We spent a full day in Hale County, Alabama, one of the poorest in the state, but host to a growing community of creative thinkers and young designers. Our friends from Project M have been working in Hale County for a while now, as have Rural Studio, the well-known design-build architecture program founded in the 90’s by the late Samuel Mockbee.
Our official host was PieLab, a “pie-conversation-optimism-design” establishment downtown setup by Project M in collaboration with HERO. They serve pie and open their doors to folks from all walks, providing a community space that inspires more amazing projects. It’s a coffee shop-turned community catalyst. And the pie is amazing (I’m on my 4th slice as I type). In the past few weeks, they’ve hosted open mic nights, business seminars, and more.
Rural Studio Boys and Girls club in Akron, AL
Before opening up our trailer exhibition, we took a drive around the county to check out some of the Rural Studio’s projects, each of which was designed by a group of Auburn University architecture students for the community, over the course of one year. We saw a Boys and Girls Club (which is about to open), a dog pound, a baseball field, and a few houses that have been standing since Mockbee’s early days in the 90s. In many ways it is the work of Rural Studio that has paved the way for an influx of young designers to follow suit and work together to build up the creative capital within a poor and rural community.
We parked the trailer around the corner from PieLab, on Main Street, and our first visitors were a group of YouthBuild students who were at PieLab for a class for the day. We tried to teach them how to wheelie in the Whirlwind Wheelchair, and they seemed to enjoy the playfulness and function of some of the products, like the Adaptive Eyecare glasses and the DIY soccer ball tape.
Cynthia in her restaurant in downtown Greensboro
Later in the afternoon we had an extensive conversation with a lovely woman named Cynthia, originally from New York, who moved to Greensboro a few years back and opened a restaurant (ate her catfish for lunch!). She had attended the PieLab open mic night last weekend and loves what they’re up to. She was even wearing a PieLab t-shirt, and we invited her to come by and visit our trailer.
John Bielenberg, founder of Project M, with the folks from Good Focus
Though we were only here for a day (I’m writing this towards the end of the day, sitting in PieLab, one of two places on Main Street that have wifi), it was a different and refreshing experience to set up shop downtown on Main Street in a struggling but hopeful Alabama town (Hale County is actually quite similar in its social and economic makeup to Bertie County, NC, where we are moving and have worked with the public school district this past year). And of course it was wonderful to catch up with our friends at PieLab (Project M meets Project H!).
