Study Hall

We're launching Study Hall at Warehouse On Watts as a membership-based social club, startup lab, shared workspace and community hub, which we're REALLLLLY excited about!
..But, as exciting and cool as *that* is, it's just the first step in our plan to reimagine school, work, and cities for the future.

The whole thing goes like this:

Step 1. We connect everything and everyone in local ecosystems (people, places, resources, and opportunities) in physical spaces (like WOW, et al), and around social, professional, and community events and programs.

Step 2. We take the talented people into that network/ecosystem and plug them into real projects, to facilitate collaboration, and give people opportunities to do real work, and help startups, entrepreneurs, brands, and businesses to build, launch, and grow.

Step 3. Then we connect those projects -- and all of the energy and activity within the network/ecosystem -- to local students, schools, and neighborhoods, to create opportunities for internships, apprenticeships, community education, and engagement.

Step 4. And then, we use a virtual platform (which we're building) to facilitate and augment *everything* that's happening across the network and in specific physical spaces (teaching and learning, portfolio building, hiring, etc.).

The result:

A new kind of trade school for the new economy. A virtual and IRL framework intended to provide students and learners at all ages and levels, with the things college and traditional degree programs do well (access to content and instruction, context for social interactions and relationships, introductions with mentors, learning alongside peers, etc.), without requiring them to take on massive, crippling debt, in exchange for a vague [often empty] promise of future security/employability.

Because the reality is that, even as our world is changing at a dizzying pace, today's schools, look exactly like yesterday's schools. They are preparing people for a world and an economy that no longer exists -- a world that will be utterly unidentifiable within a matter of years. While college has long been seen as the great equalizer, the value of a degree is inflated, there is no continuity between high school, college, and career, and as Mike Rowe notes in this video, from a very early age, we're all pushed in the same direction, even though we're all very different.

We believe the future of education is self-directed, collaborative, socially-credentialed, and entrepreneurial — focused on solving real problems and doing real work. And while there are many emerging alternatives to college and traditional degree programs (gap year, service year, online education platforms, et al), there is has been no comprehensive framework that provides learners with a viable alternative, to help them find *their* genius. And that's what we're aiming to create.

So, do you see it yet? We hope you do. But either way, higher ed, we're coming for ya!