Do it yourself,
but not alone.
For LA, Magenta House transforms schools into project incubators and students into engaged youth.
For students, Magenta House develops the self confidence, know-how, and stick-to-itiveness needed for hands-on project development, along with a values-orientation that’s civic-minded..
For instructors, Magenta House provides a helpful and effective framework for turning academic abstractions into actual solutions that can be put to work to better the home, community, and world. And the resources are fun.
For the community, it connects education to social purpose and thickens the connective tissue between community and school.
For the world, it challenges students to take responsibility for the world, and gives them the tools they need to create the world they want to live in.
Magenta House Team
Eugene Shirley is program director. He is president of Pando Populus and long-time social impact entrepreneur. He is a former Jennings Randolph Fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace.
Alexi Caracotsios is a program producer. He brings experience in event organization, education, and writing.
Cecilie Stuart is content specialist. She is is an educator, climate advocate, and creative director premiering in the new CBS Reality show, “The Activist.”
Matthew Manos is program host. He is Director of Challenge-Based Learning at the USC Iovine and Young Academy and Associate Professor of Practice, Design Strategy; he is founder of the LA-based design firm verynice and chair of the Mayor’s Creative Advisory Board.
Marc O’Brien is design strategist. Marc calls himself a climate designer who focuses on creating a climate-resilient world while inspiring other designers to do the same.
Betsy Hunter heads program development. Her background is in special events, public relations and organization and is an expediter of special projects for Pando.
John Bielenberg is creative director. John has won more than 250 design awards in his career, including the 2013 AIGA Gold Medal for leadership in the design for good movement.
The story behind Magenta House
Magenta House launched from the Pando at Maryknoll accelerator in 2018 with a pop-up structure for educational outreach, in-home makeover demonstrations, and the UseMore promotional campaign prototyped for Council District 5. In the spring of 2020, the initiative relaunched from a wholly virtual base.
The Magenta House pop-up structure was designed by John Bielenberg and built by Pasadena City College Fabrication Lab. Rain Barrels International contributed the rain barrels. LA Trade Technical College contributed student participation.
Magenta House is Pando.
Pando is a non-profit educational products and services organization that develops civic engagement opportunities for sustainability in the California Southland. Magenta House is a program we have developed for middle school.
We are named “Pando Populus” after the largest organism on Earth, an aspen grove in southern Utah made up of over 47,000 trunks and millions of leaves. “Populus” is the genus for aspen. Above ground, Pando appears to be a forest of individual trees. But underground, everything is connected by a single and vast root system. It is one tree. A one-tree-forest.
Pando is the perfect symbol for the interconnectedness of things: of our lives with one another, and the entwined relationship between education and action.
