Next to highly regarded varieties of apprenticeship-based vocational education there are, in many countries, forms of mainly school-based VET (vocational education and training) that suffer from a clash of expectations between schools and workplaces as sites of vocational education. School-based VET is viewed as of lesser value compared to work experience or workplace based training and one reason for such negative views on mainly school-based VET is the lack of authentic work-related experiences in schools. In what follows I will, based on a case study of a social development project, argue that there is a potential hybrid form of school-based VET that could deal with this issue of authenticity by working around the usual binary of school and workplace. This has resulted in some suggestions for how to reconsider vocational education curricula in schools, aiming at authentic learning environments through the systematic enactment of social and cultural developmental projects. The result is not only a way of dealing with the problems that face school-based VET but an argument for how to take advantage of schools being predominantly cultural institutions.