Research into practice-based knowledge formation suggests that to ‘make something with your hands’ develops intellect, creativity, and skills in individuals; creates social cohesion across diversity; and enhances sustainable acting and thinking on a local and global scale. Consequently, making appears a highly desirable competence to teach to future generations to enhance ecological resilience and support inclusive identity formation. Yet, dominant educational systems still attach little intellectual and economical value to making, regarding it as soft skill with low priority, even when they explicitly educate makers (i.e. art academies and vocational education). One of the axioms of a cultural democracy is that local cultural participation enhances the capacity of citizens to contribute to democratic debate. While creative production and cultural meaning making have become strongly democratized over the past decades, we argue that attention for “learning through making”, specifically embodiment and materiality in secondary education, is called for at all levels of formal education. This chapter further theorizes this perspective and presents first findings from the research project Curious Hands. Moving Making to the Core of Education (Dutch Research Council, 2020–2026). The project members have analysed making as a pedagogical practice in different educational environments in the Netherlands, including secondary, vocational, and higher education. We conclude with a reflection on how the current gap between potentiality and structural making education might be reduced.