The Cuba Project 

An Interdisciplinary Experience

View of a busy city street seen through a vehicle window, featuring vintage cars, pedestrians, and historic buildings with ornate architecture and clear blue sky in Havana, Cuba. Photo by Anna Tripp.
Children and adults playing basketball on an outdoor court enclosed by a chain-link fence in an urban neighborhood with weathered buildings and graffiti in Havana, Cuba. Photo by Anna Tripp.

The Cuba Project is an interdisciplinary internship program that immerses students in another culture while providing them with real-world training in a specified industry.

The Cuba Project launched in 2018 with five Jacksonville University undergraduate students, from five different disciplines spanning the arts and sciences, completing a two-semester internship with TigerLily, a Florida-based film production company, and included an eight-day cultural immersion in and around Havana, Cuba. This program partnered multi-disciplinary students with real-world filmmakers and producers.

How it Works

We collaborate with U.S.-based high schools, colleges, and universities to provide unique experiential opportunities in Cuba.

Our work between U.S. and Cuban institutions in two-fold. We facilitate cooperative agreements and design and implement student internship programs. Our student internship program requires an established company to participate for real-world experience.

Students spend a semester gaining a deep understanding of Cuba’s history, culture, and economy through selected readings, documentaries, and other media. Additionally, students receive hands-on training and mentorship from a local professional industry leader to prepare them for a 7-9 day trip to Cuba where they integrate this knowledge. Students then spend a second semester detailing their experience abroad guided by their industry professional. Students work together as a group, but each student is also responsible for deliverables specific to their discipline or interest.

We are currently re-launching this program after a multi-year hiatus due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Group of ten people, mostly women, sitting and standing in front of a green house with wooden shutters, outdoors with trees in the background. Some are smiling, and some are holding dogs at Finca Marta outside Havana, Cuba. Photo by Vanessa K. Harper
A young man with blond hair and a white T-shirt sitting on a boat railing overlooking the ocean, with a person in blue sitting behind him, and city buildings in the distance under a partly cloudy sky.
People walking into a building with colorful geometric murals on the facade.

Photo Essays

Explore photo essays and creative writings from students to get a sense of their experience and the potential this program has to offer.

A Cuba Project Itinerary

A collage of nine photos showing different scenes of everyday life and various transportation methods in a city and rural area.
Two men riding a horse-drawn cart on a rural road surrounded by green trees, with power lines overhead.

Each program has an unique itinerary. This one highlights the day-to-day cultural immersion for a group of Florida-based university students during a nine-day trip to Cuba, mentored by a team of film production professionals and our on-the-ground Cuba travel experts. All of our trips comply with Department of Treasury OFAC rules and regulations under the general license Support for the Cuban People (515.574).

Documentary Film

The Cuba Project program can cater to most any industry. In 2019, we partnered university students from different disciplines with film industry professionals. As a result, students worked in collaboration to produce documentary short films.

Dense tropical jungle with large green leaves and trees, mountain in the background.
Three people inside a room with colorful wooden walls, one man in a blue shirt sitting and smiling, two women standing in the background, one in a pink top and white shorts, the other in a beige jacket, with a green and orange wall above.

“What I Loved the most was being part of the daily life of the Cubans, and I know I would not have gotten this humbling experience anywhere else.”

— Anna R. Tripp

The Cuba Project Gallery