USA Today: The Inevitable Foundation Introduces $5,000 Elevate Collective Grants for Disabled Screenwriters
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By Lynn Henson
The nonprofit Inevitable Foundation, which helps screenwriters with disabilities, created Elevate Collective, a program aimed at middle- and senior-level writers.
Offerings include $5,000 in grants awarded quarterly. Applications are available on the Elevate website. The grants are designed to help advance these writers’ careers by helping them pay for career coaching, script consulting, work-from-home setups, IP acquisition, and other professional development. Elevate also plans to offer community-building and professional networking opportunities to dozens of qualified writers each year.
“We are excited to create Elevate Collective and to provide focused support, education, connections and financial resources to screenwriters with middle and upper-level disabilities to advance their careers,” said Inevitable Foundation co-founders Richie Siegel and Marisa Torelli-Pedevska , in a joint conversation statement. “We built Elevate Collective on the foundation of a year and a half of experience running our fellowship program. Elevate Collective is the latest addition to the ecosystem we are building to empower disabled writers, which also includes our concierge service for creative leaders and showrunners, the Disability is Diversity campaign, and our sponsorship for screenwriters.”
The Foundation is also offering two additional $5,000 Elevate Collective Awards in partnership with two organizations. The Inevitable Foundation x Caring Across Generations Care Award also grants its recipient access to scriptwriting and development consulting services with Caring Across Generations.
“Caring is a crucial part of all of our lives, and it’s time to normalize that idea on screen,” Lydia Storie, Caring Across Generations’ associate director of culture change, said in a statement. “We connect disabled people and others with lived caregiving experiences to Hollywood to transform the stories we tell about aging, illness and disability. Partnering with the Inevitable Foundation on this Elevate Award is the perfect alignment of our respective missions.”
In the meantime, the recipient of the Inevitable Foundation x Humanitas Alumni Award can participate in Humanitas virtual and in-person workshops and other events, as well as the 2023 Humanitas Awards.
“Humanitas is committed to projects that explore the human condition in a nuanced and meaningful way, which can only be done effectively when program boards are diverse in subject matter and inclusivity behind and in front of the camera,” said Humanitas Executive Director Michelle Franke statements. “We firmly believe in the Inevitable Foundation’s message that without disability there is no diversity, equity and inclusion, and are honored to partner with them on an Elevate Collective Award benefiting an alum of our New Voices Fellowship and College Screenwriting Awards programs comes.”
