Now casting · Touch Grass July · For aspiring creators
Build a real creative project this summer — by hand, on camera, in 30 days. Post daily. The best work wins prizes. The best you walks away with a portfolio, an audience, and proof you can ship something only you could make.
$10,000 in prizes across 7 winners
Applications close May 30, 2026 · —d —h —m —s remaining
The idea
Touch Grass is a 30-day cohort for college students who want to make something with their hands, their voice, or their time — and post about it every day.
Pick a creative project. Work on it for 30 days. Post your progress. Win up to $4,000. Walk away with a portfolio, a community, and proof you can do hard things.
A practice for being human.
How it works
Tell us your project, your lane, and why it matters to you.
If you're admitted, you'll get a kickoff Zoom and an accountability partner you check in with weekly.
A welcome kit ships before Day 1. Day 1 begins together with the cohort.
Each day: work on your project, post your progress on your own channels, and submit that day's update to us. Show your process — not just a final reveal.
Phone-verified public vote plus a judges' panel decides the prize winners.
Live finale event. Winners announced. Highlight reels drop. Your work reaches every audience we can reach.
Pick your lane
Pick the lane that fits the kind of work you want to spend a month on. Solo or in a team of two-to-three.
Furniture, clothing, pottery, ceramics, restoration, printed and bound writing, recipes you cook from scratch. Anything you can hold or share at the end.
Dinner parties, salons, run clubs, creative meetups, pop-ups. Put real people in the same room as each other.
Music, dance, standup, spoken word, theater. Practice. Perform. Document.
Short documentaries, photo essays, interview series, place-based explorations. Tell true stories about real people and real places.
Why participate
When
May → Mid-June
Application open. Rolling review until cap.
Mid-June
~60 admitted. Welcome kits ship.
Late June
Synchronous kickoff. Paired check-ins assigned.
July 1 → 31
Daily content. Weekly recaps. Real work.
Early August
Phone-verified vote. On-campus finale. Winners.
Questions
Each day for 30 days, you do three things: work on your project, post your progress on your own channels (TikTok, Instagram, wherever you create), and submit that day's update to us. The point isn't a single big reveal at the end — it's showing up every day, in public and to the cohort. The progress is the proof.
Whatever you submit at the end of 30 days — the object, the performance, the document, the photographs, the recording. The final thing has to be made by you, and the daily progress submissions across all 30 days are how we verify it's really yours.
Because summer is the right window, college networks are dense and culture-shaping, and the people we want — aspiring creators with quiet AI guilt — overindex on campuses. Future cohorts will expand.
Yes — that's the whole point. You're growing your own following while building something real. We require a hashtag and a tag of our central account so we can repost the best of your work to our audience.
It doesn't matter. The Underdog Award explicitly weights creator growth over absolute audience size. Some of our most successful participants will start with under 200 followers.
Yes. Teams of two-to-three may submit one project together. If you win, the prize splits proportionally.
Nothing. The cohort is free if you're admitted. We send the welcome kit. You bring the work.
A small founding team building the long-form version of this movement. The summer 2026 pilot is the proof of concept; the case study from this cohort will fund the fall flagship.
Apply
Applications close when we hit cap. The earlier you apply, the higher your odds.
Start your application →Takes about 8 minutes. We read every word.