We are a center for innovation!
TPZ made the decision to focus its program primarily in Boston and to build a state-of-the-art Innovation Center in the Jackson Square neighborhood of the city. We were intentional in our choice to shift our headquarters to the Jackson Square neighborhood of Boston, ensuring that we were in close proximity to the highest concentration of public high schools and, therefore, to the students we seek to serve and their families. We were also intentional in identifying a neighborhood that had a vibrant, diverse culture and local entrepreneurial energy but which has historically been under-resourced and in which young peoples’ opportunities for enrichment and exposure have been limited.
It was our intention to ensure that in creating the Innovation Center, we were creating a hub of innovation—along the lines of those located in the Kendall Square technology and biotech cluster in Cambridge—in a neighborhood that had not historically been identified for this type of investment. After more than five years of planning and building, the 36,000 square foot Innovation Center opened its doors to students in Spring 2022.
TPZ’s Innovation Center serves as a community hub and catalyst for education, employment, job training, and postsecondary pathways for high school students and young adults. It offers a safe, supportive, and inspiring space for our students to learn and create. A growing body of research shows that intentional design and operation of learning spaces can have a difference—making an impact on young people’s beliefs about their own potential, what they value, and what they are motivated to achieve. Therefore, TPZ’s Innovation Center has been carefully designed to feature lively design and collaboration spaces, a professional makerspace (the “Fab Lab”) with professional-level state-of-the-art equipment, multi-media studios, desk space for ecosystem partners, community meeting space, and quiet spaces for thinking and creation.