About The Academy.

The shape of the thing

The Academy runs one cohort at a time. Each cohort takes one well-bounded project on one Irish site — a county on localnews.ie, a vertical on pubhub.ie, a sprint of editorials on myid.ie — and ships it over four weeks. Eight to ten members split a small set of roles. One mentor. One weekly cohort call. One weekly one-on-one per member. A public reference letter at the end.

That's the whole thing. There are no exams, no certificates, no completion badges. The reference letter names what you actually did and links to it live on the site you helped build. That's the product.

Why two domains

The Academy is one half of a two-site setup. The other half is Built In Ireland. The split:

• The Academy is where you enrol, where the cohorts run, where you find your mentor and your role. It's the learning vehicle.
• Built In Ireland is where the references live, where employers see your work, where the brand sits. It's the proof layer.

Splitting the two means "I'm in The Academy" reads cleanly on LinkedIn as a cohort identity, while "Built In Ireland reference" reads cleanly as an employer-facing artefact. Same product, two doors.

The reference letter, explained

The reference is the part that takes the most explaining and matters the most. So:

• It's a real letter, signed (digitally) by your mentor and by Built In Ireland
• It lives at a verifiable URL on builtinireland.ie — anyone can visit it
• It names the cohort, the project, the role, and the specific work you shipped
• It links to your work live on the project site — so anyone reading the letter can click through to see the code, the article, the data you produced
• Co-signature: Built In Ireland (the project) + Raven Design (publishing partner)

To earn it: four shipped issues over four weeks, four check-ins attended, mentor sign-off, a two-paragraph self-reflection. The criteria are published with the syllabus so you can self-assess as you go.

How we keep this free

The cohort is free for members. The members ship work that benefits the project site (localnews.ie, myid.ie, pubhub.ie, etc.) which is operated by the mentor as part of a portfolio. The mentor's portfolio benefits from the cohort's shipped work; the members get a reference and a portfolio piece. There's no fee in either direction.

If we run sponsored cohorts in future — where an Irish SME funds a project that solves their problem in exchange for first dibs on hiring the cohort — the members will be paid a stipend and the sponsor will pay the fee. That model exists in other programmes (Herizon's femcode collective is the closest reference) and we may run one for Cohort 4 or 5. Members will never pay.

Code of conduct

Short version: be kind, ship your share, give credit, ask for help when stuck.

Slightly longer:

• Everyone in a cohort is here in good faith to ship and to graduate. Treat people that way.
• Shipping is the bar. If you can't ship for a week, say so — cohorts work around it. Going silent without warning is what ends a reference path, not a missed week.
• Credit your sources. Credit the cohort members who helped you. Credit the mentor when their suggestion shaped the work.
• Ask for help in public (cohort channel) before private. Other members benefit from your stuck moment.
• No harassment of any kind. No exceptions. We will remove anyone who makes the cohort unsafe for others, immediately and without negotiation.

Contact

Anything we haven't answered: hello@theacademy.ie — goes straight to Kali.

For Built In Ireland questions (employer side, reference verification, partnerships): builtinireland.ie.