Meet an innoFaither is our series to introduce the inspiring optimists in the innoFaith world and what they’re working on and thinking about. We hope it helps you find and engage with each other across the network to advance faith-rooted social innovation and interfaith collaboration for social impact. Or just meet some cool people.
Meet Mark Basnage, educator, innovator, and founder of MakeKnowledge. Mark is perpetually pushing the boundaries of what education can and should be. He inspires us to imagine education that is more inclusive and relevant, and where learning means being engaged in positive change.
What faith(s), if any, do you practice? Is your faith or practice bringing special inspiration or insight for you in this current moment of pandemic and racial justice reckoning?
I am a Catholic Christian. This answer still sounds so incomplete to me, for a number of reasons. For one, it obscures the fact that my path here wasn’t straight or even expected. I’m not a fan of labels in general, since they are often used to put people in boxes, to stop conversation and encounter instead of initiating it. And I think this label obscures the struggle I’ve felt within my faith — some of my greatest disappointments and betrayals have come from people who also count themselves as Christians and Catholics. But here I am, inside a faith that at its core understands all these difficult things, and then points to and gifts something transcendent, a love unshakable and undying.
That love is a tremendous encouragement and guide for me, as I aim to use my own gifts in productive ways in our world. This current moment is offering all of us opportunities to respond — to anti-Black racism, to the pandemic of indifference, to the climate crisis. Responding with love means a bunch of things for me: humility, innovation and making room for giant imaginations, collaborating and building bridges with many others, hospitality, encounter.
Where do you live?
I have lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for the last twenty years, and in a wonderfully diverse community in West Philadelphia for ten years before that.
What's your favorite pastime?
I love to cook. For me it’s not about one kind of cuisine or technique. Cooking offers a sense of wonder — about the varied ingredients themselves, or about the transformation they undergo. I guess most people don’t cook for the epistemological benefits, but it’s true: cooking over a number years is the best way to understand certain kinds of tacit knowledge. And of course the social aspects of cooking and sitting down with others are so welcome — even more so as COVID has made them difficult. For all of these reasons, I have just started to document a little of what I cook with my family on Instagram— and why I called it “feeding wonder.”
What are you working on currently?
A few years ago I started an education nonprofit called MakeKnowledge. We believe that schools can be engines of innovation and opportunity in their communities. We’re sparking collaboration on some big themes in education — on climate change and resilience; on the future of work & education; and a project called “STEM++” that aims to improve the who, how, and why of STEM education from childhood to career. We work with schools and districts on strategic plans to put these ideas into action.
What question are you thinking about these days?
This season has me asking so many questions — about the world (“how are people de-radicalized?”), and questions about myself as a leader. At the moment, one big question is how best to move my work forward — how to bring the ideas and opportunities to more people, to bring different people together to make change, and to do all of this in a sustainable way.
How can people find you?
Follow our regular MakeKnowledge updates on Substack.
To get a glimpse of the food and art and wonder, follow along at feeding_wonder on Instagram.