Introducing our Season 7 Protostars 💥
Ornithopters, a smart pet collar, colony simulation games, contortion artists and bee hotels – here's what our newest Protostars are creating!
This is our seventh cohort of Protostars, a microgrant program we started in 2021. We give young people from AU/NZ $1,000 through Protostars to work on their passion projects. We surround them with community, encourage them to build in public, and learn from their peers as they create their projects for eight weeks.
Keep reading to learn about the passion projects we’ve welcomed to the Protostars universe 👇
STEM 🤖
🥼 Andrew Smithyman’s Air2energy aims to create a solution to emissions within the marine industry and beyond. It does this through a retrofitted multi-celled system that uses advanced filtration and electrochemical reactions to capture and convert emissions into energy.
🌊 Angelina The is creating Ocean Eye, an autonomous beach safety and rescue drone that can detect drowning swimmers and deploy life-saving devices.
🧤 Bodi Mao is creating a speaker glove for speech and hearing-impaired individuals, integrating finger resistor sensors for intuitive alphabetical input. The glove offers a novel approach to communication without requiring knowledge of sign language. Website
💄 Celine Hosea is creating CosMe, a pocket makeup artist. The app scans your face, identifies your undertones and facial attributes, quizzes you on your desired look, and gives a personalised makeup tutorial with steps and diagrams to achieve that look. Website
📚 Chloe McCormick is creating a series of books for Code Green, an organisation they founded that creates games teaching coding and climate concepts to young people.
🐶 Finlay Ekins is building a smart pet collar with their sister (a vet) to track their dog's biometric data so that they can take better care of it and keep it healthy. Website
🦅 Inspired by Da Vinci, whose contributions to arts and science are profound, Justin Leong is designing and building an ornithopter to show how society should invest its efforts at the intersection of art and science. Follow his building in public journey here.
🌱 Ikigai is a 30-metre-squared food forest and composting hub. Kaitlyn Lamb’s vision for this space is for all food waste from the hall to be composted on-site, which feeds the food forest. The purpose is sustainability education. Website
🦾 Immobility among PwD puts them at risk of developing pressure sores. Kanishk Aggarwal is creating a lateral rotation system that can be integrated into existing bed mattresses. In addition, iterations will implement sensors for pressure mapping.
🤝 Inspired by her work at Friends on Purpose, Nikol Moses is creating a CRM for your social life to help you build better relationships with your friends and loved ones. Website
Arts 🎨
🎪 Amelia Vu is organising a two-day event that will include street dance battles, art projections, and workshops by local artists. The purpose is to create space to nurture, cultivate, and celebrate art and creativity by gathering the community. Website
🖊️ Claudia Long is celebrating the craft of type design through an analogue typeface exhibition. The exhibition will feature a full typeface designed and made by hand using linocut & print, exhibited with large posters, custom Letraset and type specimen books!
🎵 Sachin de Silva is creating a sound-based exhibition that portrays perceptions of the civil war and the tensions that emerge from violent ethnic relations.
🃏 Threads is a competitive card game created by Eamonn Tee about the politics, backstabbing, and scheming of celebrity drama. Players compete to create the best outfit while sabotaging each other's looks.
🎨 Jenna Pickering is organising an exhibition of their works to date. Somewhere to show the beautiful faces I’ve had the pleasure of painting. Website
📚 Jodie Ellin’s passion project is a love letter to her passion for print and design. She is creating a photobook and composing a curated collection of signs that inspire her. Website
🕺 Jafri Yakin is learning breakdance with the aim of using what he has learned to teach others how to breakdance.
🩰 Kelsea Blackburn is creating a mind-bending act that seamlessly blends tap dance and contortion to astonish and confuse audiences. This project uses heart-thumping rhythms and acrobatic feats to weave a narrative and create an atmosphere of absurdity.
🎬 "Temporal Aria" is a short film by Nicole Maisey combining hair suspension with contemporary dance, creating a visually stunning and unique performance. This project explores new artistic expressions and captures the beauty of this rare discipline on film.
🎪 Organised by Ruby Macomber, WORD-UP Wānanga will invite 20 Māori and Pasifika young people and 4 poetry/songwriting/rap facilitators to a weekend of skills and experience-based learning. The weekend will encourage young people to nurture their creative voices, culminating in a showcase for their loved ones!
🍞 Sophia Derkenne is the creator of Breadwinner, a baking class meets competition meets immersive theatre.
🌸 Dissecting personal discourses surrounding recent experiences with healthcare & growing increasingly chronically ill, Torren Whisson’s 'Interdependence' explores the relationships between medical imaging & the delicate nature of endemic Australian orchids. Website
Media and Storytelling 🌐
⚽️ The One Percenters by Benjamin Garson is a platform for community sports superstars to get the recognition they deserve. Whether it’s Dave who runs the team’s cafeteria or Steph who kicked the game-winning goal on Sunday, their stories should be told.
🐝 Clancy Lester is bringing the biodiversity of the bush to our backyards with bee hotels. So simple, so easy, yet so effective. In cities, there are flowers, but not as many nesting materials, which is where bee hotels come to the rescue. Website
💈 CutCast by Mohammad Alizadeh is a podcast diving into entrepreneurial journeys and other topics as guests have their hair cut by the host. Website
🦠 Marissa Chow is writing a novel about a natural disaster that triggers a deadly fungal disease outbreak and the response that follows from the perspective of a medical researcher tasked with containing the disease.
🎮 Solomon Inyang’s Culture Crafter is a colony simulation game inspired by mythological heroes from around the world. Players will create their own heroes and send them on journeys to gain new knowledge that can transform the culture of their nation. Check out his work here.