Submitted by TwispWorks – It’s amazing what you can accomplish with a clear vision, hard work and determination. After numerous local students expressed a desire to learn about automotive technology, a plan was hatched to renovate a 650 sq.ft. garage on the TwispWorks campus into a workspace.
TwispWorks is committed to supporting educational opportunities for local youth, and the back of the garage space will also double as a ‘Maker Space’ for a wide range of DIY student projects. Along with instructor Trent Whatley, students recently completed the modernization of the building and rolled in car #1, a 1975 Camaro. 
What a car! The lines on this hot rod are a work of art but it needs repair in almost every way, and that’s what the students will learn about this semester. Their curriculum covers the full range of learning about tools, how various parts make a car run, how to fix them and even repairing body damage.
ILC students interning at Serious Fun Studio – The garage gives the new Automotive Tech program a launch pad but the dreaming doesn’t stop there. Given that one car barely fits and that at some point Covid will end and class sizes will return to normal numbers, it’s clear that a much larger space is what the program really needs. 
Enter local architects Kit and Sam Kollmeyer, who are volunteering their time to work with three ILC students on conceptual designs for a larger, truly modern automotive education facility on the TwispWorks campus. In the same way that a car has many parts that must work together, designing a building is incredibly multi-faceted and requires a lot of forward thinking, research and thorough planning.
From start to finish, all aspects of creating an automotive tech program are providing incredible real-world learning opportunities for our students.
Please join us as we recognize our action-oriented students, TwispWorks, Serious Fun Studios, Winthrop Kiwanis Club, Automotive Tech Program Advisors, and our local donors who’ve come together in support of our youth, cultivating a broad range of pathways toward a brighter future!