Agency by Design was made possible through the funding and strategic partnership of the Abundance Foundation

In January 2012, the Abundance Foundation was entering the local philanthropic scene, aware of our inexperience, but wide-eyed in our intention to support Oakland students and educators. We knew three things: We wanted to support schools in the Temescal neighborhood of Oakland; we were deeply curious about the burgeoning maker movement in the Bay Area; and we were very excited about our early conversations with Project Zero. Beyond that, our driving purpose was to effect change for the many young people for whom education has fallen short.

What ensued was a three-year research project that led us to practice what was ultimately articulated by the Agency by Design initiative as a core framework—to develop the capacity to look closely, to explore complexity, and to find opportunity. Our meaningful engagement in this project—our close looking at the work from the very beginning—has made this a unique and meaningful philanthropic engagement. In the early days of Agency by Design, the Abundance Foundation team traveled to maker spaces with the researchers in search of what might need to be learned. We explored Project Zero ideas alongside teachers and immersed ourselves in the ideas at Project Zero's summer institute. We have had the unique experience of building this project as full partners with Project Zero, shifting the traditional grantmaker–grantee relationship and moving instead into the daily folds of work together. We looked closely at our Oakland neighborhood, Temescal, initially connecting four schools within a three-block radius, each serving different populations, and together comprising a reasonably accurate mosaic of the city. Teachers from these schools, most of whom had never done much more than walk past the other schools in the neighborhood, had the chance to spend meaningful time in each other's classrooms.

The work of the first year evolved into a large-scale, multicity, emergent research project that provided inexhaustible opportunity to explore complexity. We engaged our first cohort of local teachers well before we settled on a research focus.

Most initial members of this learning community were new to the concept of maker, and some were teaching in overcrowded, underfunded schools. The question of equity emerged as a point of discussion in the project, brought to light early on by the Oakland teachers. The maker movement itself presented rich complexities to explore: the tensions that exist between a well-resourced, white-male-dominated industry and underresourced Bay Area classrooms representing a range of communities; the relationship between expensive maker tools and the need for scaffolding around cognition within the making experience; and the (perhaps unintended) membership culture of the maker movement that leaves so many feeling left out.

Agency by Design has been a place for Oakland-based educators to develop their own sense of empowerment, to grow as professionals, and to find opportunity and support for creativity in resource-limited settings. With each year, our teachers blossomed as practitioners, teacher leaders, researchers, and makers. The spirit of the maker movement, coupled with their steadfast commitment to bringing equity into the conversation, made for an essential Oakland-born voice that emerged from our teachers and was heard. These teachers pushed us as a foundation and as researchers. And from that place came a deep sense of empowerment, a carving out of an Agency by Design Oakland identity.

The strength of the Oakland-based teacher researchers led the Abundance Foundation to establish a robust Maker Empowerment Grants program through which we support schools and organizations to embed maker-centered learning with a focus on equity. Our Agency by Design teacher leaders are coaching the next generation of Agency by Design teacher leaders in the spirit of maker empowerment, and together they are forming a network inspired and ready to disseminate the work. Their local impact is significant, and they are participating in the national conversation around making in schools. As we turn to Agency by Design Phase II, with a focus on assessment and documentation in the maker-centered context, Oakland teachers are engaged as leaders and thought partners, ready to dive deep again.

So here we are, no longer inexperienced in the work, and with textured and complex stories to tell. We have been honored to work with and learn from both Project Zero and the extraordinary teachers in Oakland. And it is our intention that the findings of this work will live on to affect meaningful and sustainable change for students, educators, and schools.

Wendy Donner, Education Program Director of the Abundance Foundation