This study explores learner engagement with Advanced Computational Thinking (ACT) in the New Zealand digital curriculum. "Advanced" in ACT refers to an expansive, transdisciplinary, and future-looking understanding of computational thinking (CT). ACT promotes CT beyond narrow modes of problem-solving (abstraction, algorithmic thinking, and logical data organisation). The research team worked with the learning community in the Makerspace after-school programme at Manurewa High School, exploring the life of the Makerspace environment and its contribution to the development of ACT. Key findings include: (1) The makerspace community stimulates engagement with powerful ideas through its emphasis on whanaungatanga and student-led learning; (2) The makerspace presents opportunities to inform and shape ACT through the central function of 'making' for the growth of relationships, the freedom to explore, and the enjoyment of fulfilling making tasks in a shared environment; (3) Design thinking as encouraged in makerspaces allows teachers and learners to see creativity as an ongoing and key component of learning. Similarly, they see ACT as an ongoing process constantly bursting out of prescription or predetermination; and (4) ACT emerges from collaborative, social, supportive and fun culture of spaces where learners share ideas with the confidence that they are in a safe space, and that their growth is supported. These dimensions form a necessary platform for the experiences of experimentation and creativity through a commitment to the Makerspace ethos of whanaungatanga and function as a significant pedagogy for ACT.