Internet Archive Canada (IAC) is partnering with BC + AI to launch the AI Builders Fellowship: a $5,000 award for anyone, anywhere in the world, to spend six weeks turning a massive Canadian public archive into something new.
The archive in question is IAC’s Government Publications collection, part of the larger Democracy’s Library project: over 104,000 text items, roughly 22.1 million scanned pages, and about 48.25 TB of Canadian public-record material, browsable at archive.org/details/governmentpublications.
The fellowship grew out of conversations between BC + AI’s Kris Krüg and IAC’s Executive Director Andrea Mills about what happens when a public archive gets treated as material for new work, not just something to preserve. IAC brings the archive. BC + AI brings a community of builders used to working in public.
Fellows can go anywhere with it: a search tool that answers a real question with page-level citations, a timeline tracing one policy across decades of government language, a sonic or visual piece built from archival material, or something nobody’s thought of yet. The only real requirements are that it’s useful, it’s imaginative, and the code is open source when it’s done.
How it works:
- The call opens August 1 and closes August 21 at 11:59 PM Pacific
- A fellow is selected by August 31
- The six-week build runs September 1 through mid-October, with support from BC + AI along the way
- If the project’s ready, it gets a showcase at Futureproof Festival in Vancouver on October 28
Read the full brief and sign up at bc-ai.ca/fellowship to get notified the moment applications open.