KiraKira Institute Fellowship 2026
きらきら — sparkling
light scattering across moving water, the natural phenomenon きらきら was coined to describe
KiraKira Institute exists on one belief: the people closest to a broken system already hold the brightest solutions to it. Our work isn't to install that light — it's to build the conditions for it to spread.
きらきら doesn't mean a single flash. It describes sparkling or glimmering — light that catches, multiplies, and moves between people when the conditions are right. You can't きらきら alone.
Built on the premise that the light is already there.
Fellows aren't selected to be developed into changemakers — they're already doing that work, often from direct, lived proximity to the systems they're trying to change. The fellowship builds the conditions for that knowledge to be codified, tested through play, and made transferable — the way organizing methodologies turn hard-won knowledge into something others can pick up and use.
Each fellow's project is a piece of community-rooted knowledge production, not a deliverable built for approval. The goal is a practitioner's toolkit: play-based, paradigm-shifting, and built from the ground up rather than handed down.
Fellows get real critique from peers and mentors throughout. The fellowship closes with each project presented as a contribution to a shared knowledge commons — not a performance for a grade.
Fellowship Portfolios
A showcase of the work built, tested, and shipped by this cohort's fellows — the questions they chased, the things they made, and what they learned along the way.