Empowering young people to turn ideas into action, build real skills, and create impact.
Founded in 2017 (with a near 2-year Covid pause), we’re proudly Canberra-owned and based. We are passionate about helping young people unlock their creativity, build real-world skills, and turn ideas into action.
Maker2Market started as a passion project to help young people learn design thinking and bridge the gap between school, acquiring skills, and the real world – too many miss out on the curiosity, confidence, and hands-on skills needed to thrive in creativity and business, so we started building a program where they could learn by doing real-world learning.
Our vision was to create a supportive ‘third space’ where young people can follow their passion, learn and use design skills to prototype, create, market-test, and sell their own products and services to real customers in commercial settings.
Rather than teaching theory, our highly immersive learning approach fosters individual meaning-making while using real-world design thinking skills. Along the way, participants gain confidence and life skills, including problem-solving, resilience, financial literacy, creativity, and entrepreneurial thinking – all while discovering the value of their ideas and earning income!
But it’s not just about products or sales – it’s about the transformation of seeing young people believe in themselves, scale their ideas and realise they are capable of more than they imagined. Now that’s what motivates us every day to do what we do.
Our WHY is pretty simple: We believe young people should discover that their creativity and ideas matter and can make a real impact in the world.
We exist to create a supportive ecosystem where young people can learn, earn, and grow, empowered by their community every step of the way!
Thanks to our valued collaboration partners, we connect young people to markets, retailers, mentors, and a University. Together, we are opening doors to real-world opportunities, exposure, and networks that extend far beyond any classroom.
What started as a passion project has grown into a proven program that bridges creativity and commerce and has empowered over 700+ young creatives to turn ideas into action and action into success.
Maker2Market is not just a program, it’s a launchpad for young people to develop entrepreneurial thinking and mindset using design thinking skills.
We are creating more creators who create value in this world!
Ready to join this growing creative community? We can’t wait to welcome you!
Whether you’re a young person, parent, educator or organisation working with young people or a creative collaborator, we’d love to hear from you.
Alongside our youth programs, we support schools and organisations with:
Our staff have grown from and with our program through the years and we are all committed to helping young people succeed.
