After two decades awarding scholarships to aspiring young artists in St. Petersburg, Florida, Dr. Jeff Walker is taking Walker’s Rising Stars national.

“Nationally, the idea is to have scholarships from $1,000 for fifth place to $10,000 for first place, which is huge money in the arts,” the Sunshine State neurosurgeon announced at a packed Park City panel this weekend. “This, I mean, really changed lives,” Walker added of participants and recipients of the scholarships in the categories of singing, dancing, theater, musical instruments and visual arts.

“There’s hundreds of Walker’s Rising Stars that have gone out over the country.”

The panel (which can watch a portion of above) also included Introducing, Selma Blair, director Rachel Fleit, whose latest documentary Sugar Babies debuts at Sundance today, and Bel-Air star Jimmy Akingbola. Disney’s Raya and The Last Dragon co-director Carlos López Estrada was there too, along with Kimberly Cole, singer, songwriter and director of the upcoming competitive roller skating docu Blood, Sweat & Wheels.

As with Akingbola, seasoned Sundance director López Estrada is very much on the same wavelength as Walker in trying to find ways for those traditionally outside of the entertainment industry to break in. In 2022, the helmer of Blindspotting, which premiered on opening night of the festival in 2018, joined with Raya star Kelly Marie Tran to start the Antigravity Academy to open doors and create opportunities for younger people who may not think the movies and arts are a career for them.

“It’s a very independent operation” López Estrada said as Cole, Walker, Akingbola and Fleit looked on at The Elvis Suite presented by Darling&Co on January 25. “So, you know, we don’t have like crazy corporate backing or anything, but I think we’ve done some really incredible work,” he stated. “I’m trying to identify those areas and trying to find just like, non- traditional ways to offer a solution. II think we’re just trying to fill the gaps and create bridges so that someone who may not believe that there’s a career for them in filmmaking just see some paths ahead, and hopefully we can be there just connecting.”

With arts programs almost non-existent in the public school system in most regions of the country, and the entertainment industry careening and contracting dramatically over the last five years, Long Island raised Fleit drew from her experience of her latest film to emphasis to the crowd that intersection between ambition and access that stymies the aspirations of many.

“I met the most brilliant young people in Ruston, Louisiana, and these young women are so smart, and they devised an online sugar baby operation in order to make money,” Fleit says of the teens in her Sundance US Documentary Competition competing Sugar Babies the year. “But what they really want is to make something of themselves …getting full ride scholarships to college. I just was thinking, wow, like if they only knew about this program, and how exciting that this program is going to go national to all of these states that don’t have funding for the arts, and it’s just so important.”

Citing programs and projects he has leaned into, Arrow and Ted Lasso vet Akingbola added: I think that’s something that I want to really help the next generation wit in terms of the resilience. But also, I think we’re talking about bridges. I really believe that every one of us here are part of a bridge.” Tracking her own life growing up in California’s Orange County, self-described “misfit” Cole marveled at the power of art to transform and refocus lives. “These people are doing this for nothing other than the love of something,” the ‘Bloody Mary’ performer exclaimed.

Still, with love of the power of art, Walker revealed he has a pragmatic plan to take Walker’s Rising Stars to the next level across the land.

“Well, the idea is to find 1000 Walkers Rising Star heroes that would actually sponsor the program, produce it, mentor these kids,” he told the Main Street crowd. “Then following that we go through regional, state, and televised throughout the country to raise money case it’s going to take a lot of money,” he concluded,

Money well spent.