Community Retreat 2025

In 2025, Yung Prodigy is deepening and expanding our community retreats — building on last year’s historic gathering for young people impacted by parental or kinship incarceration.

This year’s retreat continues the same ethos of community, creativity and lived experience leadership, but with one key shift:
Our retreats are now the entry point for young people to step into Yung Prodigy’s broader work, shape our direction, and access ongoing opportunities across research, advocacy, creative projects and community mobilisation.

Over two nights and two-and-a-half days, young people will come together on unceded Yuin Country, on the banks of Bherwherree (St George’s Basin), to:

• Connect with peers who share similar experiences
• Explore creativity, storytelling and grounding practices
• Unpack the realities of parental/kinship incarceration
• Reflect on community, autonomy, care and self-determined freedom
• Contribute ideas that will directly inform Yung Prodigy’s future programs and campaigns
• Build long-term relationships and pathways within Yung Prodigy

There is no fixed agenda or end goal. Instead, the retreat is flexible, emergent and shaped by the young people themselves,  honouring autonomy, cultural grounding and collective leadership.

All accommodation, food, transport and materials are provided, and participants receive $200 per day in recognition of their time, knowledge and lived experience.

Young people impacted by parental incarceration are one of the most overlooked communities in Australia.
Our retreats exist to create the spaces we’ve never been given, spaces of belonging, joy, analysis, imagination and community-led action.

What began as a once-off gathering in 2024 has now grown into a core foundation of Yung Prodigy’s model, ensuring that:

• Lived experience drives our work
• Young people co-create our campaigns, research and community programs
• Youth voices remain central in shaping long-term systems change
• Ongoing opportunities (paid and voluntary) are available to participants across the year

This retreat is more than a moment,  it is an entry point into a broader ecosystem of community care, resistance and collective creation.

We welcome Expressions of Interest from young people who:

• Are aged approximately 16-30 (flexible)
• Have lived experience of parental or kinship incarceration
• Are based in Sydney/Gadigal or broader NSW
• Are aligned with non-reformist, community-led justice approaches
• Are open to creativity, reflection, connection and co-design

To express interest or learn more, email programs@yungprodigy.org.
Spaces are limited, but don't worry, if spots fill up we have plenty more Retreats in the works and other opportunities we’d love to plug you into!