Back in 2008, sprout & co. was born as an expression of a shared mission amongst friends—to create a learning community built around the affective as much as the cognitive. After many months of running independent workshops, seminars, and educational events, we settled down in a studio space outside Davis Square in Somerville and started in on our organizational mission—making science a cultural activity.

In the domain of music, no one questions your claim to the label “musician,” even if you’re self-taught, a free jazz lover, a record collector, or an album reviewer. We wanted to create a space where people could build their own identity as scientist, engineer, designer by carving out alternative paths in technical domains. Inspired by my own experiences in collective music-making through HONK!, where people come together across age and expertise to perform, practice, and grow, we began running programs and events of all shapes and colors: building giant, life-like parade floats, running weekend-long instrument design and acoustics workshops, hosting monthly dinners around lectures+arts+performance, and much more.

Through this work, we discovered that one of the limiting reagents to building the type of learning community we were excited about which could meaningfully involve young people was time. After school, there is only so much time and energy left in a day. So, after parents of some of the kids who’d participated in our programs approached us, we began down the road of designing and seeking approval to begin Powderhouse Studios, a small, new high school in Somerville we hope to open in Fall 2018.