Three horizons, not a calendar
What we are doing, and learning from, this season.
What we expect to take up once the current work teaches us enough to begin. It may change.
The direction we are reaching towards. These are aspirations, held with open hands.
The horizons describe how mature a practice is. The four movements ”study, act, reflect, consult” run alongside one another, so much of what sits in Next is already being prepared now. Dates appear only where safety or money depends on them.
To protect the young people we serve, this page names no participants and gives no addresses, session times, or delivery dates for equipment.
Youth Empowerment Studio
Secondary-school-age young people build powers of perception and expression, one city at a time. Each studio goes one city deep before the next one opens.
We are preparing studios in Durham and Zonkizizwe with partners in each city. In Durham, we are planning a first cohort with Student U. In Zonkizizwe, a small circle of young people already meets with our local coordinator, and we are asking them what a studio should hold.
Cohorts in Durham and Zonkizizwe take up purpose labs, acts of service with reflection journals, and weekly seminars on reading the reality of their communities. Learning doesn’t wait for a finished building: each cohort begins in the best space available.
Studios in Muskegon and Amman open as their preparation matures. Young people in different cities meet in exchange labs, and skills tracks in project management, media literacy, and data basics take shape.
Each phase opens when the one before it is verified
We are repairing a community centre in stages. Each phase is funded as a tranche and begins only when the one before it is verified with photographs, invoices, or tests. The studio's learning runs alongside this work, not behind it.
Integer
Integer is the name under which the perceptions and expressions of young people, and of those who learn alongside them, reach the public. GYEC shapes the curriculum that forms dispatchers; Integer publishes what they make.
From October to December 2026, our founding team runs a public pilot. We practise the craft we will ask of dispatchers: field notes, and dialogues with scholars that move from observation to inquiry to invitation. A newsletter goes out every two weeks, and a production journal records every misstep.
From January 2027, dispatchers begin by critiquing Season Zero and reshaping its format. Each dispatch becomes a field note on what was observed, where, and how we know. Inquiry briefs set lived experience beside existing research, and invitation guides help educators and youth groups use each piece.
Once or twice a year, we draw together what dispatchers in several cities saw on a shared theme. A weekly rhythm, live briefings, audio, and print follow — each only when readers and listeners show they will stay. Print is funded by pre-orders before anything is printed.
Empowering Educators for Social Action
Educators learn alongside the studios and carry the approach into their own schools and communities. [Our first commitment is to young people, so this programme follows the studios rather than running ahead of them.]
[The facilitators preparing for the first studios are the first educators we accompany, through study, practice, and reflection together.]
[Teachers and youth workers near each studio take part in a full cycle of study, act, reflect, consult, and adapt what they find useful.]
[Educators lead the approach in their own schools and communities, drawing on materials refined across the studios.]
Learning and discourse
We study what we do, systematise what we learn, and offer it to the wider conversations of society. Our materials aren’t designed in advance and then tested; they emerge from practice.
We follow the Ruhi Institute’s approach to curriculum development: a small group acts, reflects, consults, and revises, and action never waits for finished materials. Season Zero’s production journal is our first working record.
Facilitators from each studio gather every quarter to compare what they have learned and to decide when a material is ready for its next stage. We begin a public learning log and a methods page.
We publish materials others can use with confidence, alongside in-depth accounts of what has crystallised across the studios, and offer them to the wider conversations of society.
Each material moves through an initial outline, an alpha version, and a pre-publication edition. We publish it when the changes it needs have become negligible, not when a date arrives. More on how we learn →
One path, not three projects
A young person develops powers of perception and expression alongside their peers.
What they observe and express reaches the public through Integer, the studio’s newsroom.
What the studios learn is studied, systematised, and offered to the wider conversations of society.
Educators take up refined materials and bring new young people onto the same path.
Each way of giving below is tied to a stage of this roadmap. We report back on outputs and outcomes, and on what we learned.
A phase of the centre in Zonkizizwe, from US$2–12k.
Facilitator stipends, curriculum kits, internet, and meals for a 12-week cohort in Zonkizizwe, US$6–12k.
Documentation, open toolkits, and exchange between studios, US$3–5k a cycle.
Training, stipends, and editing for young people reporting from their own communities.