Event Recap · September 8, 2026

Code the Culture:
Where Music Meets Engineering.

25 students. Everyday objects. MIT-born technology. And a room full of young people who left knowing exactly what they’re capable of.

Music and engineering don’t usually share the same room.

On September 8th, at the Best Buy Teen Tech Center in Atlanta, they did.

Twenty-five students showed up for Code the Culture — some from Cristo Rey, some from Martha Ellen Stilwell School of the Arts, and some who found us on social media and showed up because they were curious. They touched a banana and made a beat. They held a pencil and triggered a drum pattern. They built something with their hands and heard it come out of a speaker in real time.

That’s not a metaphor. That’s what happened.

What Code the Culture Actually Was

Code the Culture was presented by We Create Tech in partnership with Georgia Tech’s College of Engineering, Department of Outreach Initiatives — and it was built around a single, powerful idea: what if the tools of music production and the foundations of electrical engineering weren’t separate subjects?

Each station was set up with everyday conductive objects — a banana, buttons, pencils, pieces of foil — each paired with a photo of a cultural icon looking back at the student. Touch it, and it wasn’t just an object anymore. It was a working circuit, powered by Makey Makey, a technology that came out of MIT.

From there, students used a custom tool WCT built to trigger drum patterns directly from those circuits. They weren’t just learning how a circuit receives power. They were using that circuit to build their own song, bar by bar.

Who Was in the Room

Some students came from Cristo Rey and Martha Ellen Stilwell School of the Arts in Clayton County. Some found us on social media and walked through the door because something about it spoke to them. That second group matters just as much as the first.

Because that means the work is reaching people we haven’t met yet. That means the message is traveling further than our direct network. That means young people are self-selecting into STEAM experiences because they see themselves in what we’re building.

Best Buy and the Fulton County Library System provided dinner for everyone. Students left with Zaxby’s gift cards as a parting gift — because showing up deserves to be celebrated.

Just for One Second

What if one of these students is the next Tyler, the Creator?

The next engineer at MIT? The next founder building the next Lovable?

That’s exactly why we do this. We help students reimagine what they could be — and put the tools in their hands to get there.

Not hypothetically. Not someday. That afternoon, in that room, with a banana and a beat.

See the Recap

Watch the full Code the Culture recap reel — students in action, circuits live, beats dropping in real time.

Want to Be in the Room Next Time?

Code the Culture is one of many experiences happening inside the WCT ecosystem. Join TechRise to stay connected to everything we’re building.