minds programs can go deep on subjects in ways that are relevant to participants’ lives. There isn't just one class about grief. There are classes that approach grief through different cultural lenses, different types of loss, and different stages of processing. The same is true for substance use, identity, relationships, and most other major topics in the library. That depth is the result of years of intentional investment in storytellers.
This also means you can return to a topic across a semester or a year without repeating the same material. Your students get a richer, more layered understanding because they're encountering the same big idea through multiple stories and perspectives, each one landing differently.
