Education

Thingamakids: Oakland students make music from scratch

A teaching artist with Thingamajigs taught a weeklong workshop at charter school East Bay Innovation Academy on “sound engineering,” where students learned about physics, design, and mathematics by making their own instruments and learning about how they make sound.

Community invests in proposed West Oakland grocery store

Ahmadi said he had no choice but to fundraise from residents, rather than taking a more traditional path such as a loan from a bank. On paper, the project showed a high risk of failure “both because it’s a start-up and a low-margin business—also because of the perceptions of the challenges of the neighborhood,” said Ahmadi.