Culture Is Currency
Culture Is Currency invites learners and innovators of all backgrounds to recognize culture, creativity, lived experience, talents, family and community knowledge as innovation assets-and use them to build ideas, develop skills, and create opportunities for them to draw upon their lived experiences, values, and communities to explore how culture, creativity, and community assets create social and economic value—redefining wealth beyond traditional metrics to include the invisible strengths of creativity, care, language, land, and legacy.
Challenge Status: Challenge OpenDeadline: January 29, 2027
Powered by a Network of Innovative Industry Partners
- Signature Event
- October 26, 2026 at 11:00AM PST
Culture Is Currency Live Pitch Lab
Join us for the Culture Is Currency Live Pitch Lab—an engaging event where you’ll learn more about the Culture Is Currency National Challenge, watch students pitch their ideas and receive live coaching from special guests. Enjoy free food, giveaways, and more! Doors open at 11:00 AM. All ages welcome.
- Plaza del Sol Auditorium, CSU Northridge
Side Hustle Bootcamp
A Signature Initiative with SUMA Wealth and the Global HSI Equity Innovation Hub. Have an idea, talent, skill, or story you want to turn into something real? Side Hustle Bootcamp helps you explore micro-preneurship through culture, creativity, and community. Use the Challenge resources to shape your idea, identify who it serves, and build a side hustle concept that creates value for yourself and others.
In Partnership with:
A National STEAM Innovation Challenge
Redefining Innovation. Redefining Currency.
Culture, creativity, and lived experience are powerful assets for innovation. Currency is more than money—it includes the knowledge, stories, relationships, creativity, technology, and ideas that create value.
Across five Innovation Pathways, participants transform these assets into meaningful solutions, new opportunities, and community wealth. Each pathway begins with an essential question rooted in culture, community, and impact—and culminates in something meaningful, shareable, and designed for social good.
Culture Is Currency is grounded in the belief that innovation belongs to the people.
Catalyst Zone
Culture Is Currency
National STEAM Innovation Challenge
Your culture, creativity, and community hold value. Culture Is Currency invites participants to explore what prosperity means in their world and use storytelling, technology, and creative thinking to turn their experiences into ideas and action.
Culture Is Currency is grounded in the belief that innovation belongs to the people.
Take your ideas further by participating in challenges that give you opportunities to create, share your work, and showcase what you have learned.
The Challenge starts with what learners already bring. It invites learners and innovators of all backgrounds to recognize culture, creativity, lived experience, talents, family and community knowledge as innovation assets—and use them to build ideas, develop skills, and create opportunities for the future.
Why Join?
Core Strategic Objectives
Guided by the question—How can we transform cultural value into opportunity for ourselves and our communities?—four objectives translate the Challenge's asset-based philosophy into practical learning, workforce, technology, and community outcomes.
Redefine Wealth
Uplift community strengths, relationships, knowledge, creativity, and traditions that transcend monetary value.
Build Agency
Equip learners with financial knowledge, tools, and decision-making skills that strengthen career readiness, economic agency, and workforce stability.
STEAM Empowerment
Build practical, future-ready technology skills through AI, digital mapping, video storytelling, design, and other emerging and creative technologies.
Bridge Knowledge
Connect ancestral and community wisdom with emerging technology through intergenerational learning, storytelling, and innovation.
Eligibility
Who Can Join?
National Competition
Participate individually or as a team
- Current college students - any level
- Recent graduates · AY 2025–2026
- Eligible adult learners from Innovation Hub affliates
- Families + justice-impacted communities through Hub programs
K–12 Engagement
Age-appropriate Challenge pathway
- Educators + program leads
- Schools + classrooms
- After-school programs + student clubs
- Community-based programs
Grounded in Apple's Challenge-Based Learning Framework
From Inquiry to Action in Three Phases
College students, adult learners, recent graduates, and K–12 learners explore real-world questions and create technology-enabled projects rooted in culture, community, and lived experience. Participants build practical skills in storytelling, design, media, budgeting, entrepreneurship, research, and problem-solving.
Phase 1
Engage
Connect to a Big Idea. Ask an Essential Question. Define the Challenge.
Phase 2
Investigate
Research the problem. Identify resources. Synthesize findings into a solution.
Phase 3
Act
Build the solution. Evaluate and test its impact. Share your work and inspire change.
Culture is Currency's 5 Innovation Pathways
Innovation Pathways
Create:What's Your Side Hustle?
Challenge: Create a Side Hustle That Adds Value
Design a side hustle that transforms your culture, creativity, talents, or lived experiences into something that creates value for others. Your side hustle should respond to a real opportunity or need, strengthen your community, and demonstrate how innovation can create economic, cultural, or social impact.
There is no single right solution. The strongest side hustle won't simply be about generating income, they create meaningful value by transforming culture, creativity, talents, and lived experiences into opportunities that strengthen communities.
Support
Innovation Support Ecosystem
Participants never build alone. The Global HSI Equity Innovation Hub's support ecosystem connects learners to tools, skills, mentors, peer coaching, regional implementation, and national visibility—bridging cultural wisdom and emerging technology while opening pathways to STEAM, careers, entrepreneurship, and long-term opportunity.
Technology + Learning Ecosystem
Apple technology and creative ecosystem tools, Challenge-Based Learning, Autodesk Design & Creation Tools, Apogee creative tools, SUMA Wealth financial literacy tools, and other emerging technologies give learners hands-on opportunities to build future-ready skills across AI, media, design, storytelling, mapping, micropreneurship, financial literacy, and technology-forward problem-solving.
National HSI Partner Ecosystem
Regional HSI Hubs and Program Collaborators extend the Challenge into campuses, schools, classrooms, and communities—supporting recruitment, workshops, mentorship, student stories, regional activations, and showcases.
SUMA Wealth + What's Your Side Hustle Bootcamp
A six-module, skills-based learning experience where learners cultivate a side hustle, develop an AI-powered business pitch, and build micro-entrepreneurship, financial literacy, digital storytelling, and AI competencies.
BetaCulture Innovation Community
A student innovator community with peer mentors, creative coaches, and innovation advisors—providing office hours, technology demonstrations, and real-time project feedback to support learners through every phase of the challenge.
The Challenge Promise
Recognize value. Build from assets. Develop skills. Create opportunity. Connect generations.
Culture Is Currency helps learners see that what they already know, carry, and create can become a foundation for innovation, workforce readiness, economic agency, and community wealth.
Culture Is Currency is the inaugural National STEAM Innovation Challenge of the Global HSI Equity Innovation Hub at California State University, Northridge (CSUN), an Excelencia in Education Seal of Excelencia-certified institution. The Challenge advances career-connected learning, financial empowerment for workforce readiness, future-ready technology skills, and intergenerational engagement.
Ecosystem
Industry Partners
Culture Is Currency is powered by a network of industry partners committed to expanding access to innovation, technology, and economic opportunity for HSI learners and communities.
September 29 Launch
Join the Culture Is Currency Challenge
Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
Find quick answers about participating in the Culture Is Currency Challenge. Download the full FAQ for additional details.