The grants are available to young people aged between 15-25 based in New Zealand or Australia with a creative project in mind.
If you get awarded the grant, you agree to share at least three progress updates at a minimum with Blackbird. You will be expected to participate in the program, but how much time you commit is up to you.
Applications for Protostars Season 6 will open on Wednesday 29 May at 5:00 PM AEST, and close at 11:59 PM AEST on Sunday 30 June.
The application process has one round, and it consists of a video and written application.
In the written application, we ask you to tell us about yourself, your interests, and your skills. Here, we are looking for young people who embody the values that we look for in potential Protostars: Curiosity, Generosity and Kindness, and Ambition.
In your video, we ask you to pitch your passion project to us. You should tell us what your passion project is, why it's important, why you're so passionate about it, and how the $1k grant will unlock your ability to bring it to reality.
Once we've received all applications, our judging panel of 7 judges will review and score all candidates. The top 30 scoring projects will receive a grant.
The cohort goes for 8 weeks.
It’s designed to be fairly light but with enough content to help us build community, and complete our projects. Typically we will meet once a week via Zoom and share project updates weekly via our group chat.
The more you put in, the more you’ll get out of it, but we also understand life is busy, and everyone will be able to participate in whatever way suits them. We understand that this is a side project and that you have other priorities in life.
Protostars is not a highly structured learning program. While we do offer learning content and modules, the program is not built around this. At Protostars, we focus on relationships and building confidence through community and creativity. Homework and learning tasks completed outside of our weekly catchups aren't our vibe.not is a highly structured learning program. While we do offer learning content and modules, the program is not built around this. At Protostars we focus on relationships and building confidence through community and creativity. Homework and learning tasks completed outside of our weekly catchups aren't our vibe.
You can apply with any type of project; we are particularly interested in supporting projects that are unique, personally meaningful, and can reach a defined milestone in the next 3-6 months.
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