YouTube and NZ On Air team up to provide $300,000 to help Kiwi YouTube creators Skip Ahead

From Bryce Langston’s Living Big in a Tiny House channel to Shirley Setia’s cover of Sanam Re with an EDM twist, New Zealand content creators are pushing creative boundaries and drawing huge online audiences in New Zealand and around the world.

To help support these rising stars and the next generation of New Zealand storytellers, we’re teaming up with NZ On Air to launch Skip Ahead — a $300,000 grants program for talented Kiwis that want to develop new scripted shows, experiment with online formats, and grow their global audience.

Starting today, Kiwi-based YouTube creators can apply for up to $100,000 in funding to create a new narrative-led webseries that represents a clear step-up for them in terms of storytelling ambition and production values.

YouTube will contribute grant funding, skills development workshops and line up networking opportunities for the successful Kiwi artists to help them create these new webseries.

NZ On Air will select the artists for the program in the coming months. The successful creators will receive seed funding and support to visit a YouTube Pop-Up Space later this year.

If you’re a NZ-based YouTube creator, you can apply today and find out more about the application criteria here. Applications close on 30 August.

We hope that Skip Ahead encourages the next generation of New Zealand producers to take to the web and share more New Zealand stories with the world.