The Rural Technical Assistance Program (RTAP), formerly known as Colorado Blueprint 2.0, provides free technical assistance, consulting, and funding to help rural communities create economic development strategies. In 2021, the program format switched to three phases: education, technical outreach, and implementation. Learn more about RTAP here.
The Colorado Office of Film, Television and Media’s Rural Technical Assistance Program helps communities create new film festivals with expert guidance and small dollar grant awards. Community leaders selected for the program will also have the opportunity to attend an already established local film festival to learn from other local film organizations.
The program’s three phases are:
Phase 1: Education
Phase 2: Technical Outreach
Phase 3: Implementation
Overview
Type: Technical assistance
For: Rural communities
OEDIT division: Colorado Office of Film, Television and Media
Application deadline: Accepted on a rolling basis
This first phase is open to all rural communities. Rural communities are defined as having less than 50,000 people. The goal of the education phase is to help rural communities understand the positive economic impact of collaboration with the local film industry.
Phase 1 is a free online module covering the basic components of film festivals, ways to work with the film industry in your community, and positive economic impacts on your community.
The free Phase 1 online learning module can be found here.
To be eligible to apply for Phase 2: Technical Outreach, communities must complete Phase 1.
The technical outreach phase is competitive, meaning that communities will need to apply to participate. Because of limited resources, all communities that apply may not be able to participate in this phase.
If accepted, your community will work with a film festival consultant for one and a half months, including one all-day in-person session and three bi-weekly virtual sessions. These sessions will help you build your team, plan your film festival, and host a test run before your festival.
Communities will be expected to pay for any applicable transportation and lodging expenses that arise for the in-person session. Efforts will be made to host the in-person session at a location close to the selected communities.
The application for Phase 2: Technical assistance can be found here.
Communities enrolled in Phase 2 will automatically transition to the implementation phase as they progress through the technical assistance phase. The implementation phase will begin in the later stages of Phase 2 and finish when your community has achieved all of its project objectives.
In this phase, your community will execute a successful film festival by:
- identify costs, existing available resources, potential resources, partners, and obstacles to hosting a film festival
- creating a strategic implementation plan for the film festival
- hosting the film festival
Early April 2022: Phase 1 module live
April 11, 2022: Phase 2 applications open
The technical assistance phase will take place in late spring or early summer 2022, depending on the needs of the selected communities.
Program Manager
