In Richmond’s East End, Oakwood Arts quietly reshapes the future for young creatives. Now, with a $123,500 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the nonprofit is set to expand its Job and Education Training (JET) program, giving underrepresented young adults hands-on experience in film production.

OA is one of only two Virginia organizations, alongside Tidewater Arts Outreach, to receive the ArtsHERE grant, which was awarded to 112 other arts organizations nationwide.

The JET program started in 2021 and provides its students with hands-on training by partnering with the film industry to produce a short film on the scale of a large-budget feature film.

“These projects are a highly effective training tool, but we now seek to utilize their resources to help emerging career BI-POC [Black, Indigenous and People of Color] filmmakers take their screenplays to the next level,” said Jasmine Elmore, OA’s JET coordinator.

According to Elmore, many OA JET alumni have been hired by or placed onto television shows and films after graduation. Some of those include AMC’s “The Walking Dead: World Beyond,” Apple TV’s “ Swagger,” the drama-comedy film “Raymond and Ray and Rustin” and “Atlantis.”

With the NEA grant, the OA JET curriculum will be restructured to focus on short film training projects set to launch next year.

This initiative aims to better prepare students for roles in the film industry while meeting the demands of independent film projects.

“The NEA is understanding the power of the arts and that these [underrepresented] communities need these voices right now,” OA founder and Executive Director Shannon Castleman said.

The organization focuses on career development in the arts by exploring lesser-known fields, such as Flame artistry, where graphic designers use Flame software to create visual effects, and prop mastery, where individuals manage all props used on a film set.

“There’s a whole lot of career paths, creative career paths, that people just don’t know about,” Castleman said.

The grant funding will be utilized through June 2026.