The Collaboration Continuum Forward

TRUE Skool
May 11
3 min read

Updated: May 20

On April 30th, 2026 the energy at HGA was the ignition of a future movement. We gathered our "Historical Alliance" of partners, champions, and youth leads for our Future TRUE Skool Campus Stakeholder Kickoff, and the vibration in the room confirmed what we’ve known for almost 10 years building this vision. We'll share more footage & findings from this epic event soon.......

Our kickoff session was a deep dive into our TRUE "Identity Intelligence." Tom Avery asked a question and stopped the room:

"What are the characteristics that identify a current TRUE Skool student?"

We hosted with our partners HGA, inside their world class firm downtown Milwaukee - We moved beyond traditional architecture to ask questions like: How do the Elements of Hip Hop Culture dictate the usage of our new building?

Through working groups focused on Youth & Community, Arts, and Family, Educators & Fundraising we shared helpful ideas and blueprints for our "Living Learning Lab." We had TS Alumni , parents, students, artists, architects, teachers and everyone in between in the room!! We listened.

Highlights from the kick off engagement include:

A TRUE Multi-Generational Anchor: The clear request for a Parent / Family Resource area to support deeper community needs.

Vocational Opportunities: Aligning our design with media & tech career pathways, ensuring the campus is a TRUE forward thinking engine for Milwaukee creative trades and related industries.

We need some Civic Representatives / City Officials support in the room! Who else do we need in the room?

This Alliance with HGA and our Network of Stakeholders serves as a primary example of our 10-year 'Designed Awareness' method in action—bringing professional and university-level process rigor to our youth-led "Design Awareness" curriculum. We were doing these BEFORE the Covid-shutdown!!!

By bridging the gap between student vision and professional architectural standards, sharing our process and vision for our Future TRUE Skool Campus we are ensuring over and over that our youth are the lead consultants on their own future and the BEST solution builders for our city and beyond.

We are ALSO making sure educators and professionals in the Architecture & Design industry get it right when it comes to collaborating with youth & community!

This kickoff builds directly on our momentum with academic and professional partners. We are thrilled to highlight our recent collaboration with the UWM Community Design Solutions (CDS).

We are no longer just "visioning"; we are architecting our Master Roadmap, our next steps are becoming clearer:

Deploying our Steering and Core Committees to action tasks.

Summer Immersion: Preparing our Youth Design Leads for a high-intensity summer design externship.

Strategizing our NEXT Stakeholder Engagements!

We've got work to do!

Gratitude to everyone who attended, Thank you. You are at the 'ground floor' making this legacy possible. Together we are architecting a global monument that will prove what happens when youth and community lead and Hip Hop Culture is the cornerstone.

The recurring theme across all groups was Youth Empowerment—TRUE Skool youth as decision-makers in entire process. Stakeholders emphasized that "Culture is the TRUE Infrastructure" options for physical space downtown with adaptive reuse (and historic tax credit integration) while maintaining high-tech career pathways were also considered.