The Summit County Council last week denied grant funding to the Sundance Institute after the committee tasked with reviewing applications said it could not find “solid evidence” that the organization is committed to Park City or the Summit County community.

The Recreation, Arts and Parks Tax, more commonly referred to as the RAP tax, funds a variety of cultural and recreational nonprofits and agencies along the Wasatch Back. The RAP Cultural Advisory Committee oversees the grant application process, interviewing organizations and making an annual recommendation to the County Council for final approval.

Sharon Serpico Hanson, chair of the RAP Advisory Committee, said there was a “record number” of applicants in 2026, with 36 nonprofits angling for funding. However, the committee recommended the County Council offer grants to only 27 of the organizations.

The Sundance Institute was one of nine nonprofits denied funding. Specifically, the Sundance Institute claimed it was “committed to Park City” in its application and interview, but the advisory committee said it “could not find solid evidence of this commitment to either Park City or Summit County” in a staff report provided to the County Council.

Hanson said the committee was also unimpressed by the Sundance Institute’s proposal for what it would do with the money.

“Sundance, in its application through its Local Lens program, promised ‘year-round independent film’ to residents of Summit County; however, during the Zoom interview, the Sundance representative confirmed that Sundance was only committing to ‘summer programming’ and that Sundance would not commit to specifics about film dates or showings or director events yet because they were ‘waiting to hear from RAP Cultural re: funding request,’” the staff report said.

Hanson said county attorneys eliminated three other organizations from consideration, and another five were denied because they were not technically eligible for RAP funding. 

For example, Boundless Park City’s application was rejected because it’s too new, and the state statute governing RAP tax grants does not allow funds to go toward a startup. Chabad Lubavitch of Park City was similarly denied funding because RAP tax money can’t go toward a religious organization.

Park City Gallery Association, Song Summit Foundation and Utah Film Center were also denied funding.

In total, the RAP tax is providing Summit County groups with $1.64 million this year. RAP tax recipients include:

• Alf Engen Ski Museum Foundation, granted $100,000 for community outreach programming.
• Arts Council of Park City & Summit County, granted $1,500 to install a piano in the Henefer Civic Center.
• Arts Council of Park City & Summit County, granted $30,000 to host the Latino Arts Festival.
• Arts Council of Park City & Summit County, granted $112,000 for ongoing operations, services and exhibits.
• Arts Council of Park City & Summit County, granted $8,500 to build and install a Don Weller sculpture of a cowboy and a farmer in Oakley.
• Ballet West, granted $25,000 to perform in local elementary schools and provide educational materials to students.
• KPCW, granted $145,000 to support the Back Alley Bash, general operations and programming.
• Echo Community & Historical Organization, granted $14,000 to pay insurance and maintenance costs for four historic structures.
• Friends of Ski Mountain Mining History, granted $9,800 to create an audio guide, with GPS tracking, for hikers interested in learning about the area’s mining history while recreating.
• Grassroots Shakespeare Company, granted $3,500 to perform William Shakespeare’s plays in schools, parks and other public spaces in Summit County.
• Henefer Camp of Daughters of Utah Pioneers, granted $3,000 for ongoing operating costs, utilities, insurance and programming.
• Kamas Valley Community Foundation, granted $5,000 to support Arts Fest 2027, including rental fees for a venue, infrastructure to hang art, educational materials and insurance.
• Kamas Valley History Group, granted $7,000 to develop a website and create a “community cultural calendar.”
• Kimball Art Center, granted $160,000 for exhibit curation, educational programs, salaries and general operating expenses.
• Mountain Town Music, granted $134,000 to help with artist fees, audio engineers, production staff, supplies, transportation and other operating expenses.
• North Summit Unite, granted $30,000 to host a community theater performance with local talent.
• North Summit Unite, granted $1,800 to create Fiesta Friday, a new cultural event intended to celebrate Latino heritage through music, dance and food.
• Park City Film, granted $150,000 to fund various film screenings and cover operational costs.
• Park City Museum, granted $119,000 to support programming and fund salaries.
• Park City Opera, granted $30,000 to pay singers, musicians and dancers.
• Egyptian Theatre, granted $160,000 to support main stage productions, YouTheater, general operations and celebrations for the venue’s 100th birthday.
• Park City Performing Arts, granted $100,000 to pay artists, cover production costs and compensate outreach coordinators.
• Park City Singers, granted $1,400 to cover the artistic director’s contract.
• Park Silly Sunday Market, granted $40,000 to fund the weekly open-air market, including the cost of paying performers and marketing materials.
• Summit Community Gardens and EATS, granted $1,500 to support educational outreach, provide a stipend for staff and fund a community meal.
• Swaner Preserve & Eco Center, granted $140,000 for its educational efforts and marketing push.
• Utah Symphony & Opera, granted $110,000 to cover guest artist and conductor fees for this year’s Deer Valley Music Festival.

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Ever since the Sundance Institute announced the film festival would move to Boulder, Colorado, starting in 2027, Park City Special Event Manager Chris Finney has been bombarded with phone calls from event organizers.

“Everyone’s calling me saying, ‘I’m here to save Park City (with a new January event),’” Finney said during a panel about local arts and culture at the Wasatch Back Economic Summit on Monday. “They’re talking about tens of thousands of people they want to bring in on day one.”

While Finney said the economic boon the festival brought to the Wasatch Back will be missed — particularly by local businesses like Park City Lock & Key, which always raked in cash from festivalgoers locking themselves out of their Airbnbs — it also put a strain on year-round residents and city resources.

“If you think about everything that happens during Sundance, there’s someone standing out in the cold, directing traffic or working a crosswalk or loading people into cars or standing in an intersection,” Finney said.

Jocelyn Scudder, executive director of the Arts Council of Park City & Summit County, said residents of the Wasatch Back should focus on establishing the next Sundance Institute instead of the next Sundance Film Festival. In other words, she sees greater potential in the creation of spaces for artists than events to draw in tourists.

“We are very heavily reliant on these big events: Sundance, Kimball Arts Festival, Savor the Summit,” she said. “If we’re able to have these really amazing spaces for arts and culture and activity and experiences to happen, then we will see 12-month, year-round activity act more as kindling for the local community, rather than these high-impact events that are great for our economy, but they’re hard on our community.”

One of those spaces could be the Heber Valley Arts Center planned for east of the Utah Valley University Wasatch campus, encompassing an outdoor amphitheater, indoor theater and rehearsal, community and gallery spaces. The Wasatch County Arts Council hopes to build the arts center by the 2034 Winter Olympics. 

Phil Jordan, co-chair of the Heber City Arts Advisory Committee and an executive at entertainment company Next Level Ops, said the Wasatch Back’s greatest need is rehearsal space for artists.

“It is, generally, across the United States, the debit that is always identified first and generally supported last because it doesn’t generate a return on investment,” he said. 

He added that the Heber Valley Arts Center will bring a “rising tide” for Wasatch Back residents, who will be able to express themselves authentically in the new space. That, he said, will attract new residents to both counties.

Scudder said Summit County residents are excited about the Heber Valley Arts Center.

“I’ve heard from a lot of artists who’ve caught wind of that and (are) like, ‘Well, maybe I’ll go down there and exhibit,’ or ‘Maybe I’ll go down there and perform,’” she said. 

While the Heber Valley Arts Center is a long way from breaking ground, Heber City’s arts and culture scene is growing rapidly, explained Rachel Kahler, executive director of nonprofit Community Alliance for Main Street.

Kahler has a contract with Heber City to organize at least 50 local events in Main Street Park annually. The city’s goal is to build up to 250 events annually. 

Kahler has taken the advice of Park Silly Sunday Market Executive Director Kate McChesney: “Be mindful of what you’re doing and don’t grow too fast.”

Park City Councilor Tana Toly provided Savor the Summit as an example of an event that has grown into a tourist event rather than one for locals.

“We can’t afford to go do that, and so, we’re looking at other events during the summer,” she said.

Kahler said organizers need to recognize the pressures events can put on local communities. She provided Ice Castles — which she was previously marketing manager of — as an example. 

Ice Castles started in Midway’s town square in 2011. 

“If you remember back then, they basically took over downtown,” she said. “Every neighborhood was angry because, instead of Swiss Days, which takes over for two days, they had seven weeks of lines and people and parking.”

Ice Castles then moved to the Homestead Resort and later Soldier Hollow Nordic Center in response to resident feedback. The attraction became beloved and brought an influx of economic activity for small business owners, like David Medina, owner of Lola’s Street Kitchen.

“David told me those first couple years, he had such a small restaurant. But because of the Ice Castles, it kept him in business to (the point) where he now is a destination restaurant,” Kahler said. “These are factors that you can’t often gauge with data, but you can with relationships.”

Kahler’s example represents how arts and cultural events can provide economic spillover for local businesses. But the benefits of the arts aren’t purely economic, Scudder said. 

“Creating art and experiencing art is what makes us distinctly human, and it allows us to connect,” she said. “It not only supports our community, but it supports our well being as people. I hope that people think of arts as a social investment.”

Ciara Steele from the Utah Arts Collective said the organization’s Nutcracker Tea Party demonstrates that. Every year, the Utah Arts Collective collaborates with local businesses — for example, Midway’s Dandelion Gelato — and donates all proceeds to the Wasatch County Children’s Justice Center, which provides services to children undergoing the child abuse investigative process.

“We’re all working together, and there’s a local benefit,” Steele said. “We educate our dancers about what the (Children’s Justice Center) provides, so they understand what they’re serving with their talent. The parents get behind that, and the community does, (too).”

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The departure of the Sundance Film Festival weighed heavily Friday over a panel of five Park City arts leaders at the annual Park City Leadership Symposium. 

Ben Anderson, founder of Park City Song Summit, called the festival the “fair-haired child” of Park City’s arts scene that “gave us the one-fingered salute” and disowned the family. He and the other panelists contemplated how Sundance’s siblings in the Park City arts scene might fill the void left by the festival.

For Katy Wang, executive director of Park City Film, the biggest void left by the Sundance Film Festival that she hopes to fill is inspiring Park City’s youth. 

“My kids, growing up here, are saying all of these stories that they got exposed to are spreading their imaginations, sparking that creativity and (making them) go, ‘I could be that,’” she said.

Jamie Wilcox, executive director of Egyptian YouTheatre, agreed.

“We cannot talk about centering the arts if we’re not talking about giving these opportunities to young people,” she said.

She added that not all children will grow up to be artists — some may even work jobs that don’t exist yet, particularly due to advances in AI — but that the skills children gain by being grounded in the arts are essential. 

“Our kids are coming back and telling us, ‘It helps me with interviews. It helps me speak up for myself and others. It helps me collaborate,’” she said. “If these aren’t skills we’re teaching them and in a fun way, we’re giving them a disadvantage in their future.”

Meanwhile, Brian Richards, executive director of Mountain Town Music, thought the biggest void the festival left was the presentation of art that takes creative risks or discusses difficult subject matters, challenging perspectives and sparking conversations.

“I’m not sure that we, as an arts and cultural collective, are doing enough right now to continue to shape those future discussions,” he said.

He then brought up musical plants.

“I had a thing come across my desk. This artist was going to bring in a bunch of plants, and they were going to connect microphones to the plants, and they were going to create music,” he recalled.

But he couldn’t think of a suitable venue for the artist. 

That led straight into a discussion of arts spaces, or the lack thereof, in Park City. 

Jocelyn Scudder, executive director of the Arts Council of Park City and Summit County and moderator of the panel, pointed out that the need for such spaces was outlined in the Arts & Culture Master Plan created by the Arts Council, which was approved by the Park City and Summit County councils earlier this year.

Anderson said he hopes that manifests in the form of a facility similar to the Center for the Arts in Crested Butte, Colorado. The Center for the Arts was established in 1985 to revive the ski town, and in 2019, a new, 28,000-square-foot building was opened, costing about $20 million.

“They do food and wine festival outdoors. They do a summer concert music series outdoors. Indoors, they do art, music, drama. They have culture. There’s 1,600 people in Crested Butte. What are we doing?” Anderson asked. “We are so far behind. We are so lacking.”

Richards agreed. He asked whether anyone regularly saw live music on Main Street. A few raised their hands. 

He then asked where people see live music most. People shouted out venues like The Marquis and The Spur. Richards pointed out that those were venues for patrons 21 and older and emphasized the need for spaces for youth musicians. 

He added that Park City live music is “beholden” to the whims of ski resorts during the winter, which tend to host only DJs.

Anderson described bringing live music to Park City as “an uphill, Sisyphean battle because we don’t have the space.”

Wrapping up the panel, Scudder asked each panelist how they wanted to look back on the arts scene 10 years from now.

“In this town, we always joke that you could throw a stick and hit an Olympian. I would love to be able to throw a stick and hit an artist,” Wang said. 

All agreed that they wanted further investment in the arts scene, diversifying Park City’s portfolio so the tourism industry can survive even during warm winters.

But for that investment to happen, words have to turn into actions.

“I have been in so many of these meetings, going back to sitting up at the loft of the costume area at the Egyptian Theatre with Randy Barton, trying to outline how we could move forward as an arts and cultural society. All we’ve done for 15 years is talk about it. We need each and every one of you in this room to pursue action now,” Richards said. 

“I don’t know how much we have talked about AI today, but we are at a critical junction, and we are going to experience a lot of pain. And there is no way around that,” he continued. “And we are going to need one another. We’re going to need artists. We’re going to need community. … When we are sitting here in 2036, we’re going to say, ‘We did it. We provided joy. We provided community gatherings. We contributed to the wellness of our community.’”

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Brooklyn-based filmmaker Philip Thompson first attended the Sundance Film Festival in 2025, but even that couldn’t have prepared him for the frenzy of the 2026 festival.

Some made friends with strangers in the standby line for in-demand films. Others wandered the streets simply to experience the energy. There was networking and industry veterans and greenhorns letting loose at parties. And every Uber driver Thompson talked to was hell-bent on making bank from the tourists one last time before the festival moved to Boulder in 2027.

“Boulder is way more spread out, so that’s going to have a different feeling to it. … Park City is so crammed in and compact and condensed, it’s like everyone’s bumping into each other, all the cars are about to hit each other, and you really feel that energy,” Thompson said. “Sometimes it is a lot. I was there for a week, and by the end of it, I was ready to go home. But it is this magical feeling that you really can’t get anywhere else.”

There was a much different feeling at the Sundance Institute’s annual, three-day Screenwriters Lab. 

Thompson, who is currently writing the script for his first feature film, had been invited to the Sundance Mountain Resort, along with 10 other fellows, to receive feedback from accomplished screenwriters like Michael Arndt, Lulu Wang and Meg LeFauve in the days leading up to the festival in January.

The lab’s vibe was exemplified by a screening of the 2016 Academy Award Best Picture winner, “Moonlight,” with co-writers Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney, two of the creative advisers who worked with the fellows on their scripts. Both hadn’t seen “Midnight” in years, Thompson said.

“I forgot that ‘Moonlight’ was about (McCraney’s) life. So, being able to talk to him and know him as a human being, and then watching the movie after was so emotional and devastating but beautiful. Both of them broke down in tears after the screening,” he recalled. 

Ilyse McKimmie, deputy director of the Sundance Institute’s Feature Film Program, said the feeling of the lab was especially reverent this year as the fellows and lab organizers honored Sundance Institute founder Robert Redford, who died in September, by discussing what the actor and director meant to them.

McKimmie, who has worked for the Sundance Institute since 1999, remembers Redford as committed to his craft, forthright and funny. 

“When he was there, he was just another person at the lab,” she said. “He always wanted to make it very much about the work and was very eager to get to know each fellow.”

While the death of Redford and the moving of the film festival to Boulder have left the Sundance Institute in a season of change, the Screenwriters Lab will continue to be held at Sundance Mountain Resort, the “ancestral home” of the Institute and Film Festival, as McKimmie called it.

The Directors Lab will also return to Sundance Mountain Resort in 2027 after it moved to the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, in 2024 amid construction at the resort.

Redford founded the resort in 1969 and the Sundance Institute in 1981. Though he sold the resort in 2020, the location is rich with the Sundance Institute’s history and ties into Redford’s lifelong passions for nature and Native American rights.

“I have many wonderful memories of doing everything from snowshoeing in the winter to riding the ski lift in the summer and going hiking,” McKimmie said. “And traditionally, when our Directors Lab has been there in the past, we always kick things off by going up to Elk Meadows, which is a meadow a little bit up the road from the base of the mountain, and receive a blessing from a Ute tribal leader.”

McKimmie is hopeful that by maintaining a connection with Sundance Mountain Resort and continuing its outreach to Utah organizations, like the film programs of the University of Utah and Utah Valley University, that the Sundance Institute can “get away with having the best of both worlds,” she said, beginning “a version of our story in Boulder” while repaying Utah communities and ensuring they stay a key part of that story.

As for the Screenwriters Lab fellows, they’ll continue to walk away from the lab with their confidence shaken “in a good way,” as Thompson put it.

His script, “Dance Monkey Dance,” is a found-footage documentary about a fictional comedian, equal parts “Blair Witch Project” and a satire of fame and the commodification of Black artists by white audiences. He’s been working on it for well over a year.

He had to cut down his 180-page epic to 130 pages to even apply to the Screenwriters Lab. Now, he has a thousand new ideas — but the script is too long again.

Fellow Renee Zhan is also working through revisions. The London-based filmmaker has been working on her script, “BAOBAO,” for two years. 

“BAOBAO” follows an only daughter returning home to China to find that her parents have had another baby. It’s inspired by a true story from a friend, studying in London, who returned to China in her mid-20s to find her parents had brought a baby brother into the world without letting her know.

“They’d done this at the time because the one-child policy was revoked, so they could finally have, basically, the son that they’ve always wanted, because it’s still such an important thing for the patriarchal system in China to have that boy,” Zhan explained. “I’m a very much spoiled only daughter, and the thought of, suddenly, this new intruder of a baby arriving … I just could imagine how angry I’d be.”

With such a wacky premise that becomes even wackier as supernatural horror and baby puppetry enter the mix, Zhan’s greatest challenge has been ensuring that the characters remain relatable rather than cartoonish even as the tone becomes increasingly surreal. 

After receiving feedback from five industry veterans, Zhan is back to square one in developing her main character.

“To be honest, before I got to the labs, I was feeling pretty good about the script,” she said. “Now, I’m rethinking everything. I’m confused, but in a good way. I think the lab really challenged me to look deeper and to think about it in different directions, which I think, ultimately, is going to make it a much better script.”

And that, McKimmie said, is the point of the Screenwriters Lab.

“They’re not at the lab trying to find all the answers,” she said. “We always say, ‘Actually, if you leave asking the right questions, that’s a great result.’”

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