Full Steam Ahead: The Rediscover Center
There’s barely a day that passes without me bemoaning phone/screen addiction: mine, my child’s, the world’s. There’s a movement towards dumbing down smartphones, which I’ve done. Still, the best antidote is making something tangible with my hands. A meal that requires a sharp knife, picking up a pen to crowbar myself open long enough to pin an idea-feeling down with words, threading a needle to fix a tear. On that note, I was happy to talk to Jonathan Bijur, the Executive Director of Rediscover Center. Its mission, always lovely, now feels essential: “to foster creativity and environmental stewardship in youth and communities by providing hands-on maker education with sustainable, upcycled materials.”
Jonathan has a 617 area code. He was living in Boston in 2002 when he got a “candy bar phone,” and kept his number even after moving to Santa Monica in 2010. We didn’t meet back then, but in 2002 we both worked at MIT. Jonathan was the Educational Programs Manager at the MIT Museum, where I spent hours gleaning inspiration for what would be my dissertation about the consilience of science, art, and human romantic interaction. Then, as now, Jonathan is inspired by the “intersections of art, engineering, and K-12 education”—in other words, STEAM—which led him, in 2014, to the Rediscover Center.
As part of his organization's famed community outreach, he’ll be back at Coffee & Connections on August 29th to share a “gentle intro to woodworking”: making a string art board to hang on the wall. This project includes “lots of entry points for different skill levels,” Jonathan says. “It’s a good way to learn to manipulate materials,” to both bend them to your imagination, as well as to angle your creativity to something using what’s available to make art. I’m excited to get out of my head and off my screen to loop my focus and creativity with others’.
The Center’s mission privileges hands-on making, a kind of DIY empowerment for all ages, interests, and abilities. Mainly, children and parents take advantage of the camps, tinkering studio, and classes. There are Rediscover staff working with every public school in Santa Monica, leading workshops during and after the school day (such as Cardboard City). McKinley Elementary and SMASH boast “fully embedded” Rediscover educators. Bahala sponsored Rediscover Center-led cardboard construction workshops at Lincoln Middle School last year as part of their "Game On! Designing Arcade Games," a project-based learning unit for all 7th graders.
I’m most familiar with the Center’s original location in Venice, where Bahala held its Halloween costume DIY program. On Earth Day in 2024, a second Rediscover location opened in mid-city Los Angeles. With 3,000 square feet, Jonathan says, “there’s a lot of room to play.”
Play is paramount to mental health, both for children and adults as we age, and music inspires joy, lightness, and movement. To that end, reDiscover will host Family Activities at Americana in the Park in Gandara Park on Sunday, September 14th. It’s a day celebrating the roots of the American songbook in all its glory, plus craft activities, food trucks, and family fun.
Jonathan hopes that the event will serve as a “first interaction” and a “gateway” for people new to the area or to Rediscover. The Center garners support mainly from its inventive programming, as well as from local businesses and the Santa Monica Office of Sustainability and Environment (at 30 years, one of the longest-standing departments of this type in a U.S. city). To reach the next echelon of bringing value and strengthening our community, they’re fundraising to support two exciting projects.
The first, the Rediscover Center at the Santa Monica Airport site, will celebrate a soft opening this winter and a grand opening on Earth Day in 2026. With 4,000 square feet, it’s “bigger than anywhere we've been,” Jonathan enthuses. Housed in the renovated basement in an old SMC building from the 1940s on the south side of campus, the building includes Ruskin Theater’s new home and offices for architects, artists, and nonprofits. “I’m excited for what we’ll be able to do with such a huge makerspace,” Jonathan says.
The second big news on the horizon revolves around the City of Santa Monica’s big plans to close the airport in 2028 and turn the land into a multi-use public park. When the park officially opens in 2029, Rediscover plans to open LA’s first adventure playground. Designed for ages 8-15, this place-as-project will be for “older kids and teens who need more control of their environment than pre-fab playgrounds provide,” Jonathan explains. “They need buy-in and creative options to be engaged.” Staff will guide kids as they work within the limitations of the landscape, carving out their own spaces for relaxation and movement.
After educating, empowering, and delighting thousands of people, the reach of these two projects will be profoundly positive for all of us lucky to visit or live here. “With full community support, we’ll soon be able to reach, educate, and inspire hundreds of thousands of folks,” Jonathan says. “We can only love what we feel a true part of and co-design.”
As a gentle but powerful clamping device for our fractured culture, the Rediscover Center, like Bahala, collects the isolated bits, organizes them, and reframes them into something greater. And so we measure, cut, glue, stitch. We shape ideas with tools, add dimension to flatness with ribbons. By employing our faculties toward a vision, however slight, in our mind’s eye, we upcycle our available materials into hope, crafting community.
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