Up from the Understory knitted together in a single project, strategies promoting youth development, community mobilization and campus-community partnership.

Through production workshops, interaction with community leaders and mentoring from UC Davis faculty, Blue Mountain youth developed production and public speaking skills as well as pride in their hometowns. Through the public screenings, community members became more aware local issues, what their fellow residents were doing about them, and how they could get involved in making change. By bringing faculty and students out to rural Calaveras County and Blue Mountain residents down to the suburban University campus, the project demonstrated how youth and adults can reach across generational, geographic and cultural divisions to work together for community development.