Institute for Applied Tinkering

Brightworks is an innovative school that reimagines education. By taking the best practices from both early childhood education and hands-on, project-based experiential learning, we strive to meet students' needs in a flexible, mixed-age environment that breaks the traditional walls between school and the community outside the classroom. We offer a broad-spectrum learning environment designed to encourage creative capacity, tenacity, citizenship, imaginative cabilities and empathy. This year we are planning our move to a new location, where we hope to put down roots for many years to come. We are working to make signficant investments to infrastructure and programs including hiring a new Finance Manager and Business Manager. We continue to invest in our programs, systems, and processes to ensure the future success and longevity of the school.

Tinkering School acts as after school, break, and summer programming to encourage creative capacity, tenacity, and citizenship in youth. Tinkering School is a place where children are given abstract, open-ended building projects and problems. Trained to use the tools required for success, they have the freedom to fail and the time to persevere. Trusted with real tools and real supplies, kids are put in an environment where constraints breed creativity and foster problem-solving that will expand into every area of their lives. Kids learn to trust themselves and their curiosity. They develop new skills and vocabulary, their creativity and their ability to persist. We are slowly coming back from COVID and this year we did an overnight summer camp. We are planning to slowly come back in 2022-2023 and be back to full pre-pandemic levels.