01
The fellowship award
CA$10,000 across two projects and the focused time to move each from idea to working artifact.
Applications · ClosedInternet Archive Canada and BC + AI
The public record is huge. Make it do something weird and useful.
Two builders got six weeks and CA$10,000 across two projects to turn a massive Canadian public archive into open-source experiments people can use, question, or get lost in. Who knows what's actually possible?
Human origin
A conversation about what disappears, and what builders might bring back into view.
The fellowship grew from real conversations between Kris Krüg and Andrea Mills about archives, public memory, and what becomes possible when a public record is treated as material for new work. Internet Archive Canada brings the archive. BC + AI brings a community willing to build in public.
The brief
collection_01 / public_memory
Use AI to help people search, understand, question, or creatively encounter Canada's public record.
The collection
A large, real, and uneven record of Canadian government publications.
The archive is the material. Its contents are part of Canada's public record. Public memory is the larger possibility: helping people find, connect, question, and reinterpret what governments chose to publish.
Explore it at archive.org/details/governmentpublications, part of Internet Archive Canada's open-government holdings.
This collection is part of Democracy's Library, one branch of the Internet Archive's larger mission to keep public knowledge open. If you know the Wayback Machine, you already know the scale of the ambition.
- 104,104
- text items
- ~22.1 million
- scanned page images
- ~48.25 TB
- of material
- 107
- tagged sub-collections
The coverage is uneven, and that is the point
Federal material is substantial, but provincial and municipal coverage leans heavily toward Ontario and Alberta and is thin elsewhere. About 34.5 percent of items carry no recorded date. Treat those gaps as part of the story rather than something to paper over. The most useful projects tend to work with the unevenness, not around it.
Andrea's talk
Start at 31:27.
This is where Andrea turns from the larger work of preserving the internet toward this archive, this fellowship, and what a builder might do next.
The player starts at that moment. The full conversation remains available from the beginning.
What we asked builders to make
Builders could follow a voice, a question, a pattern, or a hunch into the archive.
They could make a sonic journey through decades of government language, build a research tool, trace a civic pattern, turn records into an artwork, or invent a strange interface that changes how someone moves through public memory.
01
Make the record navigable
Build a search, map, timeline, or question-answering interface that helps someone find a useful path through Canadian public records.
For instance, a plain-language search that answers a real question and returns the specific reports behind the answer, each with a page-level citation.
02
Reveal a civic pattern
Trace how a policy, place, institution, or public concern changes across time, sources, and levels of government.
For instance, a timeline of how one environmental policy was described across decades of federal reports, with the undated records placed as open questions.
03
Turn archives into culture
Create a visual, sonic, literary, or generative work that makes the collection legible without flattening its provenance.
For instance, a field guide that pairs archival photographs with the reports that produced them, keeping every source one tap away.
Or they could build the thing nobody had imagined yet. That was the point.
What fellows receive
Enough structure to finish. Enough freedom to surprise us.
02
Archive context
A prepared Canadian civics and open-government collection plus guidance on how it was assembled.
03
A public moment
October 28: the fellows present at Futureproof Festival opening night.
How it works · Selection
Useful. Imaginative. Open. Achievable in six weeks.
- 01
- Useful
- A specific person or community can use, question, or learn from the result, and the idea genuinely needs this archive.
- 02
- Imaginative
- The project makes an unexpected connection or gives people a new way into the public record.
- 03
- Open source
- The working artifact and its code can be shared, examined, and built on after the fellowship.
- 04
- Achievable
- The scope can reach a credible working artifact during the six-week build window.
How it works · Timeline
From an idea to something people can encounter.
Applications opened
Builders read the brief, explored the collection, and told us what they wanted to make.
Applications closed
Submissions closed at 11:59 PM Pacific.
Review
Applications moved through project review.
Two projects selected
BC + AI selected two projects, with CA$5,000 awarded to each.
Build
A focused build period with archive context and BC + AI check-ins.
Fellows present at Futureproof Festival
The fellows present their projects on opening night in Vancouver.
How it works · Application
What we asked for
Every proposal had to carry three things.
- The project
- The tool, guiding question, or gap analysis you want to pursue, grounded in a specific part of the collection.
- A work plan
- A phase-by-phase or week-by-week sketch of how you would get from curiosity to something real during the six-week build window. We care about momentum and judgment.
- A success metric
- What you will point to at the end as evidence the work succeeded, named by you rather than left for reviewers to infer.
We also asked for contact details, relevant experience, and confirmation that each applicant could work through the build window. Applications are stored privately and were reviewed by the selection team.
Questions about the fellowship? Contact BC + AI.
Applications closed
Applications closed August 21 at 11:59 PM Pacific.
The 2026 call is closed. BC + AI selected Jacob Ortiz and Daniel Shavit for two CA$5,000 fellowships, with Internet Archive Canada as our archive partner. The original brief stays here so you can read what builders were asked to make.
Credits
Partners and people
Archive partner
Internet Archive Canada
An independent Canadian digital library preserving public knowledge and supporting open access.
Community partner
BC + AI Ecosystem Association
The BC nonprofit that grew from Vancouver AI and supports the fellowship’s builder community and public documentation.
Andrea Mills
Executive Director of Internet Archive Canada
Leads Internet Archive Canada’s work to preserve and open Canadian collections, including the public-record context for this fellowship.
Brewster Kahle
Founder and Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive
Founded the Internet Archive, whose Democracy’s Library initiative works toward free, open, sustainable access to government research and publications.
Kris Krüg
Founder and Executive Director of BC + AI · Founder of Vancouver AI
Grew Vancouver AI into BC + AI and leads the community, builder support, and public documentation around this fellowship.