Kindling Fellowship, Fall 2024

You’ll retain full ownership of all the work you do and artifacts you create in the program. However, Powderhouse will retain a license to be able to publish and adapt the work you create in the program. You can read the full policy here. If you have any questions or concerns about this, please let us know, and we’ll be happy to work with you to figure it out.

We’ll cover the costs for anything (within reason) you need to do the projects you tackle during the program. The only major exception to this is, if you are looking to start a business, while we will support limited prototyping, you will be responsible for buying materials for the products you well.

Powderhouse’s team is running this fellowship. We’re running it to prototype some elements of a replacement for high school we’re working to build as part of our larger mission.

We believe that for many people, School doesn't work, with severe consequences. Although society invests in improving School-as-it-is, where will radically new approaches to School come from?

We’re trying to answer that question, and we hope you’ll help us do so!

As long as you’re eligible, we're looking for people who are looking for support to achieve one or more of the following goals:

1. Finish high school — Depending on your situation, we can work with your current school to accredit learning you do at Powderhouse; administer a homeschooling plan with the state; register in dual enrollment programs at local colleges; design individualized plans for targeted credit via AP, CLEP, and other exams; or support you in getting their GED.
2. Get into (and/or prepare for) college — We can help you finish coursework, find and apply for colleges and scholarships, study and learn about the topics you’ll need when you first get into college, and help you take college classes to test out the waters before you go full time.
3. Break into an industry — We can support you to launch your own business; start training in a trade; develop a resume, portfolio, and other materials to show potential employers; get on-the-job training through internships and apprenticeships; or finance licensure and certificate programs in your field of interest.
4. Figure out your interests — Sometimes, when high school ends, you still aren’t sure what you want to do next. We can help you explore and discover your interests, putting together workshops, projects, and courses for you, as well as helping you connect with people involved in the fields and industries you want to explore.

If you have any doubts about whether you’re a good fit, please get in touch. We’re happy to arrange a call to discuss the program in general and your particular situation.

There is no cost to you. You will not be paid for the program, but you will be provided a laptop, tablet, and phone for use while you're with us and access to a budget to support your projects and other work throughout the year.

We’re looking for ~12 creative, committed, and collaborative people who will bring a diverse set of skills and perspectives to their work. Everyone in your cohort will be looking to finish high school and/or transition to their next step, whether college, career, etc. We're all here to work toward our own goals and support and celebrate others as they do the same.

No.

Unfortunately, not at this time.

“Special education” can mean many things, and we are committed to supporting people to be able to comfortably and effectively participate. As long as you are eligible, we will work closely with you to ensure you have all the support needed to participate. If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

The program will be run in English and will be accessible to folks who are conversational in English; there is no expectation that you are a native speaker. If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

The team behind Powderhouse is the same team that put together the proposal which Somerville’s School Committee rejected in 2019. This program is part of our next steps pursuing the same mission, and draws on a lot of the design work we’ve done in the past. But there is no formal connection between the Powderhouse Studios Innovation School and Kindling.

Although the projects and other work you do at Kindling will be regularly workshopped and critiqued, we do not offer traditional grades (numeric or otherwise). Internally, we evaluate work based on the goals you set in your Roadmap and project pitch. Pitches ask:

1. What do you want to make or do?
2. Why are you doing it?
3. What will make it a success?
4. What's your plan? From here, we evaluate your work on its own terms. For example, if you want to explore chemistry by doing beautiful experiments, standards of success will look very different than if you are looking to pass the AP Chemistry exam. Or, if you are doing a woodworking project to get familiar with shop tools, standards for success will look very different from a piece you are building to demonstrate competence for admission to trade school. In this way, we look at both the quality of the work itself and the quality of your process making it, evaluating the work based on the goals we set before you got started.

We want to make sure that you are able to comfortably take your next step after Kindling. This means we provide individualized support through things like:

• tutoring and test preparation for the GED/HiSET
• campus visits and application/essay support for college admissions
• developing and deploying a personal website, portfolio, and resume
• searching and interviewing for jobs

In cases where we cannot provide the kind of transition support you need, we will work to find community partners and other services instead. If you have a particular transition support need you’d like to discuss, please get in touch.

You’ll be learning from other fellows as well as from Powderhouse’s team alongside experts and advisors from the community whom we’ll bring in to support particular projects and pieces.

We’ve been developing youth and adult programming since 2009, prototyping hardware, software, and media to support rigorous, creative work across a variety of disciplines. Academically, our backgrounds span math, physics, environmental engineering, creative writing, and community performance.

When you build a fire, the small sticks you use to start the flames are called “kindling.” That’s where program gets its name.

Our work often involves helping people spark their own intellectual and creative journeys. And we hope that our publications can offer the same to our audience, in small ways.

And not for nothing: Powderhouse’s namesake is a gunpowder magazine. Whether the forest fire that clears out the brush while fertilizing the soil for something new, the revolutionary muzzleloader, or the spark that leads to a lifelong passion, we have an affection for the fragile and new, and hope to provide some space where it can gather momentum until it can be self-sustaining.

We are accepting applications on a rolling basis through 1 August 2024. To get started, apply here, and we’ll be in touch within 48 hours about next steps.

The application process looks something like this:

1. An online application will ask you to briefly describe your background, what’s interesting to you about this program, and to share a few examples of projects you think are great (whether or not you want to do them yourself).
2. Based on that, we’ll follow up with an informal interview during which we’ll discuss those questions further, along with any questions or concerns you might have about the fellowship.
3. After that, we’ll enter you into our random lottery and let you know within a month whether you’ve been admitted.

We don’t care whether you’ve found traditional kinds of success before (in school, sports, or wherever). We care that you’re excited to acheive your goals: working collaboratively to make great creative projects, committing to figuring out your future plans, and willing to work for it.

If you have ideas about how we can do this better (in general, or in your case in particular), please let us know.

We understand life happens. But, you are expected to treat this program as a full-time commitment, unless we make a different arrangement before you are admitted. If we find that you are regularly missing sessions, we will work with you to solve the problems standing in your way, but may eventually ask you to leave the program and reapply when things have settled down for you. If you know already that you have a scheduling conflict, please get in touch with us to discuss it.

None. Because we'll be working with a lot of digital materials, all fellows will be working on Mac products. Necessary equipment (e.g. laptop, tablet, and phone) will be provided if you don’t already have access to them. Fellows will have the opportunity to purchase this loaner equipment at a discount at the end of the program.

At Kindling, we will organize your work in what we call a Roadmap. This document captures your big goals for the year, along with a plan for how you'll achieve those goals during your time with us. We'll design your Roadmap with you and your family, and it will likely include things you're excited about (like getting your license or releasing an album) and things you're less excited about but still want to accomplish (like getting math and ELA credit or applying for jobs or college). While you won't necessarily learn a set curriculum, you will learn what you need to in order to achieve your goals—and we'll hold you to that!

Powderhouse is not an accredited school, though we are working toward that. Depending on your situation, however, we can work with your current school to accredit learning you do at Powderhouse; administer a homeschooling plan with the state; register in dual enrollment programs at local colleges; design individualized plans for targeted credit via AP, CLEP, and other exams; or support you in getting their GED.

Yes, but since we admit people through a lottery, your new application will be considered for the next year's program.

“Disability” can mean many things, and we are committed to supporting as broad a set of people as possible to comfortably and effectively participate. As long as you are eligible, we will work closely with you to ensure you have all the support needed to participate.

The biggest, structural constraint is that our current workshop has a small step to enter and stairs to a second floor (without any elevator, currently).

If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to get in touch and we can look at the details of your situation and how we might best accommodate you.

We’ll be meeting 10AM–5PM, Monday–Friday from 3 September 2024–30 May 2025 (excluding state and federal holidays). Refer to the full calendar for details.