poietoworks

poietoworks is a small non-profit dedicated to empowering youth in underserved communities in the greater LA area to learn and build more ethical, empathetic, equitable, and trustworthy technology for the future. Through art project-based learning and instruction, their original STEAM curriculum gives students access to new creative tools, fosters interest in the creative potential of emerging technologies, and cultivates intention and social responsibility in the use of everyday technologies. The poietoworks pedagogy is culturally responsive. They incorporate the passions and interests of the students and the communities they exist within into the curriculum and collaborate and consult with local knowledge experts, artists, and organizations on the art and technology examples used in their lesson plans.

Since their work began in mid-2022, poietoworks has engaged 500+ students in underserved communities in LA in their original coding curriculum. They’ve partnered with Inner-City Arts and Para Los Niños Charter Middle School (PLN), Larchmont Charter School, and the Gang Alternatives Program to reach K-7 students with classroom-based instruction and after-school programming.

Through their partnership with Inner-City Arts and Para Los Niños Charter Middle School, poeitoworks offers "Creative Technology: Coding, Craft and Community" four days a week, engaging upwards of 100 students. In this class led by phenomenal teaching artists, students learn how to make multimedia art with digital technology and computer hardware. This program ensures students' early encounters with code are exciting and engaging to begin fostering a lifelong love of technology. Students emerge from the course with a series of original artworks in multiple forms of media — audio, visual, and creative writing — all created using digital (and sometimes analog) tools.

At PLN and with Inner-City Arts, poietoworks serves students and the community with incredible staff to transform how technology is taught and to carry forward its mission:

• To make technology accessible to everyone regardless of age, gender, race, or socioeconomic status.
• To provide an innovative and collaborative environment that fosters a deep-rooted love of learning and nurtures a sense of ethical and social responsibility.
• To empower the youth of today to develop a spectrum of lenses to assess technology’s impact on current society so that they can build better, more ethical, more empathetic, more equitable, and more trustworthy technology for the future.

poeitoworks hopes to expand its reach and impact in the lives and work of students far and wide. You can learn more about their work at http://www.poietoworks.com/.