Glitch'n

Discover Circuits Through Music

Glitch'n supports young people's creative and technical development through circuit bending: building sound circuits, changing them, and learning from what breaks.

Participants in Phoenix, Arizona can join a brief paid internship facilitating public pop-up events, and some go on to co-teach our courses.

The drum machine from the first lesson.

Youth-led community learning

How Glitch'n started

Glitch'n began in June 2025 with three free summer courses at the ASU MIX Center in downtown Mesa, Arizona. Fifty-eight young people came, many with their families, to build circuits that make sound. These video lessons are that course, free for anyone.

Funders

  • U.S. National Science Foundation
  • Qualcomm Foundation
  • Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, Arizona State University

Partners

  • Boys & Girls Clubs of the Valley
  • Phoenix Conservatory of Music
  • Arizona Science Teachers Association

Why Phoenix, why now

$265 billionTSMC's planned investment in its Phoenix chip plants
67,000U.S. semiconductor jobs projected to go unfilled by 2030

Phoenix is becoming a center of chipmaking. Glitch'n teaches youth how circuits work, and offers them paid internships facilitating public science.

Sources: TSMC and the City of Phoenix, 2026; Semiconductor Industry Association, 2023.

A sustainable community loop

The community circuit A loop of three roles. Builder (hanging out) leads to Facilitator (messing around), paid to run pop-ups. Facilitator leads to Leader (geeking out), paid to co-teach. Leader teaches the next group of builders. facilitates pop-ups · paid co-teaches · paid co-teaches the next group BUILDER Hang out! FACILITATOR Mess around! LEADER Geek out! facilitates pop-ups · paid co-teaches · paid co-teaches the next group BUILDER Hang out! FACILITATOR Mess around! LEADER Geek out!
  1. BuilderTakes a free course of five two-hour sessions and learns a few baseline circuits by heart.
  2. FacilitatorShares what they have learned by helping to facilitate free public pop-up events, in a brief paid internship. They gain experience being paid for technical work, and their STEM identity grows stronger.
  3. LeaderJoins a pool of facilitators who co-teach the next course alongside trained undergraduates. Future course leaders and Glitch'n staff come from this pool.

Research and funding

Glitch'n began with seed funding from a National Science Foundation EAGER award (Advancing Informal STEM Learning). Our research team studies what youth learn when they teach, and what visitors learn from them. How the internship works