XQ: The Super School Project Announces Powderhouse Studios as One of 10 Winning Super Schools Out of Nearly 700 Proposals

After a rigorous 11-month application and evaluation process, XQ Institute has announced winning Super Schools, including Somerville-based team Powderhouse Studios. Each school will be awarded $10 million over the next 5 years. All 10 schools will serve as catalysts for change, making high school more relevant, engaging and effective for every student, everywhere.

“The Super School Project was born out of the conviction and commitment that every child from every background has a right to a quality education that prepares them for a future none of us can easily predict,” said Russlynn Ali, Chief Executive Officer of XQ Institute. “We are proud to partner with each of these 10 amazing teams who represent the power of communities coming together to restore the highest goals and aspirations of public education.”

Powderhouse Studios will be a research intensive school where students will have opportunities to work on long-term, local research projects outside of the traditional classroom and school day. The school will engage students to become independent investigators who are charting their own personal and professional paths with the support of adult mentors.

“We are awfully excited to be chosen as an XQ Super School,” said Powderhouse Studios founder and director Alec Resnick. “The opportunity to design a school from scratch-much less one which has the room and permission to deeply rethink things-is inspiring. We’ve been working in and around Somerville for nearly a decade now, and starting with the Mayor approaching us about the idea of starting a school under Massachusetts’s Innovation Schools legislation, we’ve been struck by folks’ appetite and passion for redesign. We’re very keen to get down to business and build out a world-class team to join us.”

Powderhouse Studios (PHS) is devoted to inventing the future of learning for young people who see things differently, and who don’t feel that school works for them. That means PHS looks more like a research and design studio than a school. Focused on building deep relationships-enabled by a model combining small, mixed-age cohorts with tightly knit, cross-functional teams of staff-PHS is about people doing real work which matters to them. Inspired by many of the structures supporting creative work in the real world, PHS uses two unique toolsets-computation and storytelling-to open traditionally academic subjects to more vocational, artistic, and hands-on approaches. This work is being supported through Massachusetts’s unique Innovation Schools legislation, which gives district schools the freedom and flexibility needed to substantively reimagine the future of learning. A profile of the team can be found on the XQ website.

XQ: The Super School Project was born from a commitment made by Emerson Collective in July 2014 to find and develop the best designs for next generation high schools as part of President Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper Initiative. Launched in September 2015, XQ: The Super School Project was an open call to America to meet the challenge of preparing our students for today’s world by dreaming, designing, and creating the next American high school.

From its beginning, XQ: The Super School Project has asked communities to self-assemble, engage young people and offer ideas on how to create models that challenge students as critical thinkers to take on real world problems and have a positive impact on the world.

In the coming months, the 10 teams, selected from nearly 700 submitted proposals, will begin building and implementing their Super School Designs.

For additional information about XQ: The Super School Project, or the selected Super School designs, contact John Joanino at jjoanino@wearerally.com or (310) 735-7538.

~City of Somerville