The New Guy: What Is TwispWorks?

Hello, Grant here, the new Communications Officer at TwispWorks.

I’ve been here for just about three months, navigating my way through introductions, meetings, and reports, attempting to take small sips from a rushing firehose of information. While I am still very much finding my footing with TwispWorks, I’ve had plenty of time to breathe and take in my surroundings, to observe the terrain and topography of the work and relationships on this campus.

I think most people can sense when a space is built on love. Love for their craft, love for their family, and love for their community. Evidence of this can be found everywhere on campus, and through the people associated with it. The scent of a bubbling curry from Lal’s truck drifting over the pavilion lawn, where a bunch of young folks from the ILC have gathered to chatter away in the sun. Sara Ashford washing her fabrics in homemade dye, while just across the way Kit and Sam Kollmeyer are deep in the designs of the next dream home. The auto tech building whirring and banging as Matt Kennedy guides his mechanics class a hundred feet away from Jonathan Baker, who’s rolling out a massive sheet of vinyl for the next eqpd bag. All of this just around the corner from the tiny humans at Little Star, bouncing around the day care.

These are people’s jobs of course, teaching, caring, creating, manufacturing, but they are here, together, sharing the moments of vastly different daily lives a couple steps from one another. This, to me, is humanity, what it means to be a community, what it means to share.

So what is TwispWorks among all this? It’s a place, obviously. But, in my short time here, I have noticed that it appears to be the glue, the connective tissue, the structural framing for people to create, play, and thrive. This function to connect comes in many forms, some explicit and quantifiable, and others totally nebulous and ineffable.      

My job here, as far as I can tell, is to be a connector, a conduit, a fastener between the lives of our community. What is happening over there? Who do I contact about that? What are we building here? How do I learn more about this? These are questions I attempt to answer every day, through a myriad of mediums, and I am hopefully getting better at it with every attempt.

Thank you for reading our newsletter, I am looking forward to writing many, many more.

Grant