The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Academy Foundation conduct a media literacy program twice a year for high school juniors within the Los Angeles Unified School District. The Academy works in a partnership with the Urban Educational Partnership’s (UEP’s) Humanitas program.

The program brings 300-400 high schools students to the Academy for three days to take part in a series of film clip analyses, feature film screenings, filmmaker visits, large group discussions in the Academy’s theater as well as small breakout discussions. The goals of the program are to increase student awareness of the role of media in their lives and in creating stereotypes and assumptions about groups in our society, ,to provide and hone analytical tools to evaluate those media messages, and to encourage more provocative and thoughtful interaction with the media.

As part of the program, students are required to complete a final written or artistic assignment based on what is covered in the program. Teachers are then asked to submit the best work to the program’s Academy facilitators who compile the projects in a magazine format that is distributed to the students.