This article reports, from the insider's perspective, on a research project comprising fifteen academics in the Faculty of Education Sciences at the North-West University and fifteen senior officials from one of the four Education Districts in the North West Province. This project has as its research theme, hence aim; "the creation of sustainable empowering learning environments" at any site where learning occurs. Through this article I describe how this research project was established and operationalised couched within Boyer's scholarship of engagement, as the theoretical framework. Information on the project in its quest to unmask factors that hinder the creation of sustainable and empowering learning are also highlighted in the context of the apartheid legacies of the North West Province's practice of education. Although the study does not generalize its "findings" beyond the researched, it is however believed that important lessons can be learnt from this instance of engaged scholarship.