Programs
Three programs, built to follow one another: hear from decision makers, learn the mechanics, and get someone in your corner. Register once and you hear about all of them.
Programme of work
Dates and venues are announced to registrants first. Nothing on this page is confirmed until you hear it from us directly.
A forum is a room, a panel of people with real authority over an issue, and an audience that gets to ask. Questions come from the floor. Answers are given in public, on the record.
The first forums are being planned now, focused on youth leadership and on the issues residents raise most. Registrants hear about dates and venues before anyone else.
Most civic education stops at how to vote. These sessions start there and keep going: how a council decision is actually made, how to read an agenda and a budget, how to make a submission that gets read, how to speak at a public meeting, how to run for a role and how to lead a campaign in your community.
Sessions are practical. You leave with something you can use that week.
We match young people with people who have held an elected role, led a community organisation, run a business or run a campaign. A mentor is there to answer the questions you cannot ask in public, to tell you honestly what the work involves, and sometimes to open a door.
Mentors agree to help you form your own views. They are not there to recruit you to theirs.
Also on the floor
If you would rather argue than ask, Grounded State is our filmed debate series. Two people who disagree, one motion, cameras rolling. It is casting now. Read about the formats, the motions and how casting works.