Building with our hands is the essence of creativity, productivity, human spirit, and even community—as our knowledge, passion and our creations are passed along through generations. As humans, we are driven to do this kind of activity, and to celebrate the associated art and knowledge, that ability to think through our hands. Enter IYRS, a school founded initially to reinvigorate and teach these skills in the world of boat craft and restoration. Along the way, those traditional and cutting edge skills, and the hands-on way IYRS teaches them, have helped IYRS develop a whole new experiential education model—a model that prepares deeply technical and ultra-talented craftspeople and technicians to work with a range of materials, and to maintain a range of mechanical systems, to help industry and the individual. That educational model is this: students immersed both body and spirit, with a team equally dedicated, in a condensed timeframe, to transform materials and systems into useful, lasting things, and in so doing transforming their own lives and careers. When we build with our hands, immersed with others in the task, we become attuned to the importance of all that we do. At IYRS, students learn to make, restore and maintain things with this heightened sense of purpose and craft, becoming truly in demand across industries. In the process, they build more meaningful lives, satisfied and inspired in the knowledge that, in their hands, they have the power to build almost anything.