Targeting aspiring creators from underrepresented communities in Canada and the US, the Spin Master Future of Play Scholarship Program offer eight individuals access to post-secondary education within their fields.
The programme aims to develop the next generation of creators, inventors, designers and entrepreneurs in children's entertainment. It provides $12,500 per year to each student chosen from equity-seeking communities, such as black, indigenous and people of colour (BIPOC), 2SLGBTQIA+, people with disabilities or women.
Children's entertainment producer Spin Master created the programme to broaden diversity of thought within the children's entertainment industry.
Spin Master looks to target the financial burden of post-secondary education in order to encourage students that would not even have applied to post-secondary at all due to financial burden to pivot and apply. For this reason, the programme is only open to students entering their first year of post-secondary studies.
The aim is to provide students with awareness of different jobs that they can aspire to within the entertainment industry, inspiring out-of-the-box thinking and motivating students to achieve. A student may have no interest in engineering until they know that is a necessary job function in toy creation, thus inspiring their dedication to learning the craft.
"At Spin Master, we believe that diversity of thought fuels new ideas and innovation," said Tara Deakin, executive vice president and chief people officer at Spin Master. "Our Future of Play scholarships give students from equity-seeking groups the opportunity to hone their trade and become the next generation of creators, inventors, designers and entrepreneurs in the children's entertainment industry."
On top of financial support for their studies, students also have the chance to grow through mentorship and networking opportunities with Spin Master employees and their scholarship cohort. Students engage in four group mentorship and three craft-specific mentorship sessions a year, helping to prepare them for entering the workforce and creating an opportunity to build their network.
Since 2021, 32 scholarships have been awarded with this number set to rise to 40 by the end of 2024.