About Rediscover Center
Mission & Vision
Mission
Rediscover's mission is to provide makers with the tools, resources, and confidence to engage in creative reuse and self-expression. We educate youth of all levels of expertise in transforming discarded materials into art, functional objects, and tools for learning. We support one another as hands-on creators, problem-solvers, community stakeholders, and stewards of the Earth.
Vision
Rediscover envisions a culture of makers who contribute to building a creative and environmentally sustainable society. We provide affordable and accessible programming for all youth in Los Angeles. Our imaginative and resourceful staff create spaces — physical and mental — where everyone is welcome to explore their creativity without judgment.
As Rediscover nurtures creative reuse among makers, we move closer to a culture where reclaimed materials can be recognized for their educational and creative value. We achieve this vision by enhancing youth's instincts and interests to use the available resources in their lives responsibly. By sharing our resources in a makerspace, we reinforce practices of sharing that strengthen our neighborhoods, city, society, and planet.
Core Values
Support Personal Expression
We share excitement for making art, and create spaces to inspire the wildest ideas.
Celebrate Creative Makers
Makers are everywhere — facilitators, tinkerers, and community members learn from one another.
Teach Environmental Stewardship
Rediscovering materials creatively teaches people to use resources responsibly in every part of life.
Engage Hands-On Learning
Exploring materials and tools with our hands connects us to new concepts and new ways of seeing the world.
Value Play
Creativity is fun, experimental, and playful — play is a vital part of learning.
Establish a Culture of Safety
Trust is the foundation for using powerful tools safely: respect the tools, the space, your body, and each other.
Build Confidence by Teaching Competence
Maker skills turn imagination into real things. Every maker starts somewhere and can go anywhere.
Our History
Rediscover is founded, then formally incorporated in 2004 to improve children's art education through recycled materials.
The Rediscover Center opens in Venice, CA — a 3,000 sf public youth makerspace stocked with tools and sustainably sourced materials.
Week-long summer camps begin, introducing more intensive tools — clamps, drills, handsaws, and power saws — for larger creative-reuse builds. The program grows rapidly through the mid-2010s.
Rediscover shifts toward free public programming and intensive maker education for underresourced communities, forming new partnerships and completing its first Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Action Plan.
Staff and board align these priorities with daily operations, outreach, hiring, and fundraising, while expanding distance learning and engagement with Title I schools across LAUSD, SMMUSD, and PUSD.
Rediscover Center Mid City opens, duplicating the Venice model with a public makerspace, materials warehouse, camps, classes, and group workshops.
Rediscover celebrates its 20th anniversary, looking ahead to another 20 years of hands-on, sustainable maker education for Los Angeles youth.
